Sex In The Public Square - activism - Comments

Another irony?

Elizabeth — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:40:52 -0800

The New York Times reported this morning that gay rights activists in Utah are planning a 5-bill strategy toward equal rights in that state. From the article:

But leaders of the rights group here, Equality Utah, said statements made by Mormon leaders in defense of their actions in California — that the church was not antigay and had no problem with legal protections for gay men and lesbians already on the books in California — were going to be taken as an endorsement to expand legal rights that gay and lesbian couples have never remotely had in Utah, where the church is based.

“We are taking the L.D.S. Church at its word,” said Stephanie Pappas, Equality Utah’s chairwoman.

The article reports that the bills will not be aimed at overturning Utah's constitutional amendment banning same sex marriage, but that they will be aimed at eliminating language that prohibits domestic partnerships and will be aimed at creating legal protections in health care, housing and employment.

Pleasure and Danger

Elizabeth — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 03:18:47 -0700

Iamcuriousblue wrote:

I will note, however, that there really was a feminist counter-narrative to it at the time it came out, its just that that kind of feminist and sex-poz critique was a great deal less mainstream than it is now. That kind of critique was coming from groups like SAMOIS, marginal sex magazines like Spectator, and from a few dissident feminists who were less than pleased with the whole cultural feminist/anti-sex turn in feminist ideology starting in the late 70s.

IACB, it is so important to be reminded of that. Thank you. There was also the 1982 Scholar and Feminist IX Conference, "Towards a Politics of Sexuality" (later just called the Barnard Conference) that produced the essays collected by Carole Vance in the amazing anthology Pleasure and Danger. The anthology contains essays by feminists like Dorothy Allison, Gayle Rubin, Cherrie Moraga, Joan Nestle, and Amber Hollibaugh and from many others.

Given the prolific writing by feminist sex work and sexual expression advocates I wonder if there is a way to pull the best of that writing together into a new anthology! We do so much publishing online - and consider that the Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy is now in its 8th edition - I wonder if we need to be pushing something into print. This might be a good moment for such a thing.

I was on a panel on Sex Work and Left Politics with Amber Hollibaugh, Audacia Ray, and Ignacio Rivera (moderated by Antonia Levy) at last April's Left Forum. Amber and Antonia, having been regulars at the Left Forum - were nervous about the reception we would get. In fact just about everybody who attended, and the room was full, was supportive of our message that sex worker rights were human rights. Is there space right now among folks on the Left to do some coalition building with libertarian-types and advance an agenda that is truly supportive of freedom for sexual expression? If so, we should be using all media at our disposal, including the 'old' ones, perhaps, to provide fuel.

Thanks for the good word,

Iamcuriousblue — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 21:25:01 -0700

Thanks for the good word, Elizabeth. I plan on concentrating my blogging activity more on posting on the Pro-Porn Activism blog, as well as my own blog , too (where I still post occasionally for topics that don't quite fit on BPPA). I'm scaling way back on my activity among the commentariat at feminst blogs (even sex-positive ones), becuase I just don't think its very productive and leads to a whole lot of strife and petty personal stuff that's a huge drain.

And you're right to point out this Virginia obsecenity prosecution, which is part of a much larger wave of obscenity prosecutions in the US, both federal and local. Its one of the main reasons I blog about this topic, because I don't think the anti-porn movement, including the left/feminist side of it, exists in isolation and I think their claims that they don't want a return to traditional obscenity laws are disingenuous. Its quite clear to me that if a lot of the lies these people are spreading about porn get wide currency, these kind of obscenity prosecutions are a natural outcome.

I have mixed feelings about organized gatherings to screenings of The Price of Pleasure. I think it is a good idea to be present to calmly and respectfully call the agenda of this film into question, but at the same time, I know how much anti-porn folks like to bait their oponents with really ugly personal attacks. Toward men, "this is what you jack off too and this is what it says about you, you scum" kind of rhetorc. Toward women, "you're no feminist and you're betraying women". One has to be prepared for that kind of stuff and have the presence of mind not to respond in kind, which is easier said than done. The fact that these kinds of discussions would be in-person rather than over the blogosphere would certainly have an inherently civilizing effect on discourse to some degree, but if the Feminist Sex Wars of the 80s are any guide, things can get pretty bad , even in real-world meetings.

I remember "Not a Love Story"

Iamcuriousblue — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 18:27:22 -0700

Yes, I totally remember Not a Love Story, which got an awful lot of press when it came out, about 1981-1982, and was touted by many as the definitive "progressive" line on porn. At the time it came out, I didn't get a chance to actually see it other than the movie trailer, but I remember it as having some word of mouth among my female friends, who would talk incredulously about the things they learned about porn-using men (who were, it was presumed, were a subculture of sexually deviant men, rather than typical guys they knew). This was right around the time I started viewing hardcore porn myself, so it was a rather strange message.

I will note, however, that there really was a feminist counter-narrative to it at the time it came out, its just that that kind of feminist and sex-poz critique was a great deal less mainstream than it is now. That kind of critique was coming from groups like SAMOIS, marginal sex magazines like Spectator, and from a few dissident feminists who were less than pleased with the whole cultural feminist/anti-sex turn in feminist ideology starting in the late 70s. In fact, I remember reading a critique of NaLS in Spectator around that time and it was one of the things that clued me into the fact that there were a lot of half-truths and downright lies espoused by this documentary and the emerging feminist anti-porn movement.

Not a Love Story made a big impression, but was soon buried by the larger Feminist Sex Wars that emerged over the next few years. NaLS has similar self-induced distribution problems to The Price of Pleasure – its producer, The National Film Board of Canada, only made video copies available at expensive academic pricing, a situation that remains true to this day, so unless you make a special field trip to the media center of an academic library or had it pushed on you in a women's studies class, you're unlikely to ever have seen it. (Not exactly the best way to get your point of view out there into the marketplace of ideas, but that's academic radicalism for you.)

However, I got a chance to see it when I was living in Seattle in the mid-90s – the Seattle Public Library happens to have a VHS copy among its circulating videos, so I was finally able to see what all of the fuss was about. One of the first things I was struck by was just how dated the rhetoric in NaLS was. Its a work that wears its cultural feminist perspective on its sleeve, and as a result would totally not work as propaganda today (it probably would have fallen flat any time after about the mid-80s, actually), and in places almost comes across like a parody of a feminist documentary. Its an artifact of late 70s/early 80s radical feminism, which was dominated by some very essentialist views about male and female sexuality and a purist orientation toward "womyn's culture" rather than corrupt male-dominated pop culture. Its a fascinating portrait of radical feminism at the time, and its very interesting to compare and contrast it to radical feminism today. Many things about radical feminism remain the same today, of course, but things like the idea of an innately gentle women/lesbian sexuality or the tendency toward separatism and celebration of rather traditional modes of "women's culture" have gone by the wayside in many cases, Womensspace being the notable exception. (The biggest change in radfem theory that I've noticed is that they've gone 180 degrees from a blatantly essentialist view of gender to beating everybody over the head with more-social-constructionist-than-thou rhetoric.)

The movie is also way too blunt in its rhetorical style, to put it mildly, even having one of its subjects literally stand on a soapbox in Times Square to denounce the evils of pornography. Another thing that stands out is the fact that the main subject of the film, Lindalee Tracy (who is portrayed as making a journey of conversion from sex worker to feminist), later wrote in her autobiography she felt very manipulated by the filmmakers and that NaLS was not an accurate depiction of her views on the subject. She had her own criticisms of hardcore pornography, but was far from anti-sex work. If this pattern of putting words in sex workers' mouths sounds more than a little familiar, it should, because performers as diverse as Linda Lovelace, Belladonna, and Sasha Grey have said much the same thing regarding their experiences with anti-porn feminists or mainstream media.

Bonnie Sherr Klein (who is Naomi Klein's mother, BTW), the director and main force behind NaLS, gives her perspective here and its pretty telling. To be blunt about it, a lot of her statements are pure BS, claiming that positive versus negative reviews were entirely split on gender lines, with men hating and women supporting it. (Actually, many women were among its most vocal critics.) She also implies that third party "radical feminists" gave her flack for putting words in Lindalee Tracy's mouth, when in fact Lindalee Tracy herself stated this in her autobiography.

There are some clips from Not a Love Story from the NFBC website here, here, and here, and very good critique of it here over at the Lucrezia Magazine site.

Speaking of old anti-porn docs, I remember another one, Rate It X, that came out about 5 years after NaLS, which got some showing on PBS at the time. It also managed to garner these clips and discussion on Siskel and Ebert. I think both movies kind of serve as a template for TPoP. NaLS in the sense of showing (often cherry-picked) porn images in order to "expose" porn, and RIX in its emphasis on pointed and confrontational interviews with porn industry people and fans, and with the fact that RIX also similarly veils (rather thinly) its real agenda around the pretense of fostering dialogue.

Del Martin, interviewed

Elizabeth — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 16:14:00 -0700

From Viviane at The Sex Carnival I learned about this interview Terry Gross of Fresh Air did with Del Martin

Click the interview link above to access a recording.

Remember "Not a Love Story"?

Chris — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:45:00 -0700

In the eighties and nineties, the big anti-porn agitprop film was Bonnie Klein's Not a Love Story. It was shown at film festivals, art houses, and universities, and was essential in defining the narrative about pornography. One very good critique written at the time summarizes the film:

NOT A LOVE STORY focuses on ex-stripper Linda Lee Tracey, Early in the film, we see Tracey performing her "Red Riding Hood" act, which she claims is not to be taken seriously. While Tracey has some reservations about stripping, she does not yet see pornography as harmful. NOT A LOVE STORY is essentially a description of Tracey's conversion. With Tracey and Klein, we journey through the world of pornography in all its forms: porn shops, sex booths, live sex shows, hard-core" magazines, photographs of women in bondage. We hear directly from the workers in the porn industry; social scientists such as Edward Donnerstein who discusses the connection between violent pornography and violence against women; an owner of a chain of pornographic magazines who describes the proliferation of hard-core pornography as a response to the women's movement; and U.S. and Canadian feminists who analyze the phenomenon of pornography.

Not a Love Story was one of the great media successes of the anti-porn movement, and it was years before an effective counter-narrative was established within feminism. I'm sure that the producers would love to reproduce that success. That's why it's important to start picking it apart now. We'll never convince Dines or Jensen, but there's a lot of people out there with little direct experience of porn who could easily be convinced either way, and I don't blame them. Frankly, if films like this were my main experience with porn, there's no way that I'd want to get anywhere near the stuff.

OK, here it

Iamcuriousblue — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 21:17:05 -0700

OK, here it is:

http://bppa.blogspot.com/2008/08/more-movies-about-porn.html

So timely!

Elizabeth — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 18:50:58 -0700

Chris, I'm so glad you posted this. And Iamcuriousblue, I read your post on the Blog for Pro Porn Activism and I'm glad you're out there writing. (I was also glad to see the comments there from Ernest Greene, Renegade Evolution and Anthony Kennerson).

I think this is incredibly timely given the news from Staunton VA about the conviction and continued prosecution of Rick Krial on obscenity charges for selling pornography to adults in his adult video store. There is much to say about that case, but for the moment let me just thank the two of you for putting the issue of "unbiased" analysis of porn out there. Certainly "The Price of Pleasure" is not unbiased, and I'm angered by they way they took clips of Ernest Greene and Joanna Angel out of context to slip into their framework.

Chris, I love your idea of organizing a group to attend the screening and ask questions - insistently yet respectfully - so that the bias is revealed and the discussion in the room can become more balanced.

It is important, when possible, to disrupt the ritualistic solidarity-building potential of these screenings by insisting on a more nuanced and less biased discussion.

9 to 5

Iamcuriousblue — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 17:26:19 -0700

"That’s a film I want to see. That’s a film that needs to be made."

You wished and it was so:

http://9to5-themovie.com/

Also, there are several reviews up about TPoP, and all of them confirm that its anything but "honest and nonjudgemental".

These two things are what I'm blogging about over on the Pro-Porn blog literally right now, so it will be up shortly. I'll post a link when I'm done.

In honor of Del Martin, donations to support rights to marry

Elizabeth — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 20:21:44 -0700

A lovely tribute at Feministe includes this:

According to a statement by Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, “gifts in lieu of flowers can be made to honor Del’s life and commitment and to defeat the California marriage ban through the National Center for Lesbian Rights NO on 8 committee at www.nclrights.org/NoOn8.”

a subtext

CelticWarrior — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:23:01 -0700

In reference to my last post:

The next time I get Bushed, I hope there is some K-Y Jelly at hand...

Gotta have big pictures becaus no one reads anymore

CelticWarrior — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:13:58 -0700

They put their mixed messages up with big pictures because they assume no one reads anymore. I don't have a billboard to post because I can't see them anymore. But I can still have my computer read to me and still remember what I have read. I wonder if any of the ROCKbrains and their ilk ever consdered this:

A recent decision of the Supreme Court leaves to each community the right to decide what is pornography. Speaking for the majority of the Court, Chief Justice Warren Burger admitted that although no link has yet been found between the consumption of pornography and anti-social behavior, any community may assume that such a connection exists if it wants to -- in other words, an outraged community may burn a witch even though, properly speaking, witches do not exist.
The Court's decision has of course alarmed and confused the peddlers of smut, who claim, disingenuously, that guidelines are now lacking. They complain that the elders of Drake, North Dakota, may object to the word "damn" in a novel while the swingers of L.A. may want to read even worse words. Must the publisher, they ask, bring out two editions, one for permissive L.A. with the word "damn" and another for hightoned Drake with the word "darn"? Or settle the matter by publishing only for Drake?
This is a deep problem which I have solved. Wanting in every way to conform with the letter as well as the spirit of the Court's decision, I have carefully eliminated from this book those words that might cause distress to any one. Since books are nothing but words, a book is pornographic if it contains "bad" or "dirty" words. Eliminate those "bad" or "dirty" words and you have made' the work "clean."
In this novel I have replaced the missing bad words with some very good words indeed: the names of the justices who concurred in the Court's majority decision. Burger, Rehnquist, Powell, Whizzer White and Blackmun fill, ,as it were, the breach; their names replace the "bad" or "dirty" words. I have also appropriated the names of Father Morton Hill S. J. and Mr. Edward Keating, two well-known warriors in the battle against smut. I believe that these substitutions are not only socially edifying and redemptive but tend to revitalize a language gone stale and inexact from too much burgering around with meaning.

Gore Vidal, Myron (opening comment to the book)

$pread Magazine Voter Guide

Elizabeth — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 11:21:30 -0700

Just read on Bound, Not Gagged that $pread Magazine has compiled a voter guide for the upcoming presidential elections. It outlines the two major party candidates' positions on issues like health care, immigration, labor rights, reproductive freedom and lots of other important issues.

Get your copy here (PDF ) and check out the $pread Grind The Vote page while you're at it!

Here is a link to a New York

Elizabeth — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 07:51:00 -0700

Here is a link to a New York Times article from a couple years ago that discussed a PONY workshop on income tax filing for sex workers held at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center in Manhattan. The title of the article is a bit of an oversimplification of course:

An Old Profession That's New To Doing Taxes (Cory Kilgannon, NYT, April 5, 2006)

The short answer is: Yes

Elizabeth — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 05:58:17 -0700

sweLL, I'm glad you raise that question because it is one that spotlights a lot of false assumptions about sex workers. And I'm glad you're the one asking it because I know that from you the question comes from genuine curiosity and a desire to know. So thank you!

Much of sex work is legal, and of that some is done "on the books" with formal withholding and W-2 forms and some is done "off the books" without withholding, just like other kinds of work. Some is compensated mostly by tips (rather than wages) which may be reported or not reported (or under- or over-reported) depending on how the establishment works. So among legal sex work you have a range of formal withholding practices that is not unlike the range in, say, the restaurant or entertainment industry more widely.

You also have in the legal sex industry workers who get their employment as "independent contractors" and who are responsible for their own tax reporting. Sex worker advocacy groups have, over the years, put on trainings and workshops for those who want to get the tax paperwork right. There are also accountants and lawyers who are open to working with sex workers to help them file correctly.

For those working in jobs that are criminalized reporting is more difficult, but some of those workers also file, and file using job titles like "independent contractor" or "consultant" or "entertainer".

I'm rushing out right now but when I get back I'll hunt up some links to the kinds of workshops and articles about trainings that I was just mentioning. Or if anybody reading has such things at their fingertips, please post in the comments!