Amanda Marcotte reports on the feminist blog Pandagon how activists in Bloomington, IN successfully pressured a local bar to cancel a taping of the amateur-porn phenomenon “Girls Gone Wild”. This video series produced by Joe Francis follows a camera crew to party spots in various cities as they persuade attractive, usually drunk young women to strip […]
Feminist Perspective
On-screen Violence and Porn: Critical Priorities
Gender studies professor Hugo Schwyzer revisits the porn issue on his blog this week with a response to critics who wonder why Christian activists are more concerned about porn than graphic violence in movies: “Porn is just about sex”, folks say; “violence is so much worse.” Surely it’s misplaced puritanism to get so worked up […]
Testimony in Minneapolis: Porn, Child Molestation, Coerced Stripping (explicit language)
Citizens gave testimony about their encounters with porn and those who consume porn to the Minneapolis Government Operations Committee on December 12, 1983. This account appears in In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (p.103-106). Testimony of E. M. I want to tell you how pornography has affected my life, how I am fighting […]
Testimony in Minneapolis: Porn Present at Child Rape (explicit language)
Citizens gave testimony about their encounters with porn and those who consume porn to the Minneapolis Government Operations Committee on December 12, 1983. This account appears in In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (p.101-103). Testimony of Ms. M When I was thirteen, I was camping with the Girl Scouts in Northern Wisconsin. It […]
Jenna Jameson’s Tragic Backstory; Seeking Virgins with Paris Hilton
Jenna Jameson is probably the most famous porn star living today. She speaks here with an Australian newspaper about her childhood in “The porn broker”… She was born Jenna Massoli in Las Vegas in 1974. Her mother, Judy, was a showgirl; her father, Larry, worked in a grocery store, but had served in Vietnam and […]
Behind the Scenes of Deep Throat with Linda Lovelace
Linda Marchiano, known as Linda Lovelace, is the star of perhaps the most famous porn film of all time, Deep Throat (1972). She gave this testimony to the Minneapolis Government Operations Committee on December 12, 1983. It is published in In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (p.60-68). I literally became a prisoner. I […]
Free Book Download: Diana Russell’s Against Pornography: The Evidence of Harm (explicit)
Diana Russell, a longtime activist against pornography, has kindly permitted us to make Against Pornography available for downloading at no charge. Please use the links below.Dr. Russell is Professor Emerita of Sociology at Mills College, Oakland, California. She has been active in the women’s liberation movement since 1969, and is author or editor of 17 […]
Andrea Dworkin: Time for Progressives to Stand with the Victims, Not the Users (explicit language)
There are other values besides free speech and a free market, says Andrea Dworkin in In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (p.34-35). Those on the Left usually acknowledge this, except when it comes to sexual exploitation… He has a constitutional right to express himself, and if his art requires that she be the […]
Hugo Schwyzer: ‘Suicide Girls’, Empowering to Women?
On his blog today, gender studies professor Hugo Schwyzer critiques the feminist credentials of the alt-porn website Suicide Girls and wonders whether porn can ever empower women. Hugo writes: The Suicide Girls site (I won’t link to it, but you can figure it out yourself–it is not “work safe”) is the pioneer “alt-porn” center on the […]
Porn, Slavery and Women: The Parallels
Van F. White was the first person of color ever elected to the city council of Minneapolis. He writes about his evolving views of porn in “Pornography and Pride”, published in Men Confront Pornography (1990, p.290-292)… I’m 59 years old, and I’ve known something about pornography for many years. When I was young, I worked […]