Ellen Willis was a member of the Feminist Anti-Censorship Task Force, a group critical of anti-porn feminists and associated with “sex-positive feminism”. Even so, Willis had this to say about porn: The aggressive proliferation of pornography is…a particularly obnoxious form of sexual backlash. The ubiquitous public display of dehumanized images of the female body is […]
Continue reading FACT Member Ellen Willis Agrees: Porn Represents a Backlash Against Women
The National Domestic Violence Hotline website describes the characteristics of domestic violence and abuse: WHAT IS DOMESTIC VIOLENCE? Domestic violence can be defined as a pattern of behavior in any relationship that is used to gain or maintain power and control over an intimate partner. Abuse is physical, sexual, emotional, economic or psychological actions or […]
Continue reading Abusive Relationships and Porn: The Similarities (explicit language)
Gail Dines is a Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Wheelock College in Boston, and a long-time anti-porn activist. She writes in Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality (1998, p.163-166): I have met hundreds of women and men who have stories to tell about pornography and the devastating impact it has had on […]
Continue reading Academic Defenders of Porn Need to Engage with Reality (explicit language)
For a generation, there has been deep division within the feminist community about how to judge porn. Does it liberate women, or oppress them? Writing in Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality (1998, p.9-35), Ann Russo strives to reconcile dreams of individual liberty with the realities of social and economic inequality. For anti-pornography feminist […]
Continue reading Feminists Confront Feminists Over Pornography
Robert Jensen and Gail Dines discuss the weak boundaries between some legal pornography and depictions of pedophilia in “The Content of Mass-Marketed Pornography”, from Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality (1998, p.87-89). A subgenre of pornography sexualizes differences in age. Because of strict laws banning child pornography, actual children are almost never used in […]
Continue reading Some Porn Hard to Distinguish from Training for Pedophiles (explicit language)
Robert Jensen interviewed 13 convicted sex offenders in Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality (1998, p.119-134), to investigate how porn influenced their thinking. All of them had viewed “hard-core pornography”–sex presented in graphic detail. The average age of first viewing was 12, with a range from 8 to 19. From about age 21 on, […]
Continue reading Robert Jensen: Influence of Pornography on Sex Offenders (explicit language)
Writing in Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality (1998), Robert Jensen addresses a tactic we’ve seen a lot of in Northampton’s porn debate. Because “science” has not yet conclusively shown a causal link between the use of pornography and sexual violence, some pornography supporters argue, no collective action is possible… I will simply assert […]
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach is a popular TV and radio personality who has authored 17 books, including Hating Women: America’s Hostile Campaign Against the Fairer Sex (2005). Rabbi Shmuley recently won the American Jewish Press Association’s highest award for excellence in commentary. In this article from 1/15/05, he takes a critical look at the impact of […]
Lizzy Borden, born Janet Romano, runs Extreme Associates with her husband Rob Black. This porn production company lives up to its name with films like “Forced Entry”, which, according to Salon is “the story of a serial killer and his gang who rape and murder a series of women–an 18-year-old virgin, a pregnant woman, etc.–before […]
The movie Deep Throat was released in 1972. Produced for $22,500, members of the FBI estimate it has grossed anywhere from $100 million to $600 million. More than 10 million Americans have seen it. Wikipedia calls it “likely the most successful and influential pornographic film of all time.” Linda Lovelace starred in the movie. Later, […]