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1. Jennifer Armstrong
   January 19th, 2006| 5:46 am

   I feel a Nietzsche quote coming on. Something about standing on one’s own two feet… Yep — there it is folks” “Egotism”. One has to learn where when and how to apply it, but once you gaat it, you ain’t gonna be talkin the wierd talk about “I think I could be exploiting myself by directing society’s standards against myself” or nothin.

   LESSONS IN EGOTISTIC FEMINISM (a sister of sex-positive feminaughtyism)

   First, figure out who you are and what your wants and desires are like, when you are truly free, untrammelled and thinking/feeling for yourself (a hard state for some of the more oppressed ones to get into — but try).

   Then figure out, given you have certain needs and desires of your own, which of society’s holds on you would be best accepted or rejected.

   Then stick firm.

   This makes it more difficult for anyone to exploit you, whether by subtle deception or by outright coercive tactics.

   And you will make the world a nice, more enviornmentally friendly place — and people will smile at you more.

2. nubian
   January 19th, 2006| 6:11 am

   i was actually offended when this author implied that burlesque is for the purposes of women who can’t be strippers, to still exploit themselves for a male audience. (which i don’t agree with at all)

   but, obvisouly, she has not ever been to a queer burlesque show…
   which, her argument goes out the window then

3. Anthony Kennerson
   January 19th, 2006| 10:04 am

   Damn, Miz Bitch..that was absolutely f’n brilliant, and right on point.

   My problem with these erotophobes has nothing to do with their personal sex lives; it in the way in which they make assumptions about women and feminists who actually like sex and are unafraid to say si inpublic. After all, if you are saying that women who show off their sexual selves are merely slaves and copiers of “male sexuality”; aren’t you implying the collorary theory that feminism should embrace an essentialist, restrictive view of sexuality and impose it on the rest of us.

   And this crock of crap that sex radicals and defenders of sex work/porn don’t care about the economic and social status of women is just too ridiculous: If I didn’t care about that, then I wouldn’t be a Leftist or a feminst, now wouldn’t I???

   It all comes doen to this: Cultural feminists such as the author you cited have so swallowed and internalized the dominant conservative cultural beliefs that sexuality is something to either be restricted or bartered for economic security, that they are unaware of how they are reenforcing dominant cultural beliefs at the expense of the principles of female autonomy and free choice, and acceptance of a woman’s right of self-autonomy. If they feel so threatened by the sight of a woman gleefully masturbating, or showing off her body, or publically stating her enjoyment of sex, then that’s their business; but they have no right to impose their personal issues on the rest of us and wrap it as political/cultural theory.

   The real issue with sex-positive radicalism (and until there is a better term for those of us on the Left who aren’t afraid of sex and accept the diversity and variety of consensual sexual behavior, and wish to integrate the full program of sexual liberation into a larger radical Left agenda, it will do just fine for me) isn’t having lots of sex, or saying that sex alone will liberate society; it is about respecting and giving full humanity to those who wish to choose to do so.

   Sex is still nice, and pleasure is still good for you. And you can believe that and still be a committed feminst/Leftist/antiracist/socialist or whatever you want to call yourself.

   Way to call them out, Ms. Bitch. We may not agree totally, but you are my kind of feminist.

   :)

   Anthony

4. Anthony Kennerson
   January 19th, 2006| 10:12 am

   I’ve linked this entry over at Nina’s forum, BTW…and if you approve, I’d like to repost it at some of my groups, too. This is just too good to leave alone.

   The usual etiquette for linking will apply, of course.

   :)

   Anthony

5. Susie Bright
   January 19th, 2006| 11:09 am

   Thank you, Bitchy!

   Bitchy Too

6. the english guy
   January 19th, 2006| 12:40 pm

   Only twice a day? Man, you gals must be starved…

7. Saminitra
   January 19th, 2006| 2:46 pm

   hi,

   i didn’t know who annalee newitz was. i read her site and wanted to know more. i saw an interesting article at feminista! i thought it was a really good example of annalee saying one thing and a radical feminist misunderstanding what annalee wrote.

   the article is here.

   annalee pointed out that she’s an ardent feminist who happens to support diverse sexual practices. she explained that there are many feminisms. basically, she was asking that her views not be labeled unfeminist because they were different from the views of another feminist.

   one of the criticisms was this:

   The way she used the word ’safely!’ tipped me off. She used a
   popular propaganda technique — citing spokespersons from the
   victimized group to “prove” that the site is on the up-and-up.
   Just because a woman created it, and some women “like” it, doesn’t
   mean they or the site is feminist. I’d be curious to know if
   NecroBabes and SFBG have some kind of bartering system going.
   Say, did NecroBabes get a discount on an SFBG ad, or did SFBG
   employees get discounts on Necrobabe/Necrodudes memberships?
   There might not be a bartering system going, but it would be
   very interesting if there was.

   i don’t understand how “safely” was a tip off. does anyone else?

   annalee didn’t cite a spokesperson to legitimate it as feminist to engage in necrophilia. she did cite it to say who runs it. she didn’t say that because a woman runs it and wants to do it, then it’s feminist.

   i am amazed that both women think vicki and others like her are stupid. wilson obviously doesn’t believe any likes this kind of sex. she puts quotes around the word, ‘likes’. she thinks it is suspect.

   would they like it if people said that the things they enjoy are suspect? they don’t really believe what they are saying. they just ‘believe’.

   3. trish also prefers to attack the paper as in cahoots with the web site. does she realize that that is a propaganda technique too?

8. F-Words
   January 19th, 2006| 2:58 pm

   I’m a big girl. I can take it….

   With greater exposure comes greater scrutiny, and I’ve drawn some critics from my recent post about attitudes toward female libido. Unfortunately for my ego, they have a not insignificant amount of legitimacy to them….

9. Sara
   January 19th, 2006| 6:42 pm

   I am not well-acquainted with trackback, so if anyone wants to hear my somewhat humbled response, you can go to

   http://f-words.blogspot.com/20.....ke-it.html

   “Erotophobe?” For God’s sake…

10. Rachel Kramer Bussel
    January 19th, 2006| 11:59 pm

    Well said.

    I’m gonna just be a little silly (but truthful) and say that I’d partake of an orgasm contest with Annalee and a lap dancer. Also, it’s been so long since I’ve had sex twice a day, and it’s rarely even once a day or once a week for me. I wish!

    There’s this really weird idea that if you’re in the sex world in some way and also a feminist that it’s a battle between the two, or that you can only talk, think, or write about sex. That’s so insulting it’s laughable.

11. bitchlab
    January 20th, 2006| 8:43 am

    Hi Sara,

    Kinda swamped today but I’ll try to get back to your site and read this weekend — or next week. I am utterly swamped with stuff to do. if i don’t respond feel free to beat me over the head with a sack of potatoes. :) I mean, email me and tell me to get my ass in gear and do you the favor of acknowledging your response in approp. fashion.

12. Nina Hartley
    January 20th, 2006| 6:13 pm

    Hello, all!

    Thanks to Anthony for turning me on to this site. Way to go, Ms. Bitch!

    There’s so much to respond to I’m sure I’ll not get to everything, so I apologize in advance.

    One of my biggest complaints over the past 22 years of my involvement with both porn and the feminist fight for/against it, is what I’ve come to see as a childish or immature stand on the part of some of the squeamish-about-sexwork gals. I call it the “I’m uncomfortable about this. What are YOU going to do about it?” syndrome. The poster’s plaint, “. . . and I would love it a whole lot more if I didn’t have to think about how everyone in this society has been taught to objectify and sexualize me,” is very telling. All mammals everywhere, and more than a few other species, sexually objectify potential mates. That’s how we decide whom to approach to say hello and whom we’ll avoid. It’s natural and hard-wired. That SHE can’t clear her mind of all those awful people who “objectify” her is HER issue. Pleae stop making it mine, thankyouverymuch. The world is not a day nursery and cannot be made into one. I have to live in a culture that promtes lots of things I find morally reprehensible: abstainance only “education,” anti-choice propoganda, etc. For my own happiness, though, I have to leave these thoughts and feelings at the bedroom door, or they will have succeeded in stealing my potential for happiness away from me.

    As feminists and as adults, WE must claim our sexuality, acculteration or not. It doesn’t matter so much what we were taught, IMHO, as it matters what we do with that information now. If I wanted to focus on where and how I feel powerless and unattractive, then sex would be fraught with fear and insecurity. Instead, with a lot of work and practice, I focus my energies on where and how I feel powerful, confident and attractive. Lo and behold, my sex life and relationship life improved 1,000%.

    A little more mental discipline on her part, and a little less “poor me, I have these unpleasant thoughts in my head during sex,” would go a long way, I think. If you focus on the negatives of sexuality, then sex will be less than satisfying for you. If you know that the culture’s BS about sex is just that, it’s easier to reject it.

    We all have been conditioned by society to have certain views about sex and the people who have it. We’re only in the third decade of the most recent investigation into sex and culture, so all of us here are standing in two worlds: the world of our conditioning and the world of our own intellectual making, constantly deciding what of our conditioning to keep or jettison.

    We can have issues with the choices other women make with their lives without also shaming and condemming them for those choices. I’ve been dealing with the emotional implosion my career triggers in people for a long time now, and, for all the intellectual arguments I’ve heard over the past two decades it’s still clear that those who hate porn and sex work, be they from the right or the “left,” are projecting onto me and my colleagues their own “ick” factor about porn and sex. Emotionally, what gets thrown at me is fear, anger, judgement and extreme discomfort.

    Well, enough blather for now.

13. Lorenzo
    January 22nd, 2006| 3:22 am

    I found the quoted article profoundly troubling. It managed to paint both the sex-positive feminists and the errr…sex-critical (I’m not sure what would be a reasonable catch all term for feminist approaches that take a certain critical, in the analytical sense, approach to sex, sexuality, and sex-work? Radical feminist wouldn’t cover it as radical feminism sub-divides into two very different camps with very different views and besides not all feminist frameworks that take this stance are radical feminist frameworks…nor do I mean to imply that all or most sex-positive feminism takes an UNcritical stance towards sexuality…)

    I was saying, it manages to paint sex-positive and sex-critical feminists entirely with caricatures. While I do count myself amongst the “sex-critical” feminists I still found the characterization of sex-positive feminism more than a little offensive.

14. culturekitchen
    January 22nd, 2006| 10:27 pm

    Andrea Dworkin:sex postive feminist — almost sorta…

15. Sam
    January 23rd, 2006| 4:48 pm

    For someone who calls herself socialist, you’ve left out any critique of the global sex INDUSTRY, or how capitalism increasingly shapes sexuality into a easily sellable thing, or how Bright, Hartley et.al. personally profit from the promotion of commodified sex, pornography and prostitution. If the sort of sex positivism you’re talking about is really about more than the moist pussies and orgasms of middle-class white women, where is the discussion of sex capitalism, the sex industry, the sex tourism phenomena, you know, the socialist feminist acknowlegement about the non-pussy-moistening aspects of the entire sex industry?

    These are all fascinating women who have all kinds of things going on in their lives: work, knitting, baking pies, music, friends, drinking, writing, blogging, teaching, speaking, families, cupcakes.

    Susie Bright, Carol Queen, Nina Hartley, etc. don’t make their living selling dominant male-culture-approved speech about knitting, music and cupcakes, they get their wages by delivering the male-approved sexy goods. The only reason their names appear in this post is because you know that they are ‘workers of the sex’, whatever else they may be. If Nina Hartley ever writes a book about knitting then your claim to her variability would make sense, but Ann Coulter isn’t paid to talk about her hobbies and pets and Susie Bright isn’t paid by Hustler to veer off the subject of how *really* sexy feminists agree the racism and sexism of Hustler are good for Southern men to chat about her dog…well maybe if she’s fucking the dog.

    “For women to take possession of their sexual pleasure is a beautiful thing. But pro-sex feminism relies too much on it being a reliable way to empower women.”

    “Does it? Susie Bright has talked about her socialist views.”

    Susie Bright doesn’t write books about socialism and socialism is not included in any book of her I’ve read yet. What other avenue for women’s empowerment has Susie Bright suggested than through her specialized medium, sex? I’ve read the Hustler interview and a few of her erotica books and they lack discussion of anything but sexual freedom and the freedom of sexuality. Has she written an article teaching women how to lobby legislators for sex ed in schools, because that would be more real-woman empowering than offering advice on how to buy a good dildo, and Susie has had lots more to say on the latter topic than the former. That’s what she does, she talks sexy about sex and Hustler wouldn’t pay her to print her any other way.

    Nina Hartley is from a long line of socialists.

    Bluntly, so what? That doesn’t make her socialist. I can’t take this claim seriously knowing how Hartley has lobbied for the pornography industry and has argued on their behalf against basic sex worker safety that most sex workers want. “…Adult film actress Nina Hartley said that a mandatory condom use policy would be “unenforceable” and performers who wish to use condoms can turn down films requiring unprotected sex…”

    That poor, good-looking men are not told they can empower themselves through sex work the way women in similar circumstances are told to consider it their best option should enter into the critique of any kind of feminist on the sex industry.

    Sex positive feminism has very little to do with believing that you are liberated through sex and sex alone. Rather, it began as a critique of the way in which both the wider society and feminist communities regulated sex by claiming that, to be a “real woman/feminist” you could only engage in certain kinds of sex.”

    The term “sex positive feminism” is a direct sex industry response to the united feminist movement’s opposition to prostitution and pornography in the 1970’s. This is the well from which it sprung among newly coined “sex workers” paid by the porn industry, industry women like Annie Spinkle and Carol Leigh came up with this term and Hugh Hefner and his fellow pornographers, who are not feminists, popularized it in their male-owned media and gave the seed money to lend legitimacy to themselves. It was not, as you’re implying here, an organic response from grassroots feminist women against the tyranny of other feminists. It is disingenuous to disregard the specific intent and pro-sex industry semantic history of “pro-sex feminism.” The term “pro sex” was chosen by sex industry promoters for similar reasons as “pro-life” was chosen by abortion opponents, not because it says anything about the group it’s naming but because of what it says about the group they’re opposing; anti-life and anti-sex are deliberate implications both are meant as attacks against feminists.

    You don’t have to say “prude” for prude to connotatively come through loud and clear, just call yourself “sex positive” and the dirty work is done in the details. That’s why I call what you’re advocating here “pro-sex industry feminism” or “pro-prostitution feminism”, because that is a more accurate term. You’re not advocating for the right to have sex because feminists don’t opposing having sex, you’re supporting the right to capitalize on the global industrialization of the natural resource that is women’s bodies and casting men’s desire for control over this resource as part of fulfilling a feminist act of sexual and financial empowerment. I don’t understand how you reconcile this pro-capitalism stance with your socialism except in the most basic terms of women having money is the most important thing, but I differ in opinion about the supremacy of capitalistic ‘freedom’ in women’s lives at the expense of their sexual autonomy and physical and mental health.

    I ask you to look at how globalization has negatively affected women in the past 30 years and ask yourself what role the increasing corporatization and consumerism of all aspects of our human lives have been affected by them. Consider the historical timeframe of women getting paid to perform a customer’s version of sex in a brothel, strip club or porn set makes those women more the “authority” on human sexuality than trained educators who aren’t prostitutes and a socialist response is essential because prostitutes write sex advice columns for the biggest newspapers, not Planned Parenthood employees. What this says is the best sex is determined by the most money made, so if men are paying for sex with hookers then the free market mentality that encroached all our lives in the 1980’s dictates that prostituted sex is the best kind because it is the most profitable. I disagree.

16. bitchlab
    January 23rd, 2006| 5:10 pm

    knitting — rachel at lusty lady (read the post)
    cupcake — rachel, also
    music- Thagmano
    knitting — suzie’s hobby

    etc. i was talking about the fact that their lives aren’t about sex, sex, sex every minute as the second post from sarah implied.

    i was going to answer you but you seem to have no capacity for logical argument.

    you work with the text you have — what i wrote — and understand it on its terms. this is a blog, if you want a post about the effects of the global sex industry write it.

    i’m more interested in the effects of shit work on everyone’s lives.

    as i always say: what’s the difference between selling my fabulous skills and performing hummers and my fabulous skills at baking apple pies.

    nothing at all. they’re both forms of exploitive work and you should be no more outraged aobut the conditions under which sex workers work than the conditions under which i used to mop floors.

    what total patronizing bullshit

17. Alas, a blog » Blog Archive » Link Farm and Open Thread #7
    January 23rd, 2006| 5:52 pm

    [...] In Defense of Sex Positive Feminism Bitch | Lab defends “sex positive feminism” from a variety of blogger critiques. I have a lot of sympathy for this article - especially the frustration at people who criticize alleged statements of sex positive feminists without actually providing quotes or links. At the same time, I will never like the term “sex positive,” because of the implication that feminists who don’t share those views are “sex negative.” [...]

18. Sam
    January 23rd, 2006| 5:55 pm

    You talked a nice talk about dialogue with other feminists and I gave you the benefit of the doubt, but your snarling response shows your insincerity. Optimist that I am, I fell for what I thought was an open hand extended and I’ll probably do so again because that damn optimism thing I’m infected with gives form to the most phantom of olive branches.

    you work with the text you have — what i wrote — and understand it on its terms. this is a blog, if you want a post about the effects of the global sex industry write it.

    As I understood it, you began this post criticizing feminists who think sex positivism is all about sexy sexsexsex and who don’t credit sex positive feminists like yourself with analyzing “occupational segregation in the labor force, but when I point out your lack of actual discussion about capitalism, socialism and occupational segregation you get angry and say you’ll avoid talking about capitalism and occupational segregation if you want to.

    I wish you actually wanted to talk about “occupational segregation in the labor force as much as you want undeserved credit for the most successful pro-sex industry women (remember successful=profitable in capitalism) being socialists, but that would mean more than just paying lip service to the notion of critically speaking about capitalism, socialism and gender and really getting down into the thick of it.

    I’ll waste no more of your time or mine trying to speak with you because you’ve made it clear despite weak protestations otherwise that socialist critiquing of sex work isn’t really what you want and I have no desire to stick around for sexy sexsexsex talk devoid of earnest political and feminist analysis.

19. bitchlab
    January 23rd, 2006| 6:07 pm

    You are right.

    I am saying that you’re expecting too much of a blog post. If you would like to see my body of work, I’ll be happy to share it with you. I don’t hand it out lightly, I am anonymous for the purposes of not having to lose jobs and contracts b/c of what I write here, because people think that all i care about is my moist pussy and would, therefore, be disinclined to be a good worker-bee.

    I didn’t say that they failed to understand that we analyzed socialism, but that they didn’t even bother to look up what sex positive feminism initially meant.

    Do you think that the hsitory of feminist thought is irrelevant? I don’t. I think you need to get it straight.

    As far as what I talk about, you’re free to discuss this with me offlist so you can read endless reams of what I’ve written on the topic. I did my research on long term unemployment and have written a great deal on the topic of globalization and its effects on communities.

    I’ve written about scattered throughout the blog.

    Alas, it’s a blog. Not a book and not a journal article and not a conference presentation.

20. Anthony Kennerson
    January 23rd, 2006| 10:26 pm

    Oh, good Goddess almighty…here we go again.

    Just for your benefit, Miz Bitch…Sam is the one who ran this tired BS at Nina, Susie, and other critics of antiporn “feminist” lunacy at Stan Goff’s blog last year after he posted a particularly slimy and slanderous attack on Nina in particular for having the unmitigated gall to respond in kind to a sister antiporn activist’s smearing of Nina’s profession…and she has been at it ever since. She even managed to write of a real blast at Rachel at her Lusty Lady blog last year.

    I guess that things haven’t changed one bit.

    Both time and my unwillingness to reduce Bitch | Lab’s blog to a smackdown once again prevents me from giving a full response to Sam’s claptrap, and besides, I’ve already done so many times before. But suffice it to say that for someone who supposedly knows everything about feminism and Left theory, she is simply bone ignorant about not only sex work and female sexual self-agency, but also about basic antiglobalization activism. To comflate the abuses and obvious impacts of forced prostitution and poverty in Third World and Asian countries to the mostly voluntary and generally consensual adult entertainment medium in the US is bad enough; but to continually smear activists who only wish to improve the social and work conditions in which women who choose to perform such work as enablers of “the patriarchy” is beyond contemptable…it is utterly reactionary. (And in the case of Rachel Kramer Bussel, who isn’t a political activist at all, just a citizen with the same right to speak her mind through her blog as BB, Sam, or any other antiporn feminist does, it is also a simple slander.)

    And BTW…about your dear expressed concerns about how all “pro-porn” women care about is a “moist pussy”: maybe you haven’t managed to actually read Susie Bright’s blog or Nina Hartley’s forum or Rachel’s blog; but they manage to attack subjects far remived from sexuality. Not that there is anything even remotely wrong with having damp panties (or an erection, for that matter); those sort of things have happened long before and will continue to occur even long after the “patriarchy” exists.

    You see, Sam, biology and human nature, not politics, deems it that women and men have sexual feelings; where society comes in is to use outer forces such as media, government, et. cetra, to exploit such feelings for political or economic gain. But even if social structures do indeed affect the kind of choices that men and women do make in their lives, that still doesn’t mitigate the fundamental human emotion of sexual arousal or desire that tends to override even the most repressive social systems. This isn’t saying that sex is beyond social constraints or social construction; it IS saying that human beings are more than capable of making their own decisions and setting their own limts on dealing with their own sexual state of being. The main principle of what is called “sex-positive” feminism and sex radicalism is that human beings should be given the right and privilege in a more equitable world to make decisions for themselves about their sexuality without prejudgement or prdjudice. That is not supporting rape or abuse or any means of “patriarchy” of any kind; nor is it any form of insult on those who may choose not to express themselves in an openly sexual way..unless you happen to be of the traditional opiinion that only certain expressions of sexuality reduced to the most restrictive social mores should be elevated to exclusivity while others are devolved to the depths of depravity. Using feminist and pseudo-Leftist language to cover up basic restrictive sexual views doesn’t make the fundamental views any less repressive and restrictive.

    Now, to answer Alas..IN NO WAY am I conflating all feminists who are critical of sex radicalism and a more open sexual expression as innately “anti-porn” or “anti-sex”…just as Bitch | Lah says often, feminism is a wide and varying movement, and all experiences should be respected…good, bad, beautiful, ugly, or indifferent. However, the tendency of people like Sam, Stan Goff, BB, and such elements or the antiporn “Left” to continually depict their critics as racist middle-class “sellouts” who literally masturbate while women are raped or beaten, if not actually delivering women to the rapists themselves, is still quite dominant and influential within certain segments of the Left; and has had the effect of shouting down progressives with a contrary view…even while they pretend themselves to be “victims” of the “patriarchy” themselves. Such tautology is more prevalent of the Religious Right and the Neo-Cons then to a putatively progressive movement; and as a feminist symphatizer, a Leftist, a working-class Black man, and a supporter of sex radicalism and “sex-positive” feminism, I have an obligation to defend the principles I believe in and the people who promote such principles from these slanderous misassumptions and outright deceptions.

    I believe that I will stop here, since I’m on Ms. Bitch’s time and dime. Nina, Susie, Carol, and Ms. Bitch are certainly capable of defending themselves against Sam’s blather; these views simply reflect my own personal thoughts and no one else’s.

    Anthony
    (A proud, unambiguous Sex-Radical/Sex-Positive Leftist/Feminst)

21. Also feeling warmly towards champagne and strawberries at Pandagon
    January 23rd, 2006| 10:39 pm

    [...] I’ve been dying to post on this defense of sex positive feminism from BitchLab and I just didn’t know what to say. She’s addressing the myth of sex positivity–that it’s a sort of “everyone must be fucking all the time” philosophy or that sex is in and of itself the main path to enlightenment or whatever. Similarly, I do not get the idea from Lusty Lady or Thagmano or Susie Bright or Annalee Newitz that all they are are interested in having sex constantly. As much as they’d like? Sure. [...]

22. lost clown
    January 23rd, 2006| 11:33 pm

    Or maybe the blogger over at Angry for a Reason had tried the “sex work is empowering” stance (and the sex work) and learned a lot about it. SO much so that she decided that she was staunchly against it. (And when i say I’m against it I mean I’m against the work itself, not against the workers. I’m not going to tell any of you that you shouldn’t do it, although I will air my grievances with it, just like you aired your grievances with my thoughts)

23. bitchlab
    January 24th, 2006| 12:37 am

    I’m not sure what her past as a sex worker has to do with her misunderstandings of what sex positive feminism is about. Could you elaborate?

24. lost clown
    January 24th, 2006| 12:41 am

    SHe=me. I do not claim to be all knowledgable about “sex-positiveness” all I know is that when I say anything about sex work that’s critical I get termed sex-negative. I point out my past b/c in many conversations people think that I’m sitting in some big comfy chair and have never experienced sex work and therefore am unable to talk about it. That’s all I’m pointing out.

25. bitchlab
    January 24th, 2006| 1:05 am

    ahh. I have no problem with your desire to talk about it and relate the negative features of it in your life.

    My post was about what I felt was a need for a little homework — a simple search on the phrase pulls up a wikipedia site that’s fairly informative — before making assumptions that all of us are necessarily uncritical of the sex industry in the first place.

    For instance, some of us organize sex workers.

    Some of us are interested in it because we are critical of eseentializing claims within feminist thought and practice, essentializing moves that, as Linda Alcoff and others have shown, have real conseiqences for our politics and where we put our energies.

    I care because, while I’m hardly engaged in any radical sex lifestyle, I’ve had enough experiences in my life to know that, if my lesbian friends practice bondage and domination, then they shouldn’t be told that, in spite of years of abortion activism, they are somehow not feminist b/c of their bdsm.

    I care because I have lived with and worked with sex workers whose lives were perfectly fine — save for the crappy attitudes toward them. I care because, for those sex workers whose lives aren’t perfectly fine, the same crappy attitudes exacerbates the situation.

    I care because my own bisexuality gets called into question because of those essentializing moves in feminist thought.

    The rest of this is directed at Sam and others who think I haven’t a socialist thought in me pea brain:

    I care because I’ve yet to understnd why, as Sam claims, I should be more horrified by the commodification of sex work than I should be by the commodication in the last century of all manner of women’s work.

    Tons of jobs ones thought to be the domain of the mother who did all those things because it was part of her role as a Victorian woman and she did them for love, not money, are now jobs that have been thoroughly commodified.

    Take health care, for instance. It is utterly horrifying how the commodification of health care leaves us at the mercy of capital. Where’s the outrage about what thet kind of work does to people? Where’s the outrage toward the pimps and whores who work that trade?

    It wasn’t always work performed for a paycheck.

    Nor was childcare, ideally. Nor was any number of things such as waitress work — and waitresses were considered prostitutes even in the beginning of the 20th century. They were performing work that should be done at home by women.

    Excuse typos, I’m banging my head at some CSS code that’s driving me up a wall and I have about 10 minutes to spare and a long night ahead of me.

    Nighty night to all. This bitch will get to listen to the birdies chirp.

26. lost clown
    January 24th, 2006| 1:19 am

    I never meant to imply that women who engage in sex work, or burlesque, etc. can not be feminists. SO I’m sorry if it came across that way. i have issue with the the practices themselves, not with the women (I think I said this in the piece and 3 times in the comments, I truly truly believe this.)

27. bitchlab
    January 24th, 2006| 1:30 am

    I thought your discussion was about using burlesque in peace activist work? You were upset that they were doing it. You went on to complain about sex positive feminists who you said made the claims I quote above. I replied to ask for examples of women who said the things attributed to them.

    As for my most recent comment: I was reiterating, again, what sex positive fem is for me. When you write that you don’t have any kinky clothes in your drawers and then wonder who the hell does, it suggests that people who do are strange or ‘out there’.

    Perhaps you didn’t intend it this way, but it sure read to me as if the stuff, say, a good friend of mine wears is somehow an indication that she’s a bad person.

28. Annalee Newitz
    January 24th, 2006| 2:11 am

    As a somewhat old-schoolish Marxist, I agree completely that many of us sex postivistas are acutely aware of class and economic issues. Sex positivity, for me, is about liberating sex from the bounds of private property. Sex shouldn’t belong to certain kinds of people in certain kinds of relationships — it should belong to anyone in any way they like. And that means leaving space for people to dislike sex or choose not to have it. I’m very pro-virginity for folks who don’t want to have sex, just as I’m pro-orgy for people who want to fuck ten of their pals. Sex positivity is really about removing sex from (market-based) institutions like “the traditional family” and “marriage.”

    Even more than that, I think you’re right to put the term in an historical context — people called it “sex positive feminism” to distinguish it from “anti-porn feminism.” Both epithets aren’t really fair, nor are they necessarily applicable to sex/gender politics in the early twenty-first century. I’ve been experimenting with calling myself a pro-cloning feminist just to freak people out.

29. tiffany
    January 24th, 2006| 9:26 am

    *standing behind you saying “yeah. now what?!” in my best faux-thug voice while mean-muggin’.*

    this debate is where i split with many feminists. i cringe when i hear someone say that an expression of sexuality by a woman is “catering to men’s fantasies” or “having sex like men.” i really have to stop and ask: what’s your understanding of and construction of women’s sexuality? (and are we being truthful or fair when we define male sexuality as “lots of action with as many women as possible”?)

    you’ve pretty much said what i’ve been thinking …

30. My Life As A Sex-Positive Rocker at I Blame The Patriarchy
    January 24th, 2006| 9:40 am

    [...] Nina Hartley, a porn star I used to see on TV every night in a commercial advertising a St. Louis adult video store, and who identifies as a sex-positive feminist, is sick and tired of being judged by feminists who don’t fuck for a living. She intimates in a recent comment at Bitch | Lab that anyone who isn’t a sex-positive feminist, “hate[s] porn and sex work” and “be they from the right or the ‘left,’ are projecting onto me and my colleagues their own “ick” factor about porn and sex.” [...]

31. Julian Elson
    January 24th, 2006| 11:55 am

    I’m here via Pandagon.

    I think that to it sort of misses the point of the radical feminist critique to say that sex-positive feminists don’t think about sex all that much. Radical feminists would say, “yes. Exactly the point.” To radical feminists, you can’t just say, “look, I care about how women only make three dollars to a man’s four too! I care about feminism as a cause generally! I just don’t want to judge people for what they do in bed, consensually and privately!” The radical feminist would reply, “that’s because you don’t see the connection between the fact that women aren’t being paid as much and that they are in a sexually supine position in this country. ‘what people do in bed, consensually and privately’ is the REASON for all other form of misogyny in our culture.”

    Now, I don’t know much about radical feminism, and I think they’re probably wrong here, but at least from my perspective, it seems like radical feminists point has never been, “well, at least we aren’t sex-obsessed like sex-positive types.” Their point was, “sexual oppression is the root of all other oppressions.”

    To me, this seems like magical thinking. So, if you could get rid of bondage and pr0n, somehow men and women would be paid equally, half of congress, etc, would be female, and men would do half the cooking? Sorry, I don’t see it.

    Still, if you want to address what radical feminists say, it seems like you’ve captured more of a churlish attitude (”sex-positive feminist just want to get laid, and don’t care about the broader cause”) than the actual critique most radical feminists would make against sex-positive feminist. (”The reason all these other oppressions exist is because of sexual oppression. It cannot be compartamentalized.”) If anything, I’d say that, at least as a matter of doctrine, radical feminists think MORE about sex than sex-positive feminists, and (from their perspective) rightly so.

32. bitchlab
    January 24th, 2006| 12:15 pm

    Hi Julian,

    Feel free to take a look at the links at the top of this post. I addressed exactly that point recently.

    These are two quote from what I wrote in “Bitch Gets Rude” and “Is Cultural Feminism Pomo Feminism?” below, additionally, you might want to read this post, which I typed in a half hour off the top of my head, so forgive typos The Woman Question

    Bitch wrote: “Which brings us to another clue: The word radical, as Jaggar and Tong both point out, has been taken up by feminists who’ve argued that there is a root cause of women’s oppression. Radical is from radix — “the root.” Radical — it is an analysis that gets at the root cause of women’s oppression. And, similarly, in its conception of political change, it used this imagery of getting at the root of the problem. You can’t just pluck the weed from the earth, you have to pull it up by the roots to get rid of it. ‘It,’ in this case, would be ‘the patriarchy.’

    For radical feminists, there is a search for the root of oppression, especially women’s oppression, and some of them even go so far as to claim that women’s oppression is the first historical form of oppression and the dynamics of that oppression were the basis upon which all oppressions are subsequently formed.”

    ———————–
    Bitch also wrote:

    Alcoff presented a paper that was a continuation of work she’d previously published. I have it here somewhere but no time to scan. Here’s what she wrote in the published article:

    “Cultural feminism is the ideology of a female nature or female essence reappropriated by feminists themselves in an effort to revalidate undervalued female attributes. For cultural feminists, the enemy of women is not merely a social system or economic institution or set of backward beliefs but masculinity itself and in some cases male biology. Cultural feminist politics revolve around creating and maintaining a healthy environment — free of masculinist values and all their offshoots such as pornography — for the female principle. Feminist theory, the explanation of sexism, and the justification of feminist demands can all be ground securely and unambiguously on the concept of the essential female.”

    Now, that might be a little harsh, these days, since she was working out her argument in 1984-198t while she was at the Pembroke Center Seminar on the Cultural Construction of Gender at Brown University. This particular essay was published in 1988.

    The nice thing about feminist thought, to my mind, is that we encompass the internal criticisms and move forward — when we are at our best.

    But, my point here is that, clearly, Cultural Feminism is not aligned with postmodernism/post-structuralist thought. Indeed, as she shows later, a good deal of post-structurlist thought (most?) is precisely a criticism of foundationalist ontologies and associated epistemologies. (I won’t use postmodern since I don’t think it accurately describes what we’re talking about. See this article, “Contingent Foundations: Feminism and the question of ‘Postmodernism‘” by Judith Butler.)

33. bitchlab
    January 24th, 2006| 2:34 pm

    For those of you who haven’t read the FAQ, my other name, SnitgrrRl, was bequeathed to me by Annalee. :) That’s where I started embracing the names and having fun with them, so I’m forever grateful to Annaless for giving me the smackdown.

    Because she was entirely right when she did so — don’t know if you recall Annalee, but I think I felt a bit foolish at the time.

    I was ragging on her wanting to know why she was teaching comp classes with a book by sociologists. Annalee said something like, Well, SnitgrrRl,…” and then proceeded to explain what comp courses were all about and it wasn’t just about learning how to write, but learning to read across the disciplines and in a variety of genres.

    Annalee taught me a valuable that lesson that day that I subsequently put into practice in my own teaching and served me well in a team taught course where we focused on teaching people how to think, read, _and_ write.

    Thanks A!

34. Anthony Kennerson
    January 24th, 2006| 2:41 pm

    Uhhhh, Julian…allow me, as a practicing sex radical and “pro-sex” feminist supporter (and a Leftist to boot) to add to Mz.Bitch’s response, because me thinks that you may have drank a bit too much Kool-Aid today.

    First off, we “pro-sex” feminists do NOT advocate that everyone should be out there fucking, sucking, and masturbating 5 times a day, nor do we allow our acceptance of our personal sex lives to disrespect others who may not think like us. Nor do we advocate, a la Wihelm Reich, that sexual repression is the one and only source of political oppression against women, men, or anybody. And in NO FREAKIN’ WAY do we say that those who disagree with our beliefs are in any eay inferior or in need of a good lay…that is sooo passe 70s thought.

    You claim that you don’t know much about “radical feminism”…yet in the next paragraph, you talk about how “radical feminism” (I take that to mean antiporn feminism of the Dworkin/MacKinnon school) is superior because it gets to the “root” of women’s oppression…while “sex-positive feminism” only reduces the issue to the lack of getting laid or the lack of orgasms.

    Nice straw people you create, Julian, but they are NOTHING like the sex-positive women I know and honor. Last time I checked, Susie Bright was a union organizer and a socialist who actually got thrown out of her union because of her promotion of sex-positive theory (and her lesbianism which didn’t meet cultural feminist PC standards); Nina Hartley was a feminist who was actually a member in good standing of NOW and who has spoken out on issues not related to her career as a sex worker/erotic actress/sex educator; and there are other women activists who have actually combined sexual rights activism with more classical political activism. I would say that most advocates of “sex-positive feminism” actually have a much better and more comprehensive grasp of the multiple facets of oppression than even so-called “radical feminists”…some of whom just can’t seem to get their personal myopias at women who enjoy sex openly out of their heads.

    And as for finding the “actual critique” of “radical feminists” against us sex radical thinkers; well, I will grant that some sex-pozzies don’t think enough about the overall system of race/class/gender oppressions…but that is a far critique from blasting them for only being concerned about “moist pussies” and “middle-class orgasms”. Most of the antiporn critiques I have encountered don’t even attempt to address broader based concerns about non-sexual discrimination or oppression ogainst women; they go straight to the “patriarchy”/”degradation of women”/”sexual slavery”/”surrenders to male sexuality” cards from the beginning…as if porn and prostitution was the centerpiece of all oppression of women. (An ironic projection, isn’t it??)

    I’ll tell you what, Julian..let’s broker a compromise here. Whenever cultural feminists and antiporn activists cease slandering and misstateing the goals and beliefs of sexually progressive feminists and stop declaring themselves as THE ONE AND ONLY Leftist theory, then maybe I will give them the benefit of a dowbt and actually engage them in a real discussion. Until that day comes, however, I feel the need and the obligation to defend sex radicals from libelous assault from people who appoint themselves to be their saviors and rescuers from their own free will choices. Just because you may not like how they live their private lives doesn’t give you the right to dismiss their experiences and silence their voices…any more than pro-sex feminists have any right to disrespect yours.

    BTW…big props to Annalee for breaking in here…it’s nice to see progressive people defending themselves for a change.

    Anthony
    http://ajk-sdchron-sexposleftist.blogspot.com (My new Smackdog Chronicles blog)

35. Melissa Gira
    January 24th, 2006| 3:58 pm

    One thing that has pained me about sex positive feminism is that the labor/class analysis wasn’t as obvious as I had hoped — and I say this as a sex worker, sex writer, pomo academic vixen, whatever full-on stereotypes are left for me. I struggled with what seemed like a glossed-over, feel-good, middle-class movement within feminism while still inside of it.

    After about ten years now as a whore and activist of some stripe, I can see that the standards that I was holding my own community to were shaped by bias: that if economics were made “too sexy” or “too personal” (whatever that is!) that they someone ceased to be serious or legit. The patriarchal construction of what “real politics” are is as much the issue here as women getting aggro & judgemental towards other women over the value of the orgasm.

    The fact that female sexual pleasure has made it to the table as a debatable topic is a victory, it really is. (And thanks for the post.)

36. Julian Elson
    January 24th, 2006| 6:22 pm

    Anthony Kennerson:
    Reading your response to me, I can’t help but get the feeling that you are responding to an entirely different post than the one that I wrote. I only assume that your response is to me because I seem to be the only Julian on this thread, not because there is any rational connection between my post and your response. If I am in error, and you are, in fact, responding to some other Julian, perhaps posting in this thread under a pseudonym, then my apologies.

    I haven’t drunk any Kool-Aid today. I never claimed that pro-sex feminists think that everyone should be out there fucking, sucking, or masturbating five times a day (unless they want to. Nor did I claim that sex-positive feminists believe that sexual repression is the one and only source of political oppression against women, men, or anybody (though I do attribute this view to some aspects of 2nd wave feminism, such as Susan Brownmiller). I don’t claim you say that those who disagree with our beliefs are in any eay inferior or in need of a good lay…that is sooo passe 70s thought.

    I never claimed that radical feminism is superior, nor am I a radical feminist myself. I do not claim that it gets to the “root” of women’s oppression, though I do claim that radical feminists themselves claim that. I do not claim that pro-sex feminism only reduces the issue to the lack of getting laid or the lack of orgasms: on the contrary, I claim that radical feminists are more likely to to attribute apparently unrelated problems to bedroom dynamics.

    I never claimed that sex-positive feminists are only concerned about “moist pussies” and “middle-class orgasms.” I claimed that sex-positive feminists view issues like, for instance, unequal pay and insufficient access to birth control as serious issues, but ones which aren’t particularly connected to bedroom dynamics. I claimed that radical feminists are the ones who claim that sexual oppression is the root of all other oppression, although in a distinctly un-Wilhelm Reich-like manner.

    I would gladly compromise with you, Anthony, but I fear that it would do you little good. I never slandered or misstated the goals of sexually progressive feminists, nor did I declare that cultural feminists or antiporn feminists have the one and only lefist theory. To broker such a compromise, I fear that you would have to negotiate with actual cultural feminists and antiporn activists, among whom I do not count myself. I don’t disapprove of how any of the sex-positive feminists you mentioned live their private lives (unless they secretly molest children or something, which I very much doubt), and I wholeheartedly agree that I don’t have the right to silence their voices. I would claim I have the right to dismiss their voices, but I have no desire to do so, so I won’t exercise that right.

37. Aradhana
    January 24th, 2006| 7:07 pm

    Until and when sex-positive feminists are adequately able to address these issues, I don’t think this discussion will ever be solved:

    1) Who are you fighting against? Last time I checked the sex industry - including men’s mags, porn, sex work, strip clubs etc… Was a MULTI-BILLION industry!
    With so much love in the air, and so much financial support from gazillions of people, do you really think that the handful of 5 radical feminists that are still around are holding you down? You act as if we’re the big bad meanies stopping you from having your fun. Everyone loves you - you are media darlings. Porn stars and sex workers get ad promos, chances to star in movies, chances to be in tv shows!

    Sure there is stigma when people actually meet sex-workers, but social-acceptability of porn and sex work has gone through the ROOF! And please, everyone knows that women enjoy sex - so if you are fighting on behalf of women to ‘enjoy sexuality” - I hate to break it to you, it’s been done - your thrity years too late!

    2) So, if we’re talking about female sexuality - why is it that female sexuality in terms of what sex-positive feminists advocate it is - is highly-packaged and commodified? Why aren’t there gazillions of men stripping, working in the sex industry, and basically being plastered everywhere including times square? I would be thrilled at seeing naked men constantly in my face wherever I went. I would love little plastic figurines called “adult male pornstars” with big gaping mouths, buttholes and nice long schlongs!

    But where are the men? Last time I checked I didn’t need to strip down to my ‘naughties’ and take photos of myself and share them with other people in order to have a mind-blowing orgasm…. You know, it’s just as great when you are with your partner or by yourself.

    We can pretend like Anthony (is it really difficult to be a ‘male sex-positive feminist’? Oh Puh-leese…) and Nina Hartley that it’s just all ‘part of being a woman’ and ‘biological’ to display your body parts and have men appreciate you for your breast implants - but you know if that’s the case, then the only TRULY RADICAL alternative would be to differ from the norm — and that’s why I am “proudly and surely a radical/anti-racist/third worldist/socialist feminist”.

38. Anthony Kennerson
    January 24th, 2006| 10:56 pm

    Oh, yes, Aradhana…you are sooo right…I must be just pretending to be a radical because I’m not your kind of antiporn feminist…my working class salary, my race and my history to the contrary!!!

    After all, why shouldn’t those of us who support free choice and sexual self-autonomy be overly concerned about the “commodification” of female sexuality through the “BILLION dollar industry” (whose yearly earnings, BTW, still doesn’t equal one MONTH of Wal-Mart profits alone)?? As if commodification was born in Larry Flynt’s executive office 20 years ago!!!

    And woe to those of us who actually beleive that our sexual needs are such that we can choose multiple lovers or use other means for sexual fulfillment other than a single penis or your own fingers…can’t we just settle down and setltle for what God (or Goddess Andrea) inended for women?? Of course, those women who just can’t control their base sexual desires or “save” them for that special single man to live off of financially…ahhh, I mean, that special person to marry and have children with exclusively..will just have to be reeducated after the revolution to avoid such “male-identified”, “patriarchial”, unwomynlike desires which no REAL feminist/socialist would ever support.

    And besides…it’s perfectly fine that you choose not to partake such activities personally; but who the hell are you to prejudge other people when they choose to do what you dislike so much??? Just because you wouldn’t strip or experiment with non-monogamy or have consensual sex on screen or in front of other people doesn’t mean that others who do so and enjoy it can’t be any less feminist or socialist.

    And please, spare us the “lonely radicals besmerched by the big, bad sex radical freaks” line, Aradhana…last time I checked, most of the leftist organizations weren’t dominated by sex radicals or pro-sex feminists; indeed, it’s more like the other way around. Remember how Nina Hartley was simply hounded for ONE posted article in CounterPunch defending herself and her industry from the slanders of Chyng Sun?? Remember Stan Goff’s missive in response?? And I’m sure that there are many socialist/feminist pro-sex sites who counter the tiny weight of the Antipornography Feminist Network or HustlingtheLeft.com….when you see one, please email me.

    And BTW..just because porn has become more than popular with mostly young people doesn’t mean that it is totally protected; as the recent actions of the Attorney General involving the 2257 regulations and the recent obscenity hearings and uptick in prosecutions can attest to.

    And actually, if you manage to go to your local aduly vareity store (but hurry, since the local cops may close them down as public “nusiances” soon; or you might end up going to jail for possession with intent to distribute deadly WMD sex toys!!!), you CAN actually buy replica body parts of male porn stars for your pleasure. In fact, to be real about it, the women in porn actually have more freedom of personality and expression — and a bigger paycheck for their labors — than even the men do. At least the women get to actually act and be defined by their names; the men are mostly reduced to their penises and their sperm!!!

    You can talk to me about how “it’s all been done”..but right now it’s being UNDONE by fundamentalist Christians, with the full approval and support and reenforcement of the antiporn feminists who repeatedly slander and distort the opinions of those who are critical of their direction and their tactics. No bit of word sematics can change that basic fact.

    Anthony

39. Anthony Kennerson
    January 24th, 2006| 11:21 pm

    Now..onward to Julian’s response:

    I will acknowledge that I may have misconstrued your original points, and I deeply apologize to you for that.

    However, every single one of the points I critiqued has been expressed by other people who proclaim themselves loudly to be “radical feminists”, socialists, and antiracists, yet simply can’t get the basic fact that they do not or cannot speak for all women, or all feminists or all Leftists on the issue of sexuality…any more than I could. It was those people — Sam in particular, because she has had a history of going on blogs and sites with her propaganda and harrassing women who disagree with her analysis — whom I directed my my fire towards.

    Of course, I understand that not all radical feminists (or even cultural feminists) are as rabidly antiporn or closed-minded about sexuality as the likes of Sam or Biting Beaver or Goff; and I willfully grant the sizable diversity in opinion regarding sexuality. But please pardon me, Mr. Elson, if I seem just a bit ticked off tonight, because I am just plain fed up with people who have proven their credentials as leftists and feminists having to constantly defend themselves for crimes they didn’t committ simply because their private and personal sex lives don’t follow some Ivy-tower politically correct stance of a few elitist middle-to-upper class professional activists.

    Yes indeed, the sexual entertainment medium and the sex work profession is not a feminist utopia by any means; and free sex by itself will not address the root causes of racism, sexism, misigyny, or any other form of social and economic oppression. But rather than attempt to impose an even narrower sexual standard onto the mass public and pass it off as “revolutionary”, I’d much rather that true Leftists who believe in individual freedom and personal self-autonomy attempt to change the institutions of this society and create a more egalitarian society so that individuals can make informed choices about their bodies and their desires within the full range of mutual respect, mutual consent, and mutual pleasure. Merely bashing men for having erections and women for having damp panties, or scapegoating a few people for being more sexually responsive than others may soothe the prejudices of some, but in the end run, it will not only not bring forth the equal and fair and just society that socialists and feminists wish..it will simply reenforce the present-day fascism of the Right.

    Men masturbating to images of women having lustful sex is far from the main cause of women getting paid less than men or being victims of violence; just like Black men sprouting large penises willingly fucking girls with enhanced (or natural) breasts have less than nothing to do with crime rates in the Black community. To make personal sexuality such a big issue beyond the more institutionalized forms of oppresion is not only bad faith politics; left unopposed, it is one step removed from the height of fascism.

    Maybe I should have found a less direct way of saying that, but I stand by my words to the letter. Love it, hate it, or do whatever with it, it’s my view and I’m sticking with it.

    I’m done now…I’ll let Ms. Bitch move on to less hot topics.

    Anthony

40. kja
    January 25th, 2006| 3:15 am

    Of course, those women who just can’t control their base sexual desires or “save” them for that special single man to live off of financially…ahhh, I mean, that special person to marry and have children with exclusively…

    Okay, that is just misogynist.

    Look, dude, have your orgies if you want. Pretend the pornography industry is “personal” if you want. Invoke Godwin’s Law with your high-flown rhetoric. Whatever.

    But when you smear monogamous women as mere gold-diggers, who want only to siphon men’s money, one does wonder how that combines with your claim to feminism. Are all women mercenary whores and some just more honest about it? Is that what we’re getting at here?

41. Major in feminism, minor in sex positivity at Pandagon
    January 25th, 2006| 8:44 am

    [...] The post’s title refers to how I have always viewed the term “sex positive feminist” with regards to myself–that my pro-sex views are part of my feminist worldview and that I see sex positivity as an important part of the feminist movement. The reason I bring this up is because my post and especially BitchLab’s post the other day on sex positivity is creating quite the ruckus, and I was informed, to my surprise, that most people assume straightaway that the term “sex positive feminist” implies the antonymn “sex negative feminist”–the sort of prudery slur that I as least think BitchLab was coming out against. Well, I’m not speaking for her or anyone else, but I hope I can reassure everyone I don’t think that–I don’t think anti-porn feminists hate sex or hate men, I don’t think Andrea Dworkin hated sex, and I’m definitely not a simply Pollyanna about sexual politics. In fact, the Pollyanna-ish aspect of a lot of sex positive feminist writing that I’ve read irritates the ever-living shit out of me, which is one reason I feel compelled to make sex positivity a central part of my feminist writing–to articulate a non-Pollyanna-ish view of sexual politics while still believing that sexual liberation is an important facet of feminist politics. [...]

42. bitchlab
    January 25th, 2006| 9:45 am

    kja wrote: Okay, that is just misogynist.

    Look, dude, have your orgies if you want. Pretend the pornography industry is “personal” if you want. Invoke Godwin’s Law with your high-flown rhetoric. Whatever.

    But when you smear monogamous women as mere gold-diggers, who want only to siphon men’s money, one does wonder how that combines with your claim to feminism. Are all women mercenary whores and some just more honest about it? Is that what we’re getting at here?

    I wouldn’t call it misogynist but, crapplioota Anthony, that was very strange. I can’t think of a single woman who wants to live off a mn these days.

    Me? I am Ms. Monogamy — though I have and would continue to have more open types of monogamous relationships — not by design per se, just as it happens. So, I see utterly nothing about being sex positive and being and support monogamy for those who want it.

    I really detest the notion that anyone’s sex life — even if you’re asexual — should be the target of feminist claims about it being unfeminist or somehow ’sleazy’ or ‘trashy’ or ’sick’

    At any rate, I fail to understand why the horridness of the pornography industry comes up repeatedly.

    I repeat: being sex positve doesn’t mean you support the sex industry as it is. For mine, it means I support the existence of and expect to see the existence of a sex industry in the worlds we create through feminist struggles.

    I refuse to look down my nose at anyone in or who supports the sex industry because to do so suggests that the sex industry is somehow different from other industries.And, when differences are pointed to, they are typically result of the fact that it is illegal. etc.

    Alas, I’ve got a boatload of work to do so I’ll have to catch up with this later.

    Anthony’s a cool guy and I don’t think he’s done anything but utter a sexist thought. All of us are sexist (racist, etc) so we need to deal with it in judicious ways, not punishing, shaming ways. No one learns when sexism is called out as a moral failing.

43. bitchlab
    January 25th, 2006| 9:55 am

    *standing behind you saying “yeah. now what?!” in my best faux-thug voice while mean-muggin’.*

    this debate is where i split with many feminists. i cringe when i hear someone say that an expression of sexuality by a woman is “catering to men’s fantasies” or “having sex like men.” i really have to stop and ask: what’s your understanding of and construction of women’s sexuality? (and are we being truthful or fair when we define male sexuality as “lots of action with as many women as possible”?)

    you’ve pretty much said what i’ve been thinking …

    wow! I’m honored to see you here Tiffany. I’ve been a reader for a long time.

    I have so much sympathy for your view here. I would so love to talk about it more and I’m trying to figure out how we can have a productive discussion about it without it devolving into some bizarre defense of men’s rights or something.

    I brought the topic up in a round about way when I quoted Linda Alcoff not too long ago:

    “Interestingly, I have not included any feminist writings from women of oppressed nationalities and races in the category of cultural feminism, nor does Echols.”

    I’m trying to avoid rude-assery, but seriously, now Stoller doesn’t have to take my word for it. Other people, more important than Bitch, have pointed out the absence of women of color in the work of Cultural feminist traditions of thought!

    “I have heard it argued that the emphasis placed on cultural identity by such writers as Cherrie Moraga and Audre Lorde revels a tendency toward essentialism also. However, in my view their work has consistently rejected essentialist conceptions of gender.”

    “Consider the following passage from Moraga:’When you start to talk about sexism, the world becomes increasingly complex. The power no longer breaks down into neat little hierarchical categories, but becomes a seres of starts and detours. Since the categories are not easy to arrive at, the enemy is not easy to name. It is difficult to unravel.’ Moraga goes on to assert that ’some men oppress the very women they love,’ implying that we need new categories and new concepts to describe such complex and contradictory relations of oppression. In this problematic understanding of sexism, Moraga seems to me light-years ahead of Daly’s Manichean ontology or Rich’s romanticized concept of the female. The simultaneity of oppressions experienced by women such as Moraga resists essentialist conclusion. Universalist conceptions of female or male experiences and attributes are not plausible in the context of such a complex network of relations, (emphasis added) and without an ability to universalize, the essentialist argument is difficult if not impossible to make. White women cannot be all good or all bad (Alcoff is speaking, not as a white woman, but as a Panamanian American, Bitch); neither can men from oppressed groups. I have simply not found writings by feminists who are oppressed also by race and/or class that place or position maleness wholly as Other. Reflected in their problematized understanding of masculinity is a richer and likewise problematized concept of woman.”

    This captures it, for me. While Alcoff was writing and developing this line of thinking (along with others) 20 years ago, I think it captured what was going on then.

    We’ve been working on more complex understandings of oppression since then, but it’s still muddled.

    But, I think that trying to get a handle on the issue you raise is an important one. For those of us who’ve engaged on struggles for social change and who do so with a simultaneity of oppressions tend to find it more difficult to make universalizing claims about our ‘natures’ or even socialized tendencies.

    Anyway, I’m swamped with work but this is an issue that it very important to me and why I loved Reapprpriate’s last Feminist Carnival.

44. Sheldon Ranz
    January 25th, 2006| 12:40 pm

    Unless I missed something, women basketball players of the WNBA play the game just the way the men do, yet they don’t get called out for doing so. Why? Because there no “male” way or “female” way to play hoops, only a “human way”. Moreover, most folks are not inhibited from this understanding, because there is no taboo or stigma against basketball.

    When women are making porn, it’s going to look a lot like what men are making because both women and men are human and this is how human beings are able to make porn. Variations depend far more on individual vision and skill than gender. That’s why it’s absurd to charge female pornographers with catering to men’s fantasies. Nope, those aren’t “men’s fantasies” - those are human fantasies, which men and women share.

    If that doesn’t speak well for humanity in general, so be it.

45. Sheldon Ranz
    January 25th, 2006| 12:54 pm

    Count me as being in favor of “sex-positive feminist”, a term that originated, contrary to Samantha’s posts, with the need to find the equivalent of ‘pro-choice’ among those who see at least some good in the content of adult pornography.

    There is a good reason why many of us regard Dworkinites as sex-negative feminists. Whenever they’re asked - often during debates like these - to provide or create a single example of sexually explicit adult EROTICA - as opposed to sexually explicit adult PORNOGRAPHY - they are silent. If they think all porn is degrading, but clam to be not against sexual explicitness, then give us one example that would provide us with a healthy inspiration for jerking off. You could hear a friggin’ pin drop when that question is posed. Hell, they won’t even have one good to say about anything Candida Royalle or Nina Hartley has made.
    Instead, they will lecture the multitudes on wishy-washy platitudes about ‘erotica’ without pointing to one concrete example so that the rest of us could understand what the hell they’re talking about.

    Bottom line: if you can’t point to - or be bothered to create - your own example of non-degrading, hardcore adult sex fantasy, then your bluff has been called, and yes, YOU ARE INDEED ANTI-SEX.

46. Sheldon Ranz
    January 25th, 2006| 1:28 pm

    Sure, Andrea Dworkin was positive about sex…with animals and children.

    As part of her ‘pansexual’ or ‘androgynous’ utopia outlined in her 1974 book Woman Hating, she wrote the following, “Bestiality is an erotic reality, one which clearly place people in nature, not above it…Needless to say, in androgynous community, human and other-animal relationships would become more explicitly erotic, and that eroticism would not degenerate into abuse. Animals would be part of the tribe and, with us, respected, loved, and free (pp. 187-8).”

    And, further: “The parent-child relationship is primarily erotic because all human relationships are primarily erotic. The incest taboo is a particularized form of repression, one which functions as the bulwark of all other repressions. The incest taboo ensures that however free we become, we never become genuinely free. The incest taboo, because it denies us essential fulfillment with the parents whom we love with our primary energy, forces us to internalize those parents and constantly seek them…The incest taboo does the worst work of the culture: it teaches us the mechanisms of repressing and internalizing erotic feeling — it forces us to develop those mechanisms in the first place; it forces us to particularize sexual feeling, so that it congeals into a need for a particular sexual “object”; it demands that we place the nuclear family above the human family. The destruction of the incest taboo is essential to the development of cooperative human community based on the free-flow of natural androgynous eroticism.” (p.189).

    And there’s also this: “As for children, they too are erotic beings, closer to androgyny than the adults who oppress them. Children are fully capable of participating in community, and have every right to live out their own erotic impulses.” (p.191-2).

    Dworkin never retracted or apologized for these remarks, made in the same book where she ALSO denounced pornography. Conclusion: raping kids and animals are OK, but don’t you dare put that on camera because that’s (gulp!) OBJECTIFICATION, and there’s, like, nothing worse than that, y’know.

47. Nina Hartley
    January 25th, 2006| 3:08 pm

    I haven’t revisited this thread in some time, but it continues to be intereresting and, for the most part, thoughtful.

    However, predictably, “Sam,” who would seem to have little time for feminist organizing with all the scribbling she devotes to defaming me on any blog she comes across where my name appears, has once again grossly misrepresented both my statements and my beliefs regarding safer sex in the porn industry, for which I have campaigned for many years and still do as a member of the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation’s board of directors (she always forgets to mention my involvement with AIM when she’s busy dissing me as a lobbyist for the porn industry”).

    To wit, this from her post above: “I can’t take this claim (mine as a socialist, feminist, pro-sex-worker activist - Nina) seriously knowing how Hartley has lobbied for the pornography industry and has argued on their behalf against basic sex worker safety that most sex workers want. “…Adult film actress Nina Hartley said that a mandatory condom use policy would be “unenforceable” and performers who wish to use condoms can turn down films requiring unprotected sex…”

    I note that she puts the out of context paraphrasing of my comments to last spring’s California State Assembly committee hearings on porn safety in red, trying as ever to hang this false accusation around my neck like a scarlet letter.

    The commitee’s own report summarizes my remarks rather differently:

    Nina Hartley, R.N., Performer
    Ms. Hartley argued that mandatory condom requirements would increase the demand of “bareback” productions, or films depicting sexual acts without the use of a condom. Such a requirement, she continued, would not be enforceable. If performers wish to use condoms, she stated, they can always “say no” to productions requiring unprotected sex.
    She further testified that she has refused to work on productions where a male performer declined to use a condom, and noted that AIM is working to educate young performersthat they have the right to leave the set if asked to work under certain conditions.
    Chairman Koretz inquired whether younger performers are willing to assert those rights.
    Ms. Hartley responded that some performers may have done things on the set they have regretted later. Underground production, she added, will only increase if condoms were made mandatory. A better method of protection would be to inform performers that theyhave the right to say no to dangerous requests by producers.”

    In fact, my opposition to state-mandated condom use in porn is entirely based on my concern for performer safety and has nothing to do with my “arguing on the industry’s behalf against basic sex worker safety that most sex workers want” (as if Sam would have a clue as to what most sex workers want).

    Since HIV testing cannot be required as a condition of employment under California law, owing to anti-discrimination concerns, any law that mandated condom use in porn would, at the same time, nullify the current informal working requirement for HIV testing that prevails throughout the industry. It would become illegal for producers to refuse to knowingly hire HIV positive sex performers under such a law in order for it to conform to California’s existing statutes, as the legal representative of the ACLU present at the hearings made painfully clear. No one in his or her right mind would advocate allowing HIV+ performers to engage in hardcore sex acts for money, condoms or no. The price of mandatory condoms is no more required testing. I’ll wager I know a few more sex workers in the porn industry than Sam, and not one of them wants this solution. Condoms are fine for occasional encounters among civilians, but for day to day sex work under the demanding conditions of porn production, they are only helpful in combination with testing - the solution I advocate and always have.

    One more time - I am pro-condoms in porn, advocate them, use them and believe they should be standard in the industry. By themselves, however, they are not enough and I will not endorse any attempt to substitute them for testing, especially in light of what I know to be the certain efforts of many producers and performers to evade mandatory condom regulations. These efforts that would be impossible to thwart by any practical means. In the worst-case scenario sure to follow a heavy-handed attempt at state-imposed behavioral constraints in the making of porn, we would have performers working in far greater numbers with neither condoms nor reliable testing.

    For the record, AIM’s director, Dr. Sharon Mitchell, also spoke forcefully at the hearing against such incompetent and dangerous state intervention.

    Of course, such a disasterous policy would make the industry more closely resemble Sam’s demonic vision of it, so she’d probably be all for that. Who cares if a few women get infected as long as it helps her prove her point that porn is evil?

    The truth is that performer safety, whatever laws are written or whatever rhetorical thunderbolts are unleashed by Sam and her half-dozen friends, will always be the ultimate responsibility of performers themselves, which is why I devote my time to working with them directly and engaging in educationial efforts to help them make sensible choices. All new performers testing at AIM for the first time are shown Porn 101, a video discussion in which Dr. Mitchell and myself explain in detail the risks of porn work and performers’ rights and needs to protect themselves from those risks. We offer ongoing programs to keep performers informed of safety issues that concern them and support to performers resisting pressure to engage in unsafe practices.

    And BTW, Sam, we also pay out thousands of dollars every year in scholarships to performers wishing to leave porn and seek other employment. AIM is supported entirely by non-profit testing and voluntary contributions. It is not affiliated with any production company and specifically bans production companies from casting at our clinic or otherwise attempting to use AIM’s programs to their own purposes.

    To the extent that I can be described as a “porn industry lobbyist” (I spend all of one day each year in Sacremento talking to legislators at the behest of the Free Speech Coalition), it is to defend the right of my fellow performers to make their livings without fear of prosecution. I am not now nor have I ever been a spokesperson for “the producers.” I am an advocate for the rights, health and safety of sex workers in porn, period.

    Stop lying about me. If your false, ad hominem attacks on my character and those of my associates are the best arguments you can muster, you do your own cause no credit.

    And, BTW, as to this statement “That poor, good-looking men are not told they can empower themselves through sex work the way women in similar circumstances are told to consider it their best option should enter into the critique of any kind of feminist on the sex industry.” I have to ask if you ever wonder where the men who work in porn come from, or does the welfare of male sex workers fail to engage your radical sensibilities?

48. Aradhana
    January 25th, 2006| 5:59 pm

    There is no answer to my questions - it’s proof enough. Every single post consequently has been repetitive tripe… Same old dialogue and sidelining the issues - to summarize: “you’re christian fundamentalists (I’m a hindu-born now atheist), sexless virgins, think sex is gross, immature about your sexuality, blah blah blah….”.

    When it’s really a very simple question - Why are naked women used to sell everything from toothbrushes to video games, cars to art …?

    This whole ’sex-positivism’ thing really hasn’t done anything revolutionary - it’s really just fostered the creation of a very narrow definition of what female sexuality should “LOOK” like. And I emphasize the word look….

    Of course - the numerous other points of contention have been cited by Sam already, so I am not going to reiterate them for your benefit.

49. Sheldon Ranz
    January 25th, 2006| 10:01 pm

    Excuse me, Aradhana, but just because you’re a Hindu-born atheist doesn’t make you immune to the overriding Puritan context of our nation’s attitude toward the sexually explicit. Your comment reminds me of Nat Hentoff, a Village Voice writer who is an anti-feminist ‘pro-lifer’ - he also says that people shouldn’t stereotype him as a Fundie since he’s a Jewish atheist - as if that automatically immunizies him from misogyny.

    It’s not clear that sex-positive feminists in general have claimed to be revolutionary anymore than ‘pro-choice’ is a revolutionary concept. Both are necessary reforms that move society incrementally toward a better world.

    Images of naked women may be used to sell toothpaste - but not naked men. In the pornographic film and video industry, you’ll find more images of naked men pushing product than in any other major US industry. Other such industries should be challenged for not including naked men, as porn already has done.

    Sam’s point about porn having mainstream acceptance is ludicrous. Obscenity laws are being enforced at a greater clip than in the Clinton years, with more to come once Alito is confirmed. Only when the Supreme Court overturns Miller V California and, say, Ron Jeremy gets to host Saturday Night Live will it be at all reasonable to discuss whether porn has mainstream acceptance. There’s a huge difference between that and aspects of our culture FLIRTING with porn.

50. Aradhana
    January 26th, 2006| 1:17 am

    Excuse me, Aradhana, but just because you’re a Hindu-born atheist doesn’t make you immune to the overriding Puritan context of our nation’s attitude toward the sexually explicit.

    Racist and hypocritical - of course, my being born and brought up a hindu makes me ‘brainwashed by Christian fundies”….. but of course all the ’sex positive radicals’ that are liberating women via sex work, aren’t brainwashed by patriarchy…. I.e. you people sound more like the fundies than radical feminists do, ‘i.e your truth about women’s sexuality is the only truth’ everyone else is brainwashed by christian values. I have had to face Christians trying to brainwash me my whole life - and now this????

    You know that is just so below the belt … I don’t even know where to start…. Disgusting, truly.

    …. Of course, welcome to the land of postmodern conundrums…

    By the way - you still have not answered the question at hand — just sidelined it by saying “there are more naked men in porn than there are anywhere else”…. there are not more naked men than women in porn, and there aren’t more naked men anywhere else either….

    So do I really need to repeat the ACTUAL question again? All any of you will ever do is side track the issue…vs. answering the quesition at hand.

    Or isn’t the answer obvious - patriarchy LIKES women NAKED. Actually, it would prefer us progressing ourselves to the top of the porn hierarchy than to the whitehouse.

51. Sheldon Ranz
    January 26th, 2006| 7:18 am

    I’m not sidetracking the issue. You raised points - I issued counterpoints. If you can’t deal with that, it’s dishonest to repeat “sidetrack” like a broken record.

    Yes, patriarchy in general may like women naked. But the porn industry is not responsible for that because it likes both genders naked. Porn films have NAKED MEN as well as NAKED women - do you not get that?? Or perhaps it’s too much for you to admit that porn is more progressive on this matter than patriarchy.

    Patriarchy would PREFER that the adult sex industry disappear, a preference that it is working to actualize with enforcement of repressive obscenity laws. Nina Hartley herself was arrested in 1993 in Nevada for participating in a live sex show featuring lesbian sex acts, prosecutable under the “Infamous Crimes Against Nature” statute.

    As far as getting to the White House, porn star Mary Carey ran for Governor of California, acquiring over 10,000 votes. Most of that support came from the porn industry. And overseas, porn star Illona Staller (”Cicciolina”) was elected to Italy’s parliament with the enthusiastic backing of her porn fans.

    I said that being a Hindu-born atheist does not make you IMMUNE to absorbing puritanical messages - does your dictionary define “immune” as “brainwashing”??
    I also included a similar “immune” statement about my fellow Jew, Nat Hentoff. Nothing racist about that - but if you play the race card so bizarrely, you’re making Rev. Al Sharpton look like a beacon of integrity.

    As far as being charged with being “brainwashed by patriarchy”, it was YOUR side of the political ledger that historically has made that accusation against sex-positive feminists. So if that charge is being flung back at you, you’re just getting a taste of your own medicine. As Malcolm X once said, the chickens are coming home to roost.

52. Sheldon Ranz
    January 26th, 2006| 7:29 am

    Oh, by the way, YOU’RE the one who brought up your Hindu background. Once you open that door, I have every moral right to explore what that means in the context of this debate.

    And what I posted earlier about naked men stands. There are more images of naked MEN used for promotional purposes in the pornography industry than in any other US industry. The other industries focus exclusively on naked women; porn uses both. If you have an additional complaint that there are more images of naked women than naked men in porn (which is doubtful given the fact that thousands of gay male porn videos and magazines only feature nude men), then will the total equalization of those numbers make you call off your opposition to the very existence of the porn industry?

    And if not, then why bother bringing it up in the first place? If you’re dedicated to its eradication, why bother with the particulars?

53. Aradhana
    January 26th, 2006| 2:29 pm

    I brought up the fact that I was born a hindu BECAUSE of the very fact that it has been repeatedly been assumed in this thread that all those concerned with anti-porn are brainwashed by christian puritanicalism…

    SO yes, it is ONE racist for you to assume that christians are the only one who engage in this debate, and two for you to imply “my brainwashing” cushioning it in terms of ‘immunity” or whatever bullshit you want to concoct..

    PS regarding this:

    [b] Yes, patriarchy in general may like women naked. But the porn industry is not responsible for that because it likes both genders naked. Porn films have NAKED MEN as well as NAKED women - do you not get that?? Or perhaps it’s too much for you to admit that porn is more progressive on this matter than patriarchy.[/b]

    But seriously are you so blinded to the fact that for every male participant in the sex work industry there are at least 50 or more women ?

    This discussion is going nowhere — and again deflect all you want. The fact that there is an overrepresentation of women in the sex industry vs. men vs. any other industry or occupation should be a concern for feminists. Why don’t we have a full senate of women? Why not? Why not have mathematics profs who are female? Why aren’t there fully tenured women in faculty positions in all fields of study? Why sex work vs. any other occupation? And then you say patriarchy doesn’t like us naked?….

54. Sheldon Ranz
    January 26th, 2006| 6:04 pm

    Yes, there is an overrepresentation of men in the Senate. But do you call for the elimination of the Senate? No. In fact, wherever there is gender-representation disparity, folks like you don’t call for the abolition of said industry or institution EXCEPT FOR THE PORN INDUSTRY.

    In the matter of female overrepresentation, the fashion industry - which specializes in putting clothes ON people - the opposite of disrobing and nakedness - is dominated, both in numbers and pay scale, by women. Patriarchy likes the fashion industry and does not send police to arrest fashion models. Puritan ideology does not say fahion is the product of the Devil — UNLIKE its attitude toward porn.

    Once again, you illustrate Bitch | Lab’s complaint about making assertions without backing them up. From whose ass did you pull out this number about there being about a 50:1 female:male performer ratio in porn? The popular niche of bukkakke porn has upwards from 50-60 different men doing a circle jerk around one woman. Gang bang videos showed multiple men having sex with one women. And then there are all those gay male videos with ZERO women. Did you factor THAT into your 50:1 ratio???

    Speaking of ‘deflections’, you didn’t respond to my Andrea Dworkin post. What do you think about Andrea Dworkin’s advocacy of incest and bestiality? She is, after all, the founder of YOUR branch of feminism.

    Where did I assume that Christians are the only ones who “engage in this debate”? I’m engaged in this debate, and I’m not Christian. Anyone can be infected by Puritanism - it is an American/English outlook derived from the Christian sect founded by Oliver Cromwell.

    If you’re calling the dictionary “bullshit”, fine. That closes off just about all reasonable lines of communication. And your ‘racist’ canard is beneath contempt.

55. Aradhana
    January 27th, 2006| 11:17 am

    A) I have never read a single Andrea Dworkin article/book/essay - so I am not going to contribute to something I don’t know about. And as someone who’s critical - I wouldn’t just take your word for it either - until I read it for myself.
    B) She’s not the ‘founder’ of radical feminism - see above - I am not only a radical feminist - and would consider myself more socialist if anything.
    C) there are tonnes of criticisms of pornography by a myriad of scholars - see Julia Davis Oconnell for something that might be considered “a bridge” between our two viewpoints. She is not a radical feminist either.
    D) the fashion industry is constantly criticized by feminists… Um, you gotta be kidding me if you think it isn’t…. ???? Are you serious? Many feminists staged a huge uproar over a fashion show 2 yrs ago in paris where ALL of the lines of clothing were ‘retro-sexist’…. Please give me a break.
    E) Your analysis of “gang-bang” porn, gay-porn, etc… DO NOT FACTOR into consideration the dimensions of power. I.e. language, forms of advertising and other demeaning ways in which such porn is presented. I.e. gang-bangs are never shown in a positive light in regards to the women, advertisers usually resort to the following demeaning representation: “Watch this horny little slut, get fucked by all the men in the room. This slut just can’t get enough”… How’s that empowering. If you have ever talked to a gay pro-feminist man - you would also know that there are forms of gay pornography where the ideologies of heterosexism are present - i.e. a dominant/submissive analogy - where men who are the submissive are called ’slut, bitch, whore etc…” This specifically elludes to the feminine. Of course you’re just going to twist this criticism and shove it into a barrell of monkeys - cause you aren’t critical of the industry - and you never will be.
    F) Fuck you, about the ‘racism’… That’s really just tacky - that you can’t even see why I had to write I was born hindu, and then you attack me about it. When you resort to “let’s look up the dictionary” games - you know you’re just drawing it down to the personal to deflect from the topic at hand - it’s really quite juvenile.

    This is as much as I will write on this.

56. Sheldon Ranz
    January 27th, 2006| 3:44 pm

    1) Being born Hindu or Jewish or Islam doesn’t matter if you grow up in the US and absorb the dominant cultural paradigm of puritanism, which originated in Christianity. Andrea Dworkin’s being born Jewish obviously didn’t make her immune to it, and neither does your Hindu background. You keep calling this a racist remark even though from the very beginning I did not single out your Hindu background. Or is it that you think that Hindu atheists are somehow immune to Puritanism, and anyone who dares challenge this unfounded notion is racist?

    2) Andrea Dworkin is the founder of anti-porn feminism - I never said she was the founder of radical feminism [although nowadays, almost all self-described radical feminists are anti-porn]. And since you are an anti-porn feminist, she is the founder of yes, YOUR, branch of feminism. You don’t like it, tough, but that’s the truth.

    3) I did not offer ANY analysis of gang-bang porn. I referenced that to point out the inaccuracy of your claim about the comparative numbers of male vs. female porn performers. Instead of dealing with THAT, you deflect it into an analysis I never made.

    4) Please knock off the fake-wonderment “Are you serious?” rhetoric. When did I say the fashion industry isn’t criticized by feminists? It’s coddled by patriarchy, UNLIKE porn. You claimed that women only get to the top of nude-positive industries - bur fashion isn’t about nudity. That it may be sexist in other ways is another matter. Instead of admitting that I was right about your EXACT point, you dodge.

    5) How do you know I’m not critical of the industry? Have you read any of my writings? I was a film critic for 7 years at Adult Video News, which published my critical remarks. I’ve supported unionization of the sex workers and have attacked porn companies and performers for giving into racism by refusing pairings showing African-American males and white females. Funny, but all of a sudden, several anti-porn feminists are calling themselves ’socialists’ but have written nothing in support of unionizing sex workers.

    Try something new - respond to what I actually posted instead of what you wished I posted.

57. Feministe » Links, etc.
    January 27th, 2006| 7:12 pm

    [...] This piece by Bitch Lab has been going around for a while, and has generated quite a few responses (see Amanda here and here, F-Words here). Everything I would say has already been said. I identify as a sex-positive feminist, and I think it’s completely possible to be sex-positive and simultaneously able to criticize the commodification of sex in our culture, the misogyny of the sex industry, and the problems with pornography. It’s also possible to be a sex-positive feminist and have your life involve things other than sex. Which is basically what Bitch Lab says. [...]

58. ravi
    January 30th, 2006| 3:46 pm

    Aradhana writes:
    > There is no answer to my questions - its proof enough. Every single
    > post consequently has been repetitive tripe Same old dialogue and
    > sidelining the issues - to summarize: youre christian fundamentalists
    > (Im a hindu-born now atheist),

    To which Sheldon Ranz responds:
    > Excuse me, Aradhana, but just because youre a Hindu-born atheist
    > doesnt make you immune to the overriding Puritan context of our
    > nations attitude toward the sexually explicit.

    Perhaps true (though it would seem reasonable, at first thought, to
    suggest that being a Hindu-born person does put one a bit lesser in
    the Puritanical context, the use of the term “overriding”
    notwithstanding), but from the text quoted above, it seems to me
    that she is mentioning her Hindu-born background to counter the
    criticism (if such exists) that she is a Christian fundamentalist.
    Surely, even the overriding Puritanical context does not make
    Christian fundamentalists of all of us, especially those who may
    have other influences. Setting aside all that, a Christian
    fundamentalist being someone who believes in God and in Christ is
    a different beast from a Hindu-turned-atheist who by that very
    definition believes little in either.

    > Your comment reminds me of Nat Hentoff, a Village Voice writer who
    > is an anti-feminist pro-lifer - he also says that people shouldnt
    > stereotype him as a Fundie since hes a Jewish atheist - as if that
    > automatically immunizies him from misogyny.

    Well, setting aside the guilt-by-association, the immunity claim
    runs counter to the record (which I assume you can document) of
    anti-feminism and anti-choice. Where is the resemblance in this
    instance?

    Let me try to follow your analogy somewhat slowly… you believe
    that Aradhana claims immunity from Christian fundamentalism (or
    Puritanical context as put it). She says, by your argument (as
    I see it, though as shown above, I do not see the logical flow of
    it yet), that her being a Hindu-turned-atheist affords her that
    immunity.

    What you seem to be saying seems a reverse application of the
    very analogy you provide: that if she looks like what you see
    is a duck, and quacks like what to you sounds like a duck, then
    she must be a fundamentalist?

    > As far as getting to the White House, porn star Mary Carey ran for
    > Governor of California, acquiring over 10,000 votes. Most of that
    > support came from the porn industry. And overseas, porn star Illona
    > Staller (Cicciolina) was elected to Italys parliament with the
    > enthusiastic backing of her porn fans.

    I dont get how this answers the question that Aradhana, IMHO
    rightly, thinks is being sidetracked. Indira Gandhi and
    Sirimavo Bandaranaike didn’t have to do Dallas before they
    became elected leaders of their nations. In fact, if as it
    seems from the examples above, porn is one way (only way? did
    Golda Meir too hit the Bukkake circuit before her political
    ascendancy?) for women in he West to enter the corridors of
    power, it may even be seen as an illustration of Aradhana’s
    point (or question).

    > Being born Hindu or Jewish or Islam doesnt matter if you grow up
    > in the US and absorb the dominant cultural paradigm of puritanism,
    > which originated in Christianity. Being born Hindu or Jewish or Islam
    > doesnt matter if you grow up in the US and absorb the dominant
    > cultural paradigm of puritanism, which originated in Christianity.

    How do you know this? Perhaps racism is an unfair slander, but is
    this not ignorant of what it is to be (or have been) a Hindu or
    Muslim (Islam is the religion)? Including the puritanical sections
    of these religions (at least one of which predates Christianity by
    a few thousand years)?

    We know what a self-identified or even identifiable Christian
    fundamentalist stands for and is unfluenced by. To simply state
    that one is not such an entity is (to me) a reasonable defense
    against blanket labelling and attribution of motives. It is possible
    that, as you claim, the dominant paradigm has an over-riding
    influence. But I am afraid that the burden of proving that rests
    on you.

    Ultimately anchoring investigations on motives and similarities
    seems an unproductive method. Aradhana’s questions stand on their
    own merit and in honest debate (absent the strange acrimony) are
    worth an attempt at a straighforward answer.

59. bitchlab
    January 30th, 2006| 4:11 pm

    “I dont get how this answers the question that Aradhana, IMHO
    rightly, thinks is being sidetracked. Indira Gandhi and
    Sirimavo Bandaranaike didn’t have to do Dallas before they
    became elected leaders of their nations. In fact, if as it
    seems from the examples above, porn is one way (only way? did
    Golda Meir too hit the Bukkake circuit before her political
    ascendancy?) for women in he West to enter the corridors of
    power, it may even be seen as an illustration of Aradhana’s
    point (or question).”

    And yet, ravi, that isn’t what anyone has said. A started the problem by arguing against a strawfeminist to begin with.

    And then you and others aid and abett that by taking it seriously.

    No one’s saying that you must star in a porn flick.

    It has to do with rejecting the tendency of the culture in general and some lefties and feminist in particular to regulate sexuality.

    We reject that and we reject those who do that in the name of feminism.

    Nina Hartley doesn’t think everyone should become a stripper. I don’t know a sex positive feminist who does. So why bring up the issue to begin with.

    It’s b.s.

60. Sheldon Ranz
    January 30th, 2006| 6:40 pm

    A while back, I posted the following:

    “As far as getting to the White House, porn star Mary Carey ran for Governor of California, acquiring over 10,000 votes. Most of that support came from the porn industry. And overseas, porn star Illona Staller (Cicciolina) was elected to Italys parliament with the enthusiastic backing of her porn fans.”

    ravi claims that “I dont get how this answers the question that Aradhana, IMHO
    rightly, thinks is being sidetracked.”

    Well, if you read more carefully, you WOULD ‘get how’. My comment was in DIRECT response to this part of her preceding post:

    Aradhana: “Or isn’t the answer obvious - patriarchy LIKES women NAKED. Actually, it would prefer us progressing ourselves to the top of the porn hierarchy than to the whitehouse.”

    Male porn fans, whom Aradhana and her fellow anti-porn feminists have historically viewed as patriarchal enthusiasts, acted COUNTER-patriarchically, both here and in Italy. Now do you get it, ravi?

    As far as my ‘immunity’ analogy, both Aradhana and Nat Hentoff go out of their way to cite their personal background to imply, or state explicitly, that their agreement with a puritanical and/or misogynistc position commonly associated with Christan Fundamentalism is…strictly coincidental. Puritanism has been the dominant cultural narrative of this country since its beginning, and many institutions and industries in our society reinforce this narrative daily. NO ONE is immune to Puritanical influences, not even me.

    BUT, to be a sex-positive feminist (like me) is to recognize how puritanism has infiltrated our psyches and then, to foment resistance. Like the Borg, sex-negative feminists believe that resistance is futile.

61. ravi
    January 31st, 2006| 5:13 pm

    BL writes in response to me:
    >
    >> I dont get how this answers the question that Aradhana, IMHO
    >> rightly, thinks is being sidetracked. Indira Gandhi and
    >> Sirimavo Bandaranaike didnt have to do Dallas before they
    >> became elected leaders of their nations. In fact, if as it
    >> seems from the examples above, porn is one way (only way? did
    >> Golda Meir too hit the Bukkake circuit before her political
    >> ascendancy?) for women in he West to enter the corridors of
    >> power, it may even be seen as an illustration of Aradhanas
    >> point (or question).
    >
    > And yet, ravi, that isnt what anyone has said. A started the
    > problem by arguing against a strawfeminist to begin with.
    >
    > And then you and others aid and abett that by taking it seriously.
    >
    > No ones saying that you must star in a porn flick.
    >
    > It has to do with rejecting the tendency of the culture in general
    > and some lefties and feminist in particular to regulate sexuality.
    >
    > We reject that and we reject those who do that in the name of feminism.
    >

    Below, I am responding to all the points above:

    I am not saying that SPF (sex +ve feminists) are saying that a porn
    career is necessary for entering politics. When Aradhana mentions
    getting to the White House, Ranz responded with porn stars who have
    politically succeeded (or almost so). I read that to suggest that
    the porn industry (and I guess porn fans) helped elect (or almost
    elect) these women. This does not show necessarily that porn is a
    positive channel for women seeking to enter politics. Perhaps these
    women are being humoured by the men who vote for them? In particular
    they are enjoying this brief entry due to their appeasing the men
    with their porn careers. etc…

    I understand what your SPF position is and I tend to see your
    point. You know this stuff better than me and if you say some
    radical anti-porn feminism regulates sexuality for women, I will
    buy that and also that such should be rejected.

    OTOH, I have a little less worries about radical feminists desiring
    to regulate male sexuality or sexual expression. I am very open to
    hearing their argument.

    Common sense has been much maligned by every ideologue peddling a
    preferred system of thought and analysis. But common sense coupled
    with an open mind is often the only way out of the bootstrapping
    problem. I say this because IMHO we must not devalue the importance
    of addressing common sense questions. And as I noted in my first
    comment the acrimony (from all sides) clouds (at least for me)
    understanding. I do not know the two sides of this argument well at
    all and reading Aradhana’s comment, it is quite possible she is
    constructing a strawman out of SPF. But as I hinted at, there are
    versions of her questions that stand worthy of addressing:

    For example, the question (and at every part of the posing
    of this question there are, as always, assumptions, which in turn
    it is legitimate to question, in a response): Common sense suggests
    that porn as it exists today is exploitative of women (since it
    primarily serves male needs and often involves women in actions
    that at least in intention are degrading or powerless) and is also
    harms women in terms of opportunitise, stereotypes, etc. Should it
    then be regulated in some manner? (I am aware of your other post
    regarding titillation by other means, but I have an outstanding
    question there too).

    The terms used seem confusing too: I would assume that most
    feminists (other than the few

62. ravi
    January 31st, 2006| 5:41 pm

    Sheldon Ranz responds to me thus:
    > A while back, I posted the following:
    >
    > As far as getting to the White House, porn star Mary Carey ran for
    > Governor of California, acquiring over 10,000 votes. Most of that
    > support came from the porn industry. And overseas, porn star Illona
    > Staller (Cicciolina) was elected to Italys parliament with the
    > enthusiastic backing of her porn fans.
    >
    > ravi claims that I dont get how this answers the question that
    > Aradhana, IMHO rightly, thinks is being sidetracked.
    >
    > Well, if you read more carefully, you WOULD get how. My comment was
    > in DIRECT response to this part of her preceding post:
    >
    > Aradhana: Or isnt the answer obvious - patriarchy LIKES women NAKED.
    > Actually, it would prefer us progressing ourselves to the top of
    > the porn hierarchy than to the whitehouse.
    >
    > Male porn fans, whom Aradhana and her fellow anti-porn feminists
    > have historically viewed as patriarchal enthusiasts, acted
    > COUNTER-patriarchically, both here and in Italy. Now do you get it,
    > ravi?
    >

    Ok, I see the thrust of the response but let me read Aradhana with
    an equal bit of attention: She only says that the patriarchy
    *prefers* women reach the top of porn not the whitehouse. This
    seems true: for instance, as she points out, there are few women
    permitted into the corridors of power, and grudgingly at that,
    while women are the indeed the top stars in the porn world. Of
    course the patriarchy is not all-powerful and has to adapt its
    muscle-flexing to meet the mood of the moment and sometimes to
    contain the damage of populist liberalism. One way to retain the
    bulk of the status quo is to promote women into some prominence
    through the emphasis of their primary starring role. Note that
    even the examples you provide show very little success (a large
    number of votes in one case and a parliamentary win in another).
    I offered in contrast other venues by which women have risen to
    greater offices. In other words, these porn stars (unwittingly
    in their case) may serve the same role as black Republicans, etc.

    So, it comes down to this: if I am right and that the patriarchy
    acted merely to breach leaks in its system, and such advances as
    you highlight, are mere crumbs with no further potential, then is
    it still possible that we (the feminists) could subvert the
    system from within? If not, this could be a net negative for
    women.

    Also, the 800-pound question that remains unanswered when it
    comes to porn IMHO is this: SPF are not, I would venture, even
    a blip in the statistics of porn consumption. In the real world
    of today the vast majority of porn is consumed by men (I would
    further venture, not in any “sex positive” way). Feminist calls
    for regulating porn rest on this fact and their arguments sink
    or sail on the validity of their reasoning regarding the effects
    of this consumption. That last part being the question.

    > As far as my immunity analogy, both Aradhana and Nat Hentoff
    > go out of their way to cite their personal background to imply,
    > or state explicitly, that their agreement with a puritanical
    > and/or misogynistc position commonly associated with Christan
    > Fundamentalism isstrictly coincidental. Puritanism has been the
    > dominant cultural narrative of this country since its beginning,
    > and many institutions and industries in our society reinforce
    > this narrative daily. NO ONE is immune to Puritanical influences,
    > not even me.

    And hence my response that:

    Aradhana’s pointing out her religious background and current
    belief counteracts her being labelled a Christian fundamentalist.
    Your last sentence is unprovable (even in a colloquial sense)
    except as a derivation of the more general form: no one is
    immune to the influences of their environment. Which is a
    reasonable point. And quite in line with Aradhana’s pointing
    out the mixed environment she comes from.

    Also, in the case of Nat Hentoff you suggest (and I take your
    word for it) that the man is an anti-feminist, etc. By which I
    assume there is an established record of his to back up that
    characterization. Where is the analogy here, on a solitary
    thread on a blog?

    Finally, the claim has to be differentiated from its use. The
    claim that I am not X and therefore should not be construed as
    a Y can remain valid even if it turns out that one application
    of the claim is countered by other data that demonstrates the
    person to be indeed a Y.

    > BUT, to be a sex-positive feminist (like me) is to recognize
    > how puritanism has infiltrated our psyches and then, to foment
    > resistance. Like the Borg, sex-negative feminists believe that
    > resistance is futile.

    I prefer to avoid speculating about the beliefs of people and
    restrict myself to the rationale of their public arguments.
    Perhaps like Bitch, I am turning into a positivist too — or
    worse a behaviourist.

63. bitchlab
    January 31st, 2006| 6:10 pm

    ravi writes: Below, I am responding to all the points above:

    I am not saying that SPF (sex +ve feminists) are saying that a porn
    career is necessary for entering politics. When Aradhana mentions
    getting to the White House,

    Full stop.

    She made a claim that was unsupported: “Or isn’t the answer obvious - patriarchy LIKES women NAKED. Actually, it would prefer us progressing ourselves to the top of the porn hierarchy than to the whitehouse.”

    But, more importantly, she started out, from the very beginning, as did Sam, in complete denial as to what I was talking about.

    They refused to address it and, instead, reduced it to an uncritical celebration of porn and prostitution.

    This is NOT what it started out as and it’s not what it is today.

    Thus, she was arguing with a strawfeminist position.

    I don’t think Sheldon should have dignified it with an answer that, yet again, assumed that’s what it was.

    This is where Aradhana Ranz responded with porn stars who have
    politically succeeded (or almost so). I read that to suggest that
    the porn industry (and I guess porn fans) helped elect (or almost
    elect) these women. This does not show necessarily that porn is a
    positive channel for women seeking to enter politics. Perhaps these
    women are being humoured by the men who vote for them? In particular
    they are enjoying this brief entry due to their appeasing the men
    with their porn careers. etc…

    I don’t see why these are relevant questions or issues.

    But, do you think it’s fair to say they are “appeasing the men”?

    I don’t think it’s fair to say that about other people. When I keep the ’sexy’ photos on the blog, am I appeasing the men?

    I don’t think so. There are plenty of women who’ve also written to say they love the imagery on the blog.

    If we dress up in ways that we think are attracive and make us feel good, why is that “appeasing” the men?

    I understand what your SPF position is and I tend to see your
    point. You know this stuff better than me and if you say some
    radical anti-porn feminism regulates sexuality for women, I will
    buy that and also that such should be rejected.

    Firstly, why accept what I say? It’s a matter of visiting google and doing a search, reading the Wikipedia entry, and then following up with, at least, a reading of Gail Rubin. There is a Feminist Theory journal out there where the entire issue is dedicted to the dildo wars: the claim that dildos were a form of patriarchal sex.

    Additionally, I quote bell hooks in a post linked to above where she also talks about the way dominant strands of feminist thought regulated sex, both lesbian sex and hetsex. They regulated it by declaring it antithetical to being a feminist, suggesting that these forms of sex were the result of brainwashing by The patriarchy.

    To see contemporary versions, you can visit Biting Beaver and I blame the patriarchy two blogs that make patently clear that they reject the following BDSM, rape fantasies, lesbian sex as portrayed in lesbian porn made for heterosexuals.

    OTOH, I have a little less worries about radical feminists desiring
    to regulate male sexuality or sexual expression. I am very open to
    hearing their argument.

    Why? That’s precisely what they want to regulate. They want to regulate what they blieve is essential to male sexuality. Rape fantasies are not women’s own desires, you see, they are the desires of Patriarchy planted into their lil ol’ brains. If they knew better, they wouldn’t have them.

    If a woman wants to give her husband a hummer and that’s all she wants to do, that is another form of Patriarchal ideology.

    If a woman wants to dress up in “slutty” clothes and dance at a nightclub, she’s just fulfilling his patriarchal fantasies. She doesnt’ really want that because a real woman wouldn’t want to put her body on display like that. She’s just a social dope who knows not what she does.

    Common sense has been much maligned by every ideologue peddling a
    preferred system of thought and analysis. But common sense coupled
    with an open mind is often the only way out of the bootstrapping
    problem. I say this because IMHO we must not devalue the importance
    of addressing common sense questions.

    I don’t think its sensible to take my word for it, then. Because, I think if you read the stuff I pointed at, you’d have very different questions. :)

    And as I noted in my first
    comment the acrimony (from all sides) clouds (at least for me)
    understanding. I do not know the two sides of this argument well at
    all and reading Aradhana’s comment, it is quite possible she is
    constructing a strawman out of SPF.

    They both came her talking about prostitution and porn. both of them anturally assumed that sexpos didn’t have criticisms of sex work, porn, rape, violence against women.

    As I have demonstrated, that is not true for the major figures in this area. It may be true of followers but there are enough blogs out there that I suspect that they could dredge up evidence of a sexpos feminist who say it’s all roses.

    But as I hinted at, there are
    versions of her questions that stand worthy of addressing:

    For example, the question (and at every part of the posing
    of this question there are, as always, assumptions, which in turn
    it is legitimate to question, in a response): Common sense suggests
    that porn as it exists today is exploitative of women (since it
    primarily serves male needs and often involves women in actions
    that at least in intention are degrading or powerless) and is also
    harms women in terms of opportunitise, stereotypes, etc. Should it
    then be regulated in some manner? (I am aware of your other post
    regarding titillation by other means, but I have an outstanding
    question there too).

    I don’t have time to answer everyone.

    As to the outstanding question, you misread the post. I was talking about the fact that people (men and women) get turned on by someone’s mind. And, in turn, they can objectify them without imagery. I’t’s just ones and zeroes. Desire doesn’t go away. It existed without any imagery, perhaps only fantasy and perhaps not.

    E.g., I get turned on by people’s minds and I never really think of what they look like and I don’t care if I ever do. I might imagine a feature such as “tall” or “smirky grin” but that’s it.

    I’d love for A and S to talk about rad fem. However, they get to answer my questions about theory and practice. Just asserting that X (eradicating porn for instance) will reduce the oppression of women isn’t going to cut it. You need some explanatory theory and evidence.

    They won’t provide any. They provide statistics. But that isn’t explanation.

    The terms used seem confusing too: I would assume that most
    feminists (other than the few

64. ravi
    January 31st, 2006| 10:44 pm

    Response to BL’s last comment:

    I see that my earlier comment got truncated for some reason… I smell a SPF conspiracy to keep down the old-fashioned man-hating feminists like me!! ;-)

    Why don’t I read Wikipedia, Google, etc rather than just taking your word? Because I trust your word more than what the dominant axe-grinders have edited into the relevant Wikipedia page or manipulated into a high Google pagerank. Yes, more detailed digging will lead to better data and analysis, but that requires quite a bit of time (and even there I am not sure to get a reliable opinion).

    I haven’t had the time to go through all the content on this page and I am not defending Aradhana’s possible misunderstanding of your position. I understand your position and I tend to buy into it. I was primarily responding to Ranz’s criticism of Aradhana’s posts, in particular some details: such as his idea that being Hindu-born does not matter in the face of the dominance of Puritanism in the USA. etc.

    I was also interested in the discussion on porn and its effects, the correct response from feminists to it, and so on.

    WRT outstanding questions: I do not demand that you answer them. I say outstanding only to note that that post does not quite satisfy the point I raise here.

    Why would I listen to feminists opinion on male sexuality and its regulation: because my admittedly naive reading of history, and a sort of reductionist understanding from biology, tells me that male sexuality has often, though not always, strong negative impact on the lives of women. Here I am not talking about rape fantasies, but about rape. Not being a libertarian, and almost being a utilitarian, I have no problems with careful provisional regulation of individuals by society for the common good (and individual good of others).

    Next: “appeasing the men”. The thing is not whether a hypothetical “sluttily dressed woman” is doing so to appease men. Just as in my response to Ranz, I should not speculate on the motives of such dressers, and being an old-fashioned leftist, I tend to go with their version of the story — that they do it for their pleasure, or to please their partner, or whatever, but not to appease. But my concern is the real data on such things: What is actually going on in cases where some porn star gains fame and uses that elsewhere? When Anna Kournikova is the best known women’s tennis player? When sexed up better than average female chess players are better known than Judith Polgar the woman who beat Kasparov and other ranking male players and did it with a style that left them feeling threatened and intimidated?

    These are the questions that the older leftists/feminists/etc raised, yes? In that process questions and issues of nuance were I am sure trampled and require rectification. But (I hate to tie this into Pomo criticism) those questions are still important, yes, and we can arrive at some provisional answers (rather than get bogged down in contrasting viewpoints) based on a serious analysis of real world data?

    Yes the patriarchy, the male establishment, in the form of conservative and religious institutions, regulates porn for its own reasons. Yes, blanket criticism of porn overlooks legitimate and productive (or better, natural and healthy) uses. But it makes little sense to talk past each other in posing these as diametrically opposing queries.

    Again, I should remind that my response is primarily to the points raised by Ranz in response to Aradhana.

65. Sheldon Ranz
    February 1st, 2006| 9:43 am

    I] ravi posted: “When Aradhana mentions getting to the White House, Ranz responded with porn stars who have politically succeeded (or almost so). I read that to suggest that the porn industry (and I guess porn fans) helped elect (or almost elect) these women. This does not show necessarily that porn is a
    positive channel for women seeking to enter politics. Perhaps these
    women are being humoured by the men who vote for them? In particular
    they are enjoying this brief entry due to their appeasing the men
    with their porn careers. etc…”

    1) It shows that porn CAN be a successful channel, in contrast to the absolutist stance of Aradhana and her fellow Dworkinites.

    2) “Perhaps” voters were humoring Mary Carey or Ilona Staller? Really? Where is the evidence? I don’t know how the system works where you come from, ravi, but here, people who think elections are a joke don’t vote at all. The few who do vote are presumed innocent until proven guilty of voting in bad faith - both here, in Italy and elsewhere.

    3) One could make a similar argument that Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger were both elected Governor because their Hollywood acting careers APPEASED their fans. Does your concept of ‘appeasement’ only apply to sex workers? If so, it’s that kind of double standard that infuriates me as an SPF.

    4) How do you know that Mary Carey’s fans are all male? Porn stars, even the ones I don’t like, have growing numbers of female fans thanks in large part to the growth of the Internet, which allows women the opportunity to indulge their sexually explicit fantasies in a safe environment. It is this growth that freaks out authors like Pamela Paul and Ariel Levy, authors of “Pornified” and “Female Chauvinist Pigs”, respectively.

    II] ravi posted: “Common sense suggests that porn as it exists today is exploitative of women (since it primarily serves male needs and often involves women in actions that at least in intention are degrading or powerless) and is also
    harms women in terms of opportunitise, stereotypes, etc.”

    This is not a matter to which common sense is amenable. It is a question of accurately reporting data, i.e. the contents of porn. Porn, especially today, serves the needs of its consumers, whoever they may be. The data, by gender breakdown (as reported on several occasions in The New York Times and Adult Video News) suggests equality in terms of internet porn consumerism and a visible female minority in adult video consumerism.

    From 1990 - 1997, I was a film critic for Adult Video News, reviewing over 200 porn videos, few of which, in my judgment, featured degradation of women, either in intention or result. But tell me, ravi, how do we define ‘degradation’ in the context of sexual fantasy? As far as ‘powerless’ goes, a standard sexual position depicted in porn is the ‘cowgirl’ position, where the women is sitting astride the man. She is on top. She also wears shoes with sharp heels, which means that she can stab him in the balls anytime he does not perform to her liking. [I don't recall ever seeing that happen, but the threat is always present] That’s not my idea of female impotence. But your mileage may vary.

    III] ravi posted: “… let me read Aradhana with an equal bit of attention: She only says that the patriarchy *prefers* women reach the top of porn not the whitehouse. This seems true: for instance, as she points out, there are few women permitted into the corridors of power, and grudgingly at that,
    while women are the indeed the top stars in the porn world.”

    That is a non-sequitir. The fact that women reached the top of porn but are stuck at the Senatorial in Washington AND the fact that we are living under patriarchy simply means the former is happening at the same time as the latter. Period. Full stop. It does not imply that patriarchy is the CAUSE of those things. For that, further investigation is required.

    Moreover, your statement implies that patriarchy had a hand in causing women to be the top stars. Where are the meetings? The protocols? Does anybody have the minutes of the Council of Foreign Relations meetings where representatives of the ruling elite sat down and hammered out a porn plan?

    ravi, all you do is to offer hypothetical, speculative explanations. Some of us prefer to add some facts to our explanatory frameworks. For example, in the mid-Seventies and early Eighties, it was John Holmes, a male porn actor, who was THE top star - not any of the women with whom he costarred. Was that part of patriarchy’s plan, too?

    The truth is often unsexy and undramatic. You see, women like Annette Haven organized porn performers into a temporary alliance and successfully struggled to better their lot inside the porn film industry, causing a power shift over to female porn stars from their male counterparts. That’s not ‘common sense’, that’s just history. It happened because they MADE it happen, not because patriarchy decided to throw them a bone. It is just like the peep show sex workers at the Lusty Lady in San Francisco, who organized a union and later, a sex worker collective that owns and manages that entire establishment.

    I’ll tell you what degradation of women is: it’s when people like you refuse to give female sex workers (and their worshipful fans) credit for accomplishing anything good on their own behalf, belittling those accomplishments as ‘patriarchal adaptations’. Do you also belittle the achievements of workers in general to organize unions and successful strikes as ‘capitalist adaptations’?

    You ignore the reality of state censorship of the porn industry and the Bush/Cheney regime’s determination to use obscenity law to shut down the industry entirely. The chief Patriarchs have openly announced their opposition to porn and have backed up their words with deeds - but apparently not loud enough for ravi to hear? Well, whose fault is that?

    ‘Black Republicans’, my ass! Most of the female porn stars support the mainstream feminist anti-patriarchal agenda: pro-ERA, pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, anti-violence against women - in short, they all qualify for NOW membership (if they wanted to join). On the contrary, it was anti-porn feminist Tammy Bruce who voted for Ronald Reagan; it was anti-porn feminist Phyllis Chesler who voted for Bush in 2004. And, it was Catherine MacKinnon herself who was leaning toward endorsing Black Republican and anti-feminist CLARENCE THOMAS in his bid for the Supreme Court - until she found out that he (allegedly) dabbled in porn.

66. Sheldon Ranz
    February 1st, 2006| 10:12 am

    A continuation of the previous post:

    IV] ravi posted: “Your last sentence is unprovable (even in a colloquial sense)
    except as a derivation of the more general form: no one is immune to the influences of their environment. Which is a reasonable point. And quite in line with Aradhana’s pointing out the mixed environment she comes from.”

    No, it was not in line - Aradhana DENIED that puritanism had ANY influence on her - she did claim immunity, which is in line with anti-porn feminism. But I’m glad to see that you agree that no one is immune to the influences of their environment - that, of course, was my point, specified to the discussion at hand.

    V] ravi posted, “Also, in the case of Nat Hentoff you suggest (and I take your
    word for it) that the man is an anti-feminist, etc. By which I assume there is an established record of his to back up that characterization. Where is the analogy here, on a solitary thread on a blog?”

    Hentoff’s record is well-known to those who have been active on the U.S. left for years. He came out against abortion and affirmative action for women and African-Americans in his weekly paper, The Village Voice, in the Eighties and Nineties [Simultaneously, he supports Zionism as affirmative action for Jews] He also sides with Catherine MacKinnon that one can rape with words only. Do a Google on him and you may find more stuff about that.

    BUT my analogy does not rest on his being anti-feminist but on the similar rationales both he and Aradhana use to adopt pro-Fundamentalist, pro-patriarchal positions. They both preen and strut like they’re superhuman, immune to what everyone else has to cope with.

    VI] ravi posted: “Finally, the claim has to be differentiated from its use. The
    claim that I am not X and therefore should not be construed as a Y can remain valid even if it turns out that one application of the claim is countered by other data that demonstrates the person to be indeed a Y.”

    In abstract logic, that is correct. But I have great familiarity with the anti-porn movement, and cynicism about them is entirely warranted.

67. bitchlab
    February 1st, 2006| 10:36 am

    Hi ravi,

    sorry if my earlier response sounded snippy. too much going on but if i don’t answer, then i never seem to find time.

    you wrote: “I was primarily responding to Ranz’s criticism of Aradhana’s posts, in particular some details: such as his idea that being Hindu-born does not matter in the face of the dominance of Puritanism in the USA. etc.” (ravi)

    I think people are reducing puritanism to Christian and fundies in particular. that seems strange to me. don’t know how to put my finger on it, but i think it’s quite possible to adhere to puritanical attitudes toward sex no matter what your religion.

    In this sense, we might talk about “civil religion” to which USers more or less subscribe. but to do so, i’d probably have to spend hours writing about this. for now, let’s put it this way: the US version of Individualism emanantes from a Judao-Christian heritage. You don’t have to be a member of a religios group to subscribe to the dominant strands of individualism in this country.

    this individualism is appropriated, reappropriated, circulated, upheld, and sustained by myraid practices and institutions. For instance, the way we think about property and how we exchange, encourage individualism.

    Individualism, once grounded in and deeply tied to the rise of Protestantism, then, has become secularized — part of our civil religion.

    but the above is practically a freakin’ book!

    ————————————————–

    ravi writes: “male sexuality has often, though not always, strong negative impact on the lives of women. Here I am not talking about rape fantasies, but about rape. Not being a libertarian, and almost being a utilitarian, I have no problems with careful provisional regulation of individuals by society for the common good (and individual good of others).”

    What does rape have to do with male sexuality?

    What does porn have to do with rape?

    what would one regulate in order to impede rape?

    And there I’ll have to end and get back to you later. But you might want to put those questions to Biting Beave and Twisty at I Blame the Patriarchy. They work from theories that elaborate on your perspective and may be able to privde the explanatory framework and data that would answer these questions to your satisfaction.

    I dunno. Given that I’ve experienced abuse at the hands of a lesbian lover as a teen, I think it’s a lot more complicated than reduction to male v. female.

68. Web/Lint » Blog Archive » Men are bad right?
    March 12th, 2006| 4:52 pm

    [...] Dworkin: sex positive feminist [...]

69. Anthony Kennerson
    May 10th, 2006| 2:43 pm

    Not to revive a dead dog, but there is this one loose end that I have to close out in this debate.

    First, a quote from me in the thread:

    [From me]And woe to those of us who actually beleive that our sexual needs are such that we can choose multiple lovers or use other means for sexual fulfillment other than a single penis or your own fingers…can’t we just settle down and setltle for what God (or Goddess Andrea) inended for women?? Of course, those women who just can’t control their base sexual desires or “save” them for that special single man to live off of financially…ahhh, I mean, that special person to marry and have children with exclusively..will just have to be reeducated after the revolution to avoid such “male-identified”, “patriarchial”, unwomynlike desires which no REAL feminist/socialist would ever support.[/Anthony]

    I’ve emphasized the portion of that paragraph to refer to this response by kja:

    [from me]Of course, those women who just can’t control their base sexual desires or “save” them for that special single man to live off of financially…ahhh, I mean, that special person to marry and have children with exclusively…[/Anthony]

    [kja's response]
    Okay, that is just misogynist.

    Look, dude, have your orgies if you want. Pretend the pornography industry is “personal” if you want. Invoke Godwin’s Law with your high-flown rhetoric. Whatever.

    But when you smear monogamous women as mere gold-diggers, who want only to siphon men’s money, one does wonder how that combines with your claim to feminism. Are all women mercenary whores and some just more honest about it? Is that what we’re getting at here?[/kja]

    Ahhh, ma’am….you did notice the sarcastic tone of that entire original paragraph, did you??? I wasn’t trying to portray anything like what you assumed; nor do I EVER assume — now or ever — that women who marry for money are merely “golddiggers”, or that monogamy is innately evil. Most women do indeed marry for financial security just as much as they marry for love; that is part of life and I have no issue with that at all. And monogamy is as legitimate a choice in my book as any other; part of being a sex radical is the acceptance of ALL freely chosen options, including monogamy.

    My point was that most of your favored antiporn “radical feminists” do indeed condemn those women who CHOOSE to engage in alternative sexual arrangements as traitors to their gender or tools of “patriarchy”, while promoting coerced and enforced monogamy as the exclusive ideal for regulating sex for men and women. (The main difference is that some of the more extreme radfems tend to emphasize lesbian monogamy as the ideal rather than the hetero monogamy prefered by more mainstream conservatives, but that is a small difference in the overall system.)

    Before you are so quick to drop the “misogynist” card on me, kya, please at least have the decency to actually read my remarks in context before you fire your guns.

    Sorry, Miz B, for not clarifying that before now..I only noticed it today, and feel the need to clear the record.

    C’est finis…

    Anthony

70. bitchlab
    May 10th, 2006| 3:01 pm

    no worries Anthony. You should take the time to respond if it’ll clear things up. the Internets will be archived for ever with Googlezon around. :)

71. milofreeman
    May 15th, 2006| 10:29 am

    Hmmm. This all sounds suspiciously familiar *winks at Ms. Bitch* I wonder where I might have seen such flaming before?

    Wow. I’m being smarmy again. Forgive me, Ms. Bitch, for I have sinned.

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5. [...] Nina Hartley, a porn star I used to see on TV every night in a commercial advertising a St. Louis adult video store, and who identifies as a sex-positive feminist, is sick and tired of being judged by feminists who don’t fuck for a living. She intimates in a recent comment at Bitch | Lab that anyone who isn’t a sex-positive feminist, “hate[s] porn and sex work” and “be they from the right or the ‘left,’ are projecting onto me and my colleagues their own “ick” factor about porn and sex.” [...]

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6. [...] The post’s title refers to how I have always viewed the term “sex positive feminist” with regards to myself–that my pro-sex views are part of my feminist worldview and that I see sex positivity as an important part of the feminist movement. The reason I bring this up is because my post and especially BitchLab’s post the other day on sex positivity is creating quite the ruckus, and I was informed, to my surprise, that most people assume straightaway that the term “sex positive feminist” implies the antonymn “sex negative feminist”–the sort of prudery slur that I as least think BitchLab was coming out against. Well, I’m not speaking for her or anyone else, but I hope I can reassure everyone I don’t think that–I don’t think anti-porn feminists hate sex or hate men, I don’t think Andrea Dworkin hated sex, and I’m definitely not a simply Pollyanna about sexual politics. In fact, the Pollyanna-ish aspect of a lot of sex positive feminist writing that I’ve read irritates the ever-living shit out of me, which is one reason I feel compelled to make sex positivity a central part of my feminist writing–to articulate a non-Pollyanna-ish view of sexual politics while still believing that sexual liberation is an important facet of feminist politics. [...]

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7. [...] This piece by Bitch Lab has been going around for a while, and has generated quite a few responses (see Amanda here and here, F-Words here). Everything I would say has already been said. I identify as a sex-positive feminist, and I think it’s completely possible to be sex-positive and simultaneously able to criticize the commodification of sex in our culture, the misogyny of the sex industry, and the problems with pornography. It’s also possible to be a sex-positive feminist and have your life involve things other than sex. Which is basically what Bitch Lab says. [...]

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