Nancy Reyes observes that it’s hard to avoid porn when browsing Google’s top videos… …while exploring, I went to the Google Video top 100 home page to see if I could download stuff on Linux without my Google Video player, and found that the “top 100″ page was all pornography. And not just “debbie does […]
Continue reading Blogger News Network: Top Google Videos Riddled with Porn; Filters Ineffective
Alan Bisbort raises a cheer for blogs in “Vox Bloguli”, published in the July 12 Valley Advocate. He asks, Where do the American people find the truth today? Blogs. Just look at the political stories that have dominated the past two years. During that time, print and broadcast journalists got their asses kicked by the […]
Strip clubs are a buy, says Peter Siris, managing partner of Guerilla Capital Management. Once you eliminate the mafia connection, there’s no problem. Never mind these clubs are like wrecking balls to marriages and communities, or the conditions the dancers work under, or the realities of sex trafficking. Siris pitches his case this week to […]
Continue reading Strip Clubs Are the Next Hot Thing on Wall Street, Fund Manager Tells Barron’s
Catharine MacKinnon, Elizabeth A. Long professor of law at the University of Michigan, observes that torture and abuse typically get a free pass when they’re framed as commercial entertainment. Some excerpts from “X underrated”, published in The Times Higher Education Supplement (May 20, 2005): A…magical framing move occurred in connection with the scandal surrounding Abu […]
Continue reading MacKinnon: Framing Torture as Porn Magically Makes It Acceptable
Jill Manning is a Social Sciences Fellow in Domestic Policy for the Heritage Foundation. She testified about the impact of porn to the US Senate in November 2005 (transcript). She summarizes her findings: Since the advent of the Internet, the pornography industry has profited from an unprecedented proximity to the home, work and school environments. […]
While we don’t believe you absolutely have to be a woman to care about women’s interests, it is inescapably true that women are underrepresented and undernoticed in American media. Concerns arise, for example, when large white men such as Bill Dwight, radio commentator for WHMP, poo-poo the notion that adult enterprises could subject neighbors to […]
Continue reading Women Underrepresented in Media, Undernoticed
Our opponents like to focus on the handful of women who have become relatively rich selling sex, women who have achieved a measure of choice and control in their lives (example). The reality for vast numbers of other participants in the sex trade is far less appealing, as The New York Times makes clear in […]
Continue reading New York Times: “The Girls Next Door”; Worldwide Sex Trafficking; Role of Porn
Without self-restraint, the First Amendment becomes a tragic document. Free speech degenerates into who has power, money and aggression. Many who are too kind or wise to return bile for bile retreat from public forums. Their contributions are lost. The April 30 Washington Post reports that threats and harassment are driving women out of Internet […]
Continue reading Abuse and Threats Drive Women Out of Online Participation (explicit language)
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.414-415). Testimony of Jaye Morra …I’m a senior at Wheelock College in Boston… I was taking a class with Gail Dines, a professor at Wheelock College, who […]
Continue reading Testimony in Massachusetts: Porn Suggests Abusive Practices
[May 9 update: See Springfield Police Commissioner Edward Flynn’s email to NoPornNorthampton at Springfield Police Commissioner: “…it is fair to say that ‘Amazing’ constitutes an attractive nuisance that contributes to blighted conditions there”] On April 30, NoPornNorthampton mailed over 1,700 letters (PDF) to voters in the Apremont Triangle area of Springfield. This neighborhood is home […]