In 2004, Salon reviewed Jenna Jameson’s How to Make Love Like a Porn Star. Jameson’s advice to newbies caught our attention: “In a worst-case scenario, a gonzo director will take a girl to a hotel room and have their friends shoot a cheap scene in which she is humiliated in every orifice possible. She walks […]
Continue reading Jenna Jameson’s Cautions to Would-Be Porn Stars
We agree that healthy erotica exists and that “feminist pornography” that empowers women might be possible to create. However, the reality remains that the substantial majority of porn sold in America is misogynistic and degrading to women. In addition, just because porn is produced by a woman is no guarantee that it will respect women. […]
Continue reading Now on Sale at Capital Video: Watch Women Eat Their Own Poop (explicit)
Publicity campaigns and pressure on city officials helped Oklahoma City recover from a proliferation of adult enterprises in the 1980s. Jon Stephen Gustin, Retired Sergeant, Oklahoma City Police Department, tells the story in QUALITY OF LIFE: A Look At Successful Abatement of Adult Oriented Business Nuisances in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (1984-1989) (PDF). Some excerpts: Traditionally […]
Pornography and Pop Culture: Reframing Theory, Re-thinking Activism, a three-day conference, opens today at Wheelock College in Boston. This conference will: feature recent feminist theory and research on pornography, prostitution and pop culture, and provide space for collaborative discussion on how we can prepare the ground for building a broad-based, energized and vibrant feminist movement […]
Continue reading Pornography and Pop Culture: Boston Conference Starts Today
On March 19 the State of Connecticut filed an amicus curiae brief (PDF) to support adult-use zoning in Berlin, CT. A chain of adult shops called VIP is trying to open a new store in Berlin, less than 250 feet from a residential area. The brief argues that it is constitutional to apply zoning regulations […]
From the “Brief of the Neighborhood Pornography Task Force, Amicus Curiae, in Support of Appellant Hudnut v. American Booksellers Association, Inc.”, published in In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (p.321-324): The neighborhoods bordering on East Lake Street in South Minneapolis have been fighting the encroachment of pornography into their community since Ferris Alexander […]
Some of our opponents claim that the stigma that surrounds porn is just a result of society’s hang-ups about sex, rather than reflecting people’s aversion to the sexism, racism, exploitation, abuse, disease, crime and blight that are associated with porn and adult enterprises… I don’t support the sort of zoning ordinance you advocate. I think […]
Continue reading Lessons from the Stigma of Segregation Apply to the Stigma of Porn
Indianapolis city officials heard testimony about peoples’ encounters with porn at a hearing of the Indianapolis City-County Council Adminstration Committee on April 14, 1984. This account appears in In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (p.283-285). Testimony of Deborah Daniels, Indianapolis Prosecutors’ Office I’d like to read you some of the titles of the […]
Indianapolis city officials heard testimony about peoples’ encounters with porn at a hearing of the Indianapolis City-County Council Adminstration Committee on April 14, 1984. This account appears in In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (p.281-282). Testimony of T. V. , a counselor in Indianapolis In ten years of counseling with men and women, […]
Continue reading Testimony in Indianapolis: Porn Teaches, Arouses Violent Behavior in Abuse Cases
Dr. Chyng Feng Sun teaches media studies at New York University. Dr. Sun received her Ph.D. in communication at U Mass-Amherst, specializing in media literacy. In this article for CounterPunch, she argues that the misogyny of porn deserves much criticism, but that government repression of “obscenity” is not the answer… It is typical that liberal-minded […]