Why We Reproduce Pictures from Pornography
Posted by NPNAdmin at 7/13/2007 6:56 AM 
Categories: Feminist Perspective, Capital Video Corporation, Impact of Porn, Debate on the Issues, Porn Examples--Judge for Yourself
Categories: Feminist Perspective, Capital Video Corporation, Impact of Porn, Debate on the Issues, Porn Examples--Judge for Yourself
Renegade Evolution and others who defend pornography have said it's improper for anti-porn activists to hold up actual examples of porn to public view. Unless we get permission from the subjects to do this, we are exploiting them.
In a sense this is true, and unfortunate. It's the case anytime one holds up another's work for critical examination, but sometimes there's no other way to make a point but to show a picture. Describing scenes of torture and misery with words is one thing. Pictures are more compelling, less mediated. It was the photographs from Abu Ghraib that made it such a scandal.
Pictures are important part of how porn works. Countless images from porn show abusers what to do and help them believe abuse is normal. Pornographic pictures are also used to season victims--especially children. We want people to see the raw truth and judge for themselves.
Intentions are important. Our purpose is not to make a commercial profit, or stimulate ourselves with pictures of others in pain. We are trying to get people to feel compassion for their fellow humans in the pictures and stop feeding the sex industry with money.
See also:
Gail Dines Presents: Pornography and Pop Culture (explicit)
...We have seen our opposition claim that we should go easy on porn because it's a form of "art", that it represents the empowerment of women, or that today's porn is no more harmful than paintings or century-old erotica pictures. We feel the best counter to these arguments is to show people what today's porn actually is...
17min:13sec - Images are different from text
"When you look at print, and you see something, you can think to yourself, 'I agree or disagree.' You can put it down and come back. You engage with it. However, the problem with image is that we have no such immunization to the seduction of eloquence of the image. You look at that [magazine cover of buff man and woman] and you don't engage with it. You immediately think, 'Oh my God I'm such a fat pig. Look at me compared to her. What's wrong with me?' My students do this all the time... [T]hat's the role of images...to construct your identity in relation to what is normalized.
"...[T]he bizarre thing about media is it makes normal the abnormal, and makes abnormal the normal."
Video Presentation: A Content Analysis of 50 of Today's Top Selling Porn Films (explicit language)
A number of porn defenders claim that anti-porn activists harp on unusual, violent, women-hating examples of porn, and unfairly downplay the existence of 'artistic' porn on sites like Suicide Girls. anthonyjk_6319 believes that porn sites like "Gag on My Cock" and "Anal Suffering" are the "exception", and that the "overwhelming majority of porn (something like 99.8%) deals only in consenting nonviolent sex acts."
To clear up confusion about what porn is generally about, academic researchers Robert Wosnitzer, Ana Bridges, and Erica Scharrer, together with coders like Michelle Chang, analyzed 50 recent top selling porn films selected from lists compiled by Adult Video News, the leading trade journal of the porn industry.
Free Book Download: Diana Russell's Against Pornography, The Evidence of Harm (explicit)
Dr. Russell is Professor Emerita of Sociology at Mills College, Oakland, California. She has been active in the women's liberation movement since 1969, and is author or editor of 17 books. She obtained a Postgraduate Diploma (with Distinction) from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1961, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1970.
Against Pornography is unusual in that it goes beyond abstract discussions of pornography to present the raw material, so readers can judge for themselves. Dr. Russell reprints and analyzes over 100 cartoons and pictures from publications like Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler and Cheri. She writes,
I have found that showing pornography is an effective and rapid consciousness-raiser about misogyny and male views of women. It helps to enhance women's understanding of many males' dangerous notions of what it is to be a man. It often also succeeds in arousing women viewers' anger (and some men's) at the contempt and hatred of women they see in the pictures and captions. [File 1, p.16]Capital Video's Magazine Rack: Bondage, Racism and More
Magazine: World of Black Bondage
Article: ONCE A Slave...
"Because this babe has a submissive personality and a heart-shaped behind, she makes the perfect slave. Be that as it may, she got the notion into her pretty head that she wanted to play dom.Photo Caption: "The look in her eyes tells us that she would like this bondage session to end pretty soon. Forget it, girl!"
"Well, her man quickly disabused her of the idea that she could dominate him. He got rough, took away her leather paddle, threw her onto the bed and tied her into a series of strict positions."
Photo Caption: "Her Master has told her, 'Don't you dare move.' She's finding that immobility is in itself a form of torture.'"
Photo Caption: "Because her body is beginning to ache, she writhes on the carpet. It makes watching her even more arousing."
Photo Caption: "Tied to the post, Tracy takes a fearful whipping.
Now on Sale at Amazing.net: Barely Legal: School Girls #3 (explicit)
Description: "These sweet and oh-so-studious school girls can't wait to have their perky titties peaky titties and most holes corrupted!"
Amazing.net Profile of Nikki Dial (explicit)
"...Born on October 5, 1974, Nikki has that 'barely legal' look which is so adored by today's porn aficionados, making her the perfect candidate for More Dirty Debutantes #23, where she gets herself off in a heated frenzy..."
Exposure to Pornography as a Cause of Child Sexual Victimization
The incest started at the age of eight. I did not understand any of it and did not feel that it was right. My dad would try to convince me that it was ok. He would find magazines, articles or pictures that would show fathers and daughters or mothers, brothers and sisters having sexual intercourse. (Mostly fathers and daughters.) He would say that if it was published in magazines that it had to be all right because magazines could not publish lies... He would say, “See it’s okay to do because it’s published in magazines...”
Testimony in Minneapolis: Ice cream man uses porn magazine to interest children in sex
...Another way that we see pornography being used in the commission of crimes is showing them to kids. I remember an interesting case in which an ice cream man, a Good Humor man, always kept an open magazine by him as he drove along, and the kids would look at it. And he would use that as some kind of manipulative technique to involve the people into talking about sex or getting interested in sex, as a comment: have you ever seen anything like this before, or have you ever done anything like this previously...
Hustling the Left
As Craft demonstrates in the numerous Hustler cartoons she reproduces on her site, the magazine mocks child abuse (often by depicting the child as sexually precocious and seducing the adult), and promotes racism and violence against women. Hustler invites readers to identify with Nazis, wife-beaters, incestuous fathers and kidnappers of children (the famous "Chester the Molester" cartoons). The Left would show no mercy to any other corporation that made money by trafficking in racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic images. Why does the porn industry get a free pass?
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