Sheila Jeffreys article on porn in SMH

[delphyne]

Good to see anti-porn arguments in a mainstream outlet -

http://www.smh .com.au/news/opinion/the-obscenity-of-porn-xrated-and-exploitive/2007/05/28/1180205157478.html

"The obscenity of porn: X-rated and exploitive
Sheila Jeffreys
May 29, 2007

The discussion on pornography needs a reality check. Pornography does not represent jolly sexual tumbling which can provide a useful form of sex education. And it is protected from analysis by the cruelty and misogyny of its language and practices, which are hard to discuss in public.

In fact, only a small percentage of the pornography on sale online or in sex shops is what the industry calls "couples" porn that is least likely to cause distress to women.

The pornography industry, along with some academic researchers, say porn is not only harmless but can be socially useful because it makes "people" more comfortable about their bodies and with sex. Those questioned in the academic studies were mostly the male consumers who probably did feel less guilty about what they fantasised doing to women, because they saw women in the pornography apparently smiling and realised that millions of men had the same ideas.

However, women - both those used in making porn and those who have porn used upon them in relationships - are much less likely to feel comfortable.

Producing pornography requires that a woman, usually young and badly needing money, often with a history of sexual and physical abuse, should dissociate emotionally from her body and typically take a number of drugs to survive the experience. These drugs will include muscle relaxants, drugs to dull consciousness, painkillers and local anaesthetic.

They may have to shave their genitals and could also be pressured into surgery to cut off their labia. They will have breast implants. And, as a consequence of their "acts", sometimes the women may require enemas. Broken bones have been suffered in some sexual poses.

Then there is the possibility of disease. Porn movies are routinely made without condoms, despite several porn actors having contracted HIV.

Information on this is available on the website of Adult Video News, the magazine of the US porn industry. Women profiled on the site are poor, mostly "18" years old, first had sex at 13 or 14 and have just left school or left school early. They are likely to be brought to Hollywood by their pimps-boyfriends. They may start out with "girl on girl" but the pressure is on to get them to "anal" in a few weeks - and then their careers may be over.

The women who are abused in pornography start very young. They are not empowered, well-educated women with worthwhile choices ahead of them. Typically, they are described as entering the industry just after turning 18, probably because it is illegal for girls under 18 to be used and the industry does not want to attract unwanted attention. They have often gone straight into it within months of leaving, or being expelled from, school and have not held any other kind of job.

One woman interviewed fresh off the bus said she had done only two days of work in any other kind of job. Often the women may say they like sex with other women, perhaps because sex with women is the first form of porn they will have to engage in; it is considered the "softest" kind and softens them up for other forms.

Looking at the Adult Video News website, the racism and cruelty to women revealed in the titles and descriptions were extreme. Meat Holes shows straightforward misogyny. Many titles refer to semen, women being covered in it and having to swallow it, as in Gobble the Goop and Big Gulps. That's just for starters, before moving on to names and descriptions of movies which run the full gamut of permutations of anal sex and racist sexual stereotyping.

As a result of the 1990s porn boom, many aspects of popular culture are now affected by the woman-hating values of pornography. The clothes girls wear, what they have to do when engaging in sex, and their aspirations are influenced to some degree by this industry.

Pornography provided a road map for the tortures at Abu Ghraib, for example, which were widely considered reprehensible once disclosed.

But the fact that this torture of women is now central to our culture, and given positive value by some in academia, is seldom remarked.

Pornography educates, as all other cultural forms - such as Shakespeare, the Bible and Bananas in Pyjamas - do. But there are no redeeming features to pornography, which shows girls and women being sexually abused, and promotes the notion that this kind of treatment is "sex" and may be required of other women."

[gerry]

This is an incredibly important piece--the kind to be kept and passed on--lucidly and briefly answers so many of the typical arguments tossed our way. Where exactly did it appear---hard to figure out (strange site)

[delphyne]

The Sydney Morning Herald, a newspaper. I've amended the link though because it was connecting to the Sarasota Medical Hospital. Oops.

[sunnysmiles]

Pornography provided a road map for the tortures at Abu Ghraib, for example, which were widely considered reprehensible once disclosed.

I would have said I really liked the article, but does Sheila Jeffreys assume that US foreign Policy hasn't always been about torturing and murdering people? Or that prior to pornography, the imperialist predecessors, the British, didn't TORTURE and murder and Enslave people.

No, this is a stupid-argument at best and detracts completely and entirely from the harms of pornography. Because if someone who's not sex-positive like myself is able to spot it - any idiot with a brain will.

I wish for once, just for once big name radical feminists understood 'race' instead of making grandiose assumptions that undermine the history of violence and physical torture against people prior to pornography.

While attending a recent lecture by a muslim feminist, she brought up the similarities between porn and abu gharib, and no it was not 'that porn provided a road map for torture'.

If anyone actually wanted to make a criticism of Abu Ghairab which seems like such a dear comparison to some white radical academice feminists - maybe the proper route would be to understand, quite simply, and it's this simple - how people of color are objectified in the mainstream media/power relations by white male supremacists and torturers alike, just like women (of all colors).

Hell Susan Sontag talks about the way the camera is used and continues to be used as a means of objectification. National Geographic though not 'pornographic' objectifies the lesser people of the world. Putting them under a primitive anthropological lens so that they too are dehumanized and made into 'curiosities' (objects).

White radical feminists quite simply can't fathom this shit, because to them all men are 'oppressors' equally. While men of color rape/kill slaughter women of color too - under white supremacist capitalist patriarchy (which covers the gamut of media to international foreign policies) they too are objectified. Always have been.

Such stupidity really doesn't do any good to the movement. It's actually downright insulting.

This is not just a 'slip' this reveals an underlying conceptual problem amongst most academic feminists (of pretty much all stripes) but predominantly radical feminists.

Do not get me wrong, this is not me hating Sheila Jeffreys, in fact "the Idea of prostitution" was one of the best reads I've ever had in regards to this topic.

Make comparisons where they are warranted, in a fair and equitable way to everyone. That's all I'm asking. This is foolishness. I can't take it anymore.

[delphyne]

"I would have said I really liked the article, but does Sheila Jeffreys assume that US foreign Policy hasn't always been about torturing and murdering people? Or that prior to pornography, the imperialist predecessors, the British, didn't TORTURE and murder and Enslave people."

I wouldn't have thought so, but she could have worded it a lot better. It would be more accurate to say that pornography provided the road-map for *photographing* the torture at Abu Ghraib. It's definitely in part a pornographic mindset that decides to sexually torture people and then record the torture itself to add to the humilation and degradation of the victims.

But you're right the torture itself was a result of racism and imperialism and hatred of the people that the US/British were supposed to be there to "liberate".

[sunnysmiles]

It would be more accurate to say that pornography provided the road-map for *photographing* the torture at Abu Ghraib. It's definitely in part a pornographic mindset that decides to sexually torture people and then record the torture itself to add to the humilation and degradation of the victims.

Thank you delphyne, that's something I can agree with to a large extent. You always manage to put things aptly and I appreciate it.

One thing that I wanted to say was, that when we look at photography/porn-gaze and we map it on a continuum we can easily see that it is an extention of the need for western male dominance to 'objectify' all 'others', which predates photography. for example - the Sarah Bartman story: http://www.blacklooks. org/2007/04/sarah_bartman_other_herstories_of_south_african_women.html

Or how when Indigeneous people were shipped across the atlantic and their sex-lives were written about in pornographic detail by their white captors.

Anything 'other' than straight white men has always been under their sexual 'gaze'.

I wouldn't have thought so, but she could have worded it a lot better.

But one thing, I don't think this is just about 'wording'... The abu gharib example is commonly being used by academic radical feminists without being put into it's proper context. I disagree with you about this element, but that's okay. Plus, I expect more from an academic feminist than I would others, this is a written document and has more sway than lets say a ... blog!

[delphyne]

I think I agree with you about the context actually. Like you say there is a wider context than simply men oppressing women, and although I'm pretty sure that most white radical feminists are aware of that, our analysis needs to reflect and integrate that knowledge and it often doesn't, as evidenced above.

[sunnysmiles]

[gerry]

Given this was a mainstream piece on the subject of porn, I don't see how "a roadmap" is inaccurate. It was one of the roadmaps for sure, and was well documented by the press in its coverage of the specific torture that took place (this is SJ's reference).

Should Jeffreys include the racist, imperialist context in a piece appearing in a mainstream newspaper? If she had, would it have been printed?

A final point, I completely disagree that radical feminists are particularly racist as compared with other feminists. Only socialist feminists might do better but they are likely to avoid much of what radical feminism addresses including the sexual oppression of women in general (exceptions abortion, battery, and to a degree rape).

[/i]

[elfeminista]

"
A final point, I completely disagree that radical feminists are particularly racist as compared with other feminists. Only socialist feminists might do better but they are likely to avoid much of what radical feminism addresses including the sexual oppression of women in general (exceptions abortion, battery, and to a degree rape). "

This has been a male-influenced canard for a long time.
As this is **WOMEN"S** discourse, I wont go into detail. I do not believe that males should be discussing women's issues of this type.

[delphyne]

Well when it's white men talking about how racist white radical feminists are, I think we can take a good long look at their motives - cough **ampersand** cough.

But when a feminist of colour is complaining about white feminists (whatever our stripe) ignoring racism, in my opinion the thing to do isn't to start arguing about who is the most or least racist but instead pay attention to the criticism itself.

[gerry]

As this is **WOMEN"S** discourse, I wont go into detail. I do not believe that males should be discussing women's issues of this type.

I don't precisely know about this, but what i do know for sure is that this is about the 4th or 5th time you've called me on this in direct and indirect ways. Why don't you let women advise me as to this.... i don't need you as my personal policeman.

My comment was directly on the article itself---and i was the first to comment on it. It was not aimed at the discussion between two women. And as to "issues of this type" that i cannot comment on... am i to have no opinion about feminism and race... am i to think that liberal feminists are more conscious of race than radical feminists? i don't know i really think you want the men on this board to be like cheerleaders---while you're the one who makes sure that they are that, while not always being a cheerleader yourself.

[deedle]

Elfeminista and Gerry -

Can you take this to PM please - you're derailing.

[sunnysmiles]

I never said that 'radical feminists are worse' - this is a derailing tactic.

Sheila Jeffreys had no reason to mention "abu gharib" in this. And if she did want to - she could have clearly said - "we can see pornoization of violence occuring even in situations like Abu Gharib where white men's violence is used to humiliate and emasculate their coloured male prisoners using sexually saddistic means and pornographic documentation".

This would have been an accurate description, this would have been an honest description, this would have been a way to bridge a gap that I didn't create, but that already exists.

But unfortunately, Sheila Jeffreys and some other radical feminists continue to make useless comments, which is unfortunate because her book "the idea of prostitution" was wonderful. As are some of her other contributions. But yes you are right, making stupid generalizations and ignoring internalized racism is a pandemic amongst all stripes of feminists. I don't see the need to mention that here, when I am talking about an article by Sheila Jeffreys.

Delphyne understood the point I made, if neither of you do ... can't help you.

Rudeness deleted

[elfeminista]

Why was any rudeness towards me needed that it had to be deleted?

" dictionary.com definition.
urce
rude /rud/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[rood] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–adjective, rud·er, rud·est.
1. discourteous or impolite, esp. in a deliberate way: a rude reply."

[sunnysmiles]

because I realized it wasn't nice! and with a name like sunnysmiles - I don't really want to be mean!

[gerry]

[q

uote="sunnysmiles"

Sheila Jeffreys had no reason to mention "abu gharib" in this. And if she did want to - she could have clearly said - "we can see pornoization of violence occuring even in situations like Abu Gharib where white men's violence is used to humiliate and emasculate their coloured male prisoners using sexually saddistic means and pornographic documentation".

This would have been an accurate description, this would have been an honest description, this would have been a way to bridge a gap that I didn't create, but that already exists....

[/quote]

Yup, it does add a critical dimension, and i must say, would most likely get past the editors. You have won me over.

[Andrew]

Road maps:
Pornography did not/ does not create objectification, devaluation, dehumanization, desire to torture, etc. but it reinforces them and propagates them. Once pornography came into existence it forms a circular effect with the underlying attitudes; they reinforce each other.

[Andrew]

For what it is worth.