Porn likes to present itself as the embodiment of fun and freedom. For many, the reality is the opposite. David Mura writes in “A Male Grief: Notes on Pornography and Addiction”, from Men Confront Pornography (1990, p.125-126)… The addiction to pornography is not fun. Underneath all the assertions of liberty and “healthy fun” lie the […]
Continue reading Porn Addiction Not Fun; Porn’s Repressive Vision
John Stoltenberg writes about “Pornography and Freedom” in Men Confront Pornography (1990, p.60-71)… The popular concept of sexual freedom in this country has never meant sexual justice. Sexual-freedom advocates have cast the issue only in terms of having sex that is free from suppression and restraint. Practically speaking, that has meant advocacy of sex that […]
An account from Men on Rape (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982), reprinted in Men Confront Pornography (1990, p.43-49)… Regularly beaten by his stepmother and stepbrothers from the age of five, at thirteen [“Chuck”] ran away from home and began a life of drug addictions and crime. At twenty, after two painful years of marriage, […]
Continue reading Porn: One Rapist’s Story (explicit language)
Ellen Willis was a member of the Feminist Anti-Censorship Task Force, a group critical of anti-porn feminists and associated with “sex-positive feminism”. Even so, Willis had this to say about porn: The aggressive proliferation of pornography is…a particularly obnoxious form of sexual backlash. The ubiquitous public display of dehumanized images of the female body is […]
Continue reading FACT Member Ellen Willis Agrees: Porn Represents a Backlash Against Women
The National Domestic Violence Hotline website describes the characteristics of domestic violence and abuse: WHAT IS DOMESTIC VIOLENCE? Domestic violence can be defined as a pattern of behavior in any relationship that is used to gain or maintain power and control over an intimate partner. Abuse is physical, sexual, emotional, economic or psychological actions or […]
Continue reading Abusive Relationships and Porn: The Similarities (explicit language)
Gail Dines is a Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Wheelock College in Boston, and a long-time anti-porn activist. She writes in Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality (1998, p.163-166): I have met hundreds of women and men who have stories to tell about pornography and the devastating impact it has had on […]
Continue reading Academic Defenders of Porn Need to Engage with Reality (explicit language)
For a generation, there has been deep division within the feminist community about how to judge porn. Does it liberate women, or oppress them? Writing in Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality (1998, p.9-35), Ann Russo strives to reconcile dreams of individual liberty with the realities of social and economic inequality. For anti-pornography feminist […]
Continue reading Feminists Confront Feminists Over Pornography
We are pleased to see another anti-porn blog initiated by citizens, this time the residents of Johns Creek, Georgia. Johns Creek is a newly incorporated city near Atlanta. At issue is a retail store called the “Love Shack”. Johns Creek has enacted ordinances regulating Sexually Oriented Businesses (SOBs), but Love Shack owner John Cornetta says […]
Robert Jensen and Gail Dines discuss the weak boundaries between some legal pornography and depictions of pedophilia in “The Content of Mass-Marketed Pornography”, from Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality (1998, p.87-89). A subgenre of pornography sexualizes differences in age. Because of strict laws banning child pornography, actual children are almost never used in […]
Continue reading Some Porn Hard to Distinguish from Training for Pedophiles (explicit language)
One of our more prolific commenters says that raising awareness is overrated, and claims that “there are a lot of things you could be doing that would have a much greater impact than what you’re actually doing”. Another commenter questioned how much impact one blog in one small town can have. Don’t look now, but […]
Continue reading Raynham, MA Selectman: “If Northampton has done something, we will look at it”