Today’s Daily Hampshire Gazette publishes a letter from Jendi Reiter. Jendi is a co-founder of NoPornNorthampton. One can characterize prostitution and promiscuity as ‘personal choices’, but the problem of containing serious diseases remains. The fact that third parties, such as the spouses of men who frequent prostitutes, are affected by these diseases must also be […]
Continue reading Letter to the Gazette: “Addressing prostitution, promiscuity in war on AIDS”
Massachusetts legislators heard testimony about peoples’ encounters with porn at a hearing on March 16, 1992. This account appears in In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (p.412-413). Testimony of Jean M. Moran My name is Jean Moran. I’m currently a graduate student in nuclear engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During my […]
Continue reading Testimony in Massachusetts: Porn and a Hostile Living Environment at M.I.T.
Gail Dines is Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Wheelock College in Boston. For 20 years she has lectured across the country against pornography and sexist portrayals of women. A Google video (1 hr 2 min) is now available of the lecture she gave to a rapt audience at the Pornography and Pop Culture […]
Continue reading Gail Dines Presents: Pornography and Pop Culture (explicit)
Gender studies professor Hugo Schwyzer digs deep to reveal the subtle and lasting harm of porn to the viewer. Here he responds to Ethan of Crucial Minutiae. Ethan argues that porn is a harmless outlet for men who, craving variety, would otherwise “bug their girlfriends/wives for more sex” or “seek it elsewhere from strangers, prostitutes, […]
Massachusetts legislators heard testimony about peoples’ encounters with porn at a hearing on March 16, 1992. This account appears in In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (p.408-411). Testimony of Ann Russo My name is Ann Russo, and I’ve been teaching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for the last five years. I teach […]
Continue reading Testimony in Massachusetts: Porn and a Hostile Learning Environment at M.I.T.
Last week, we pointed out that the United Kingdom represents a large counter-example to the theory that the spread of Internet porn is reducing incidences of rape. During 2000-2005, rates of Internet penetration and rates of reported rape both soared at the same time. We will now further explore why it’s risky and irresponsible to […]
Advocates for ‘sex work’ say it is or should be about free choice and the empowerment of women. They claim that if prostitutes have troubled lives, this stems from the fact that many (unenlightened) people find prostitution offensive and the government doesn’t care enough about prostitutes’ working conditions, rather than anything inherent in exchanging sex […]
Even the ACLU opposes child pornography, at least when real children are depicted. Nevertheless, some people appear to remain irresistibly attracted to the challenge of arguing that possession of child porn should be legal. Cortelyou Kenney graduated summa cum laude with High Honors in Comparative Literature from Dartmouth College in 2005. Her thesis on political […]
[Updated on 4/15/07 and 6/17/07] Law professor Anthony D’Amato, and more recently Todd Kendall (PDF) of Clemson University, have attempted to correlate increased Internet penetration with decreasing rates of rape. Since the Internet is a major vector for porn, they suggest that more porn in the home means fewer people will rape. In short, they […]
Escalating hostility has led prominent bloggers to consider voluntary codes of civility. When unrestrained vitriol and personal attacks poison debates, how free is speech? The New York Times considers the issues in “A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs”: Chief among the recommendations is that bloggers consider banning anonymous comments left by […]
Continue reading Firestorm Rages Over Issue of Civility in the Blogosphere