Boston antipornography conference notes

[sam]

I'll be putting all my raw notes up eventually but for now here are some of the choicest pieces of info I gleaned. These are my notes and interpretations and therefore should not be taken as literal representations of presenters. -sam

Byron Hurt's movie Beyond Beats and Rhymes: A Hip-Hop Head Weighs in on Manhood in Hip-Hop Culture

49% of gunshot victims are black men
61% of rape victims are under 18

70% of mainstream hip hop is consumed by white men, men who want to believe the twin racist lies that black women are hoes and black men are pimps.

Rebecca Whisnant: Not Your Father’s Pl*yboy and Not Your Mother’s Feminist Movement: Contemporary Feminism in a Porn Culture

Depoliticized feminism caters to porn culture; quotes from Bust book demonstrating psychological technique of how oppressed people cope with "adaptive preferences"; if you can't have what you want, learn to want what you have.

Nina Hartley new porn film, "O: the Power of Submission".

bitch, slut, dirty whore...pornographer lexicon is the same as religious lexicon

Robert Jensen: Real Men, Real Choices

(via Meg Baldwin) Why do men hurt/kill prostitutes when they are doing what men want them to do? Men have conflicted emotions about using prostituted women. They aim for emotionless sex but being human can't cut off their emotions, so they take their failure to feel no emotions when fucking prostitutes out on the nearest target- the prostituted women.

Men struggle with "If sex is not for domination then what is it for?"

via Gail "Women are either fuckable or invisible."

Gail Dines: Pornography and Pop Culture: Putting the Text in Context

Blonde jokes are women jokes. Jessica Simpson, Meg Ryan, Goldie Hawn.

Women in movies, music and on screen make the promise of eternal sexual availability, but Britney, Madonna, Jenna et. al. have teams of bodyguards protecting them from men who want to take them up on the sexual offers. The fuck-me looks and sexual come-ons pornstitutes and models make give men the sense of entitlement to sex they then perpetrate against the everyday women around them without bodyguards.

Third wave feminism is the thinking woman's Cosmopolitan. Gail's proposed book title: "From Stepford Wives to Stepford Sluts".

Howard Stern made 302 million last year, making him the second-highest paid entertainer in the WORLD. Only Tom Cruise made more. It was his mainstream synergizing with a formerly niche pornography industry that launched his career in the early 90s.

New porn trend: cumming in a woman's eyes, called "pink eye" porn.

New porn trend: Donkey punch has a new cousin, riding the bull. When a man is fucking a woman from behind, he grabs her breasts and pulls her torso up just as a group of his friends jumps into the room and take pictures. The point is to capture the horrified look of betrayal and fear of potential gang-rape on the woman's face.

Melissa Farley and Rachel Lloyd: Pornography, Prostitution, and Sex Trafficking: How Do You Tell the Difference?

Melissa Farley: There is evidence Hugh Hefner prostituted Playmates internationally 20 years ago.

Bunny Ranch has porn made at it. Ads for the Bunny Ranch feature quotes by Flynt, Penthouse and Howard Stern.

Prostituted women who had pornography made of them had significantly more PTSD than others. Knowing their sexual abuse is entertainment for thousands of men around the world greatly exacerbates the fear they will be 'found out' as whores their whole life long. (women in Germany and Netherlands don't register as prostitutes because they want to put what they had to do to survive behind them one day).

Rachel Lloyd: a career in modeling is the sell for young girls, was the sell for her. Was a few years before she turned her first trick but was primed for it by modeling. When a woman is used for the first time in pornstitution she knows it didn't feel just like modeling but is told to deny the trauma. It is rape but you can't articulate it because you need to survive. This denial compounds the trauma because it is not recognized or dealt with for many years later after leaving pornstitution.

Ana Bridges, Erica Scharrer: Analyzing the Pornographic Text: Charting and Mapping Pornography through Content Analysis

Went to 250 top-selling pornography films over several months as recorded in AVN, then radomly selected 50 of those to analyze. The usual tactic of saying "well what's pornography anyway?" avoided by using industry's own definition.

condoms present in 11% of porn
discussion of safe sex present in .3%

female to male oral 90%
female to female oral 23%
male to male oral 0%

group sex 11.5%
anal with penis 56%
vaginal and anal same time 18%
ass to mouth 41%

90% of all scenes showed aggression against women.
namecalling and insults 47%
gagging 23%
choking 5.5%

Women's response to aggression 95% neutral or positive
Women showed displeasure or pain 3% of the time
Women never fought back like aggression like that would normally result in resistance.

Response to men's aggression was 68% rewarded, 32% nuetral, and 0% discouraged or punished.

Conclusion: pornography sends the message that men's aggression against women is desired by women and aggressive behavior pays off for men.

Female directed pornography less than 7%
Female directed films had more woman-to-woman aggression than male-directed; next study to look at this phenomena

[Pony]

Amazing Sam. I wonder if there will be conference proceedings published. Anyway...

"southern flavor" ... was this something presented at the conference, or handed out?

Just stunning in its lack of humanity. That woman is a an embarrassment to womenkind.

[sam]

Oh that's just my latest signature, nothing to do with the conference directly. Someone at the conference did bring up Bright's name to me over lunch, saying she was "the feminist that Larry Flynt built".

[Pony]

Perfect. Now what can we call Nina Hartley?

I am hoping to get conference proceedings.

[KatetheGreat]

"Depoliticized feminism caters to porn culture; quotes from Bust book demonstrating psychological technique of how oppressed people cope with "adaptive preferences"; if you can't have what you want, learn to want what you have."

I'd be really interested to hear exerpts from this part imparticular probably because it's the end of the culture I'm most steeped in.

I also like that someone's doing a segment on articulating 2nd wave feminism to 3rd wavers. Es muy muy importante! I was pretty excited to see a feminist handbook for young women called "We Don't Need Another Wave" until I opened it up and found 3 pro-pornstitution articles. One was entitled "the healing vagina - how taking off my clothes healed my soul".
I picture some 16 year old reading that and I shudder.



Hope you bring back what you've learned!