On Tue, 6 Mar 2001, Neil Faulkner wrote:
From: Iain Coleman ijc@bas.ac.uk
I'd strongly recommend you check out the following articles by Feminists Against Censorship:
http://www.libertarian.org/LA/censcrim.html
And very good reading they are too, with plenty of ammunition to deploy against the moralists. Yet I can't help feeling that these three articles betray biases of their own, by marginalising the existence of genuinely nasty stuff.
Oh, they're nakedly partisan. I was referencing them as a fairly quick way of indicating some of the problems with 'anti-porn' research, not as the last word on the subject. While I broadly agree with the thrust of the above articles, I certainly wouldn't sign myself up to every sentence.
A statement like 'In contrast, it should be noted that the
"kill the bitch" syndrome is never present in pornography' (in the first source cited above) is flat out *wrong*. I've *seen* a short movie called "Beat the Bitch" (shown on a TV documentary years ago) in which a tied-up naked women is subjected to (unconvincing) pummelling from a naked man.
I think that _any_ statement of the form "X is never present in pornography" is guaranteed to be wrong. There is absolutely nothing you or I or anyone on this list can think of that isn't _somebody's_ number one fantasy.
That said, though, I do think "kill the bitch" fantasies are at least extremely rare in porn. There's probably more penguin porn out there.
As for 'Even child porn, that favourite bogeyman of police and campaigners, is so rare that many porn researchers as well as porn aficionados say they never saw any child porn even in the 1960s and early 1970s in America, before any anti-child porn laws existed there.' - that is just shoddy argument at its worst. "Is so rare" (ie now) hardly relates to the state of affairs nearly 30 years ago. That's like saying video piracy is a non-issue because nobody had a VCR in 1970.
I must say, I do find Carol's attitude to child porn questionable at best.
What disturbs me most about pornography is not so much the content but the mechanics of its production. If consenting adults want to be filmed or photographed, as an act of self-celebration or simply for the money, fine. But how many are genuinely consenting? I've heard it alleged that women in particular are coerced or blackmailed into making porn (there is the famous anecdote of Linda Lovelace being forced to 'perform' with a gun pointed at her head - true story or urban legend?).
I gather that's a UL, though I admit I'd struggle to come up with a citation for you on the spot.
If so, then there is genuine
reason for concern, IMO. But both pro and anti factions of the porn debate operate from their own assumptions. Andrea Dworkin (maligned in the third of the sources cited above) has written from direct first-hand experience of the production of pornography, an irritating fact glossed over by the anti-censorship lobby.
The following statements are both true:
1) Some people in the porn industry are victimised and abused
2) Some people in the porn industry are happily consenting adults.
The question is, what is to be done about abusive and exploitative workplace practices? Censoring the product isn't a particularly effective approach. What does seem to be happening at the moment is that the workers are increasingly seizing the means of production.
Similarly, there have been recent noises in the media about illegal immigrant women ending up in the sex trade. Genuine concern, scaremongering deterrent, or palliative cloak for xenophobic rhetoric?
Probably a bit of all three.
Iain