In “Failure to Protect”, the Summer 2007 issue of Amnesty International magazine reports that American Indian and Alaska Native women are 2.5 times more likely to suffer a rape or sexual assault than the general US female population. Moreover, “at least 86 percent of the men who commit sexual violence against Native Americans and Alaska […]
Continue reading Non-Indian Men Raping American Indian Women in Large Numbers
We have turned off the standard commenting mechanism for this blog. Going forward, please email your comments to in**@***************on.org. Please indicate if your comments should be kept private. Why did we do this? Under our host’s standard blog system, the primary method of accountability is the IP address. Those who heckled, harassed, or otherwise abused […]
Continue reading NoPornNorthampton Commenting System Changed
Some of our opponents try to deter us by claiming that porn is not important. Often they go on to suggest that we must be motivated by some hidden agenda, personal defect or boundary issues: Silkheat: “I am finding myself wondering why you focus on this issue when there are so many more important things […]
Continue reading Survey: “Suicide attempts by teens linked with assault” (explicit language)
In 1988, Bruce Freeland, planning director of Bellevue, WA, surveyed the experience of other cities with adult enterprises. He finds that increased crime (e.g. rape, prostitution, drugs, robbery) and nuisances (e.g. noise, litter) often attend these businesses. Here are excerpts from his report: …adult entertainment regulations must seek to mitigate the secondary impacts of the […]
Stratfor advises governments, businesses, organizations and individuals about geopolitics, business trends, and how to cope with them. One of their specialities is evaluating the impact of activists on public debates. Stratfor’s May 31 report on “Sustainable Consumption: The Push for Using Less” (may require a paid subscription) focuses on energy and the environment, but suggests […]
Continue reading Activist Strategies: The Power of Positive Framing
Being a liberal city is no guarantee that porn shops will be free of secondary effects, such as crime and drug use. This May 21 article in BeyondChron, “San Francisco’s Alternative Online Daily”, calls the replacement of a porn shop with an art gallery a “breakthrough” for the Tenderloin district: When an art gallery moves […]
Continue reading San Francisco: Loss of Porn Shop Brings Hope to Tenderloin District
A few years back, Omni Hotels removed porn from its entertainment system. The results, reports James Harder, were bags of supportive mail and an increase in movie-rental profits… Hotels were among the first publicly held companies to profit from porn, networking their rooms to provide a flow of X-rated movies. It’s a route almost all […]
We have quoted before from Robert Jensen’s essay, “A cruel edge”, published as “Cruel to be hard: Men and pornography,” in Sexual Assault Report, January/February 2004. We’ll revisit this article in a moment to explore what today’s porn is actually like. But first, let’s review some of the comments about porn made recently at Political […]
Continue reading What Porn Is: Selections from Mainstream Porn (explicit language)
Candid comments from people who work in porn routinely skewer attempts by academics and porn defenders to ennoble the porn industry.“Billy Watson” is the blogmaster at I Shoot Porn (explicit). In his June 1 post, “I Be Google’n”, he laughs at the notion that porn actresses are not prostitutes. He also gives ranges for what […]
Catharine MacKinnon, Elizabeth A. Long professor of law at the University of Michigan, observes that torture and abuse typically get a free pass when they’re framed as commercial entertainment. Some excerpts from “X underrated”, published in The Times Higher Education Supplement (May 20, 2005): A…magical framing move occurred in connection with the scandal surrounding Abu […]
Continue reading MacKinnon: Framing Torture as Porn Magically Makes It Acceptable