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 […]
We are again indebted to Dr. Diana Russell for permission to reprint this selection from her essay, “Politicizing Sexual Violence: A Voice in the Wildnerness”. A version of this essay appears in Feminist Foremothers in Women’s Studies, Psychology, and Mental Health (1995). Dr. Russell argues that mental health practitioners who treat incest victims and survivors […]
Continue reading Incest Victims: Social Action Can Be As Or More Healing Than Individual Therapy
Shelley Lubben, born in 1968, was known as Roxy during her time in porn, 1993-1994. She made about 20 films. She now speaks out against porn addiction, sex industry exploitation and sexual abuse. Her website and other public testimony shed light on the life of a porn actress. Excerpt from Shelley Lubben’s upcoming book The […]
Larry King interviewed Traci Lords on CNN in 2003. Lords was born in 1968 under the name Nora Louise Kuzma. According to Wikipedia, Lords “achieved notoriety for her underage appearances in pornographic films and Penthouse magazine (she was 16 years old in her first film).” LORDS: …I started going by Traci Lords in 1984, and […]
Many adult industry lawyers like Marc Randazza are not content to defend their clients on narrow constitutional grounds. They could say, for example, that yes this material is reprehensible but we must protect it so that more worthy speech will not be threatened. Instead, they apparently want you to believe that porn and the lifestyles […]
Continue reading Certified Sex Therapist Marty Klein Wants You to Believe Porn Is Harmless
NPN’s Jendi Reiter critiques Clay Calvert and Robert D. Richards, “Porn in Their Words: Female Leaders in the Adult Entertainment Industry Address Free Speech, Censorship, Feminism, Culture and the Mainstreaming of Adult Content” (PDF), published last year in the Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment & Technology Law [9 Vand. J. Ent. & Tech. L. 255 (2006)].This article […]
Only Words, a slim volume by University of Michigan law professor Catharine MacKinnon, published in 1993, might be considered the Bible of the radical feminist anti-pornography movement, providing a theoretical and legal framework to complement the more personal evidence presented in Andrea Dworkin‘s impassioned memoirs. MacKinnon’s intelligence and thirst for justice are undeniable, but some […]
Continue reading A Review of Catharine MacKinnon’s Only Words
The journal Nature reports that the long-term mental suffering caused by psychological abuse is similar to that of physical abuse. To us, this further undercuts the notion that porn is just harmless fantasy. Many porn scenarios involve psychological abuse, as we will show below. But first, Nature: The long-term mental anguish caused by psychological torture […]
Continue reading Nature: Psychological attacks rank high on torture list (explicit language)
We are excited to hear that Gloria Steinem, 1956 Smith graduate and feminist legend, will return to campus on May 20 to give the commencement address. Steinem’s early freelance work includes an undercover article for Show magazine on the working conditions of Playboy bunnies. Her stance against porn is clear: If you have two groups […]
Continue reading Anti-Porn Legend Gloria Steinem to Give 2007 Commencement Address at Smith College