On March 19 the State of Connecticut filed an amicus curiae brief (PDF) to support adult-use zoning in Berlin, CT. A chain of adult shops called VIP is trying to open a new store in Berlin, less than 250 feet from a residential area. The brief argues that it is constitutional to apply zoning regulations […]
Prosperous Minneapolis Commercial Area Blighted by Proliferation of Adult Enterprises
From the “Brief of the Neighborhood Pornography Task Force, Amicus Curiae, in Support of Appellant Hudnut v. American Booksellers Association, Inc.”, published in In Harm’s Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings (p.321-324): The neighborhoods bordering on East Lake Street in South Minneapolis have been fighting the encroachment of pornography into their community since Ferris Alexander […]
Lessons from the Stigma of Segregation Apply to the Stigma of Porn
Some of our opponents claim that the stigma that surrounds porn is just a result of society’s hang-ups about sex, rather than reflecting people’s aversion to the sexism, racism, exploitation, abuse, disease, crime and blight that are associated with porn and adult enterprises… I don’t support the sort of zoning ordinance you advocate. I think […]
Testimony in Indianapolis: Porn Wants You to Believe Women Secretly Love Bondage and Torture, that “No” Means “Yes”
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.283-285). Testimony of Deborah Daniels, Indianapolis Prosecutors’ Office I’d like to read you some of the titles of the […]
Testimony in Indianapolis: Porn Teaches, Arouses Violent Behavior in Abuse Cases
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, […]
Chyng Sun: Rejecting Porn’s Hatred of Women Does Not Mean Embracing Government Repression of “Obscenity”
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 […]
Help Us Spread the Word Online
[Updated on 12/6/07]Some of you may have noticed several new “social networking” services now appearing at the bottom of each article. These include buttons for del.icio.us, Stumble Upon, Technorati and Digg. Please use them as appropriate to help raise the profile of our material. Our favorite is Digg.Thanks!
Incest Victims: Social Action Can Be As Or More Healing Than Individual Therapy
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 […]
Pornoland’s unwritten law: “if we tell the truth about what’s really going on here, the fan will get turned off”
ABC News presented a remarkably blunt segment on the porn industry in “Porn Profits: Corporate America’s Secret” (2003): “Even the people who enjoy looking at pornography really despise the people they’re watching, and they have no sense of protection for them,” [former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop] said… The production companies market [porn movies] over […]
Ex-Porn Star Shelley Lubben Talks about Days on the Set: Tedious, Intoxicated, Painful, Risky
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 […]