genderberg.com

I wanted to make this my new signature but it's too long so i'm posting it here!

What I don't understand is the notion that, if you dislike your significant other using porn because you have low self-esteem, it's just your issue and your significant other shouldn't be asked to change his/her behavior. Wha? Now, I don't have much experience with this relationship stuff, but aren't significant others supposed to, you know, help each other out?

Thanks for the opportunity to share a quote I''ve been liking lately. Anyone should feel free tpo jump in with one of their own.

"I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit the fashion of the time." -Lillian Hellman

Since I'm here, there are days this quote by my leading lady, Susan B., keeps me from moving to the mountains with my partner and cats.

Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.

i *heart* susan b.

I LOVE THAT SUSAN B quote - I cut it from the feminista site - and used it as my signature for a long long time ... it speaks volumes.

I once read something that said writers aren't especially good at creating new word connections as much as they're good at recognizing quality writing around them and incorporating that into their own wordsmithery. I'm a big fan of using the quotes of others to make my points because there are lots of great writers out there and I can recognize them.

At work I have a wall in my office with quotes I've collected over the years. Here are some of those quotes, and anyone should feel free to stick their own here.

**

"They sicken of the calm that know the storm" -Dorothy Parker


"It is part of my job as a radical to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" -I don't know who said it first


"You laugh at me because I'm different, I laugh at you because you're the same." -?


"She flies with her own wings." -Oregon state motto


"No single raindrop believes it caused the flood." -?


"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead to where there is no path and leave a trail" -Muriel Strode


"What if I'm a mermaid in these jeans of his with her name still on them?" -Tori Amos


"They preach that I should save the world, they pray that I don't do a better job of it." -Dar Williams


"I hear many condemn these men because they are so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority?" -Henry David Thoreau

from BitingBeaver:

It never ceases to amaze me what new, controlling, domineering and violating thing men are capable of cooking up. I am endlessly amazed by how much power white males have in this society and how they are still seeking more. How the power of being the ruling class is not enough for them. How the power of buying a body for their use is not enough for them. How the power of the fear of a rape culture is not enough for them. How the power of living in a world in which women are displayed, contorted and free to every man who wants a quick power trip isn’t enough for them.

i've been adding new quotes to o.a.g. this week, mostly from jensen's book.
he's got some amazing stuff.
here's one that could win you an argument:

“My whole reason for being in this Industry is to satisfy the desire of the men in the world who basically don't much care for women and want to see the men in my Industry getting even with the women they couldn't have when they were growing up. I strongly believe this, and the Industry hates me for saying it...so we come on a woman's face or somewhat brutalize her sexually: we're getting even for their lost dreams. I believe this. I've heard audiences cheer me when I do something foul on screen. When I've strangled a person or sodomized a person, or brutalized a person, the audience is cheering my action, and then when I've fulfilled my warped desire, the audience applauds.”
and
"I'd like to really show what I believe the men want to see: violence against women. I firmly believe that we serve a purpose by showing that. The most violent we can get is the cum shot in the face. Men get off behind that, because they get even with the women they can't have. We try to inundate the world with orgasms in the face."
- Ex-porn actor and Free Speech Coalition board member Bill Margold, quoted by Stoller and Levine.

I didn't know Jensen had a book. What's it called?

I also have a quote from him:

"Each day we struggle to empathize, we hold onto our humanity.
Each day we stay connected -- to ourselves and each other -- is another plodding step forward."

thanks oag, I posted it on my blog for more to read (assuming anyone reads it anymore...well I know 2 non-radical feminists who do)

I read your blog LC! I don't comment much (ever?) but I do read

I read you too LC, but I just don't comment much. Normally all I have to say is 'Yes!'

I enjoy your blog regularily too LC

the book is called getting off.
i can send it to you when i'm done with it.

That would be greatly appreciated.

ok, send me your address.

PM sent.

Thanks!

Here are some of the many quotes I like:

"I expected long drawn-out multiple orgasms with women babbling deliriously, thanking you as they fainted or died in blissful exhaustion... These expectations didn't come from conversations with the guys. Porn taught me everything I "knew" and taught me how to make it real. The woman I was chatting with had no idea at first she had to measure up to the dozens of pets, playmates, bunnies, pieces of tail I had pored over and fantasized about this past week. They are called "fantasies" but they sure become real and sink deep when you orgasm to them day in and day out for years. Nobody acknowledges the jerking off. Hefner, Guccione and Flynt are supposed to be such "liberators". . . What a joke! They merely built empires on men's envy and hatred of women, building up these feelings for added profits. They would never dare admit that the Average Playboy Reader spends his evenings choking the chicken, giving up on a love life. Their sexual scenarios pick up on the guilt and envy, offering violence and cynicism as solutions. As in rape, penises become weapons to punish women with, sperm is something filthy to soil their too-perfect bodies. I really believe that porn turns men into fetishists, hooked on overpriced media, with knee-jerk reactions to any woman."
--Martin Dufresne, in "Getting Off on Sexploitation" (1989) in Diana Russell Ed., Making Violence Sexy; 1993.

"The problem is not only that a high percentage of women in porn are sexual abuse survivors... It is not only the reduction of women to what University of Texas journalism professor Robert Jensen, writing in the Sexual Assault Report, painfully describes as "three holes and two hands." It is the way the pornography industry helps to define heterosexual men's sexuality. Every time a video portrays a scene where a woman asks to be penetrated by a succession of men who ejaculate all over her face as they contemptuously call her a "cum-guzzling whore", it also portrays men getting pleasure from the sight of that "cum-guzzling whore" getting what she wants, and deserves. It normalizes the men's pleasure-taking as it sexualizes the woman's degradation. The idea that consumers of porn can masturbate and have orgasms to that kind of treatment of women and not have it affect their attitudes toward the women and girls in their lives is more a fantasy than anything the most creative porn writers can conjure up."
-- Jackson Katz, in The Macho Paradox; 2006.

"Pornography EROTICIZES male supremacy. It makes dominance and subordination feel like sex; it makes hierarchy feel like sex; it makes force and violence feel like sex; it makes hate and terrorism feel like sex; it makes inequality feel like sex. Pornography keeps sexism sexy. It keeps sexism NECESSARY for some people to have sexual feelings. It makes reciprocity make you go limp. It makes mutuality leave you cold. It makes tenderness and intimacy and caring make you feel like you're going to disappear into a void. It makes justice the opposite of erotic; it makes injustice a sexual thrill... Pornography exploits every experience in people's lives that IMPRISONS sexual feelings -- pain, terrorism, punishment, dread, shame, powerlessness, self-hate -- and would have you believe that it FREES sexual feelings. In fact the sexual freedom represented by pornography is the freedom of men to act sexually in ways that keep sex a basis for inequality... You can't have authentic sexual freedom without sexual justice."
-- John Stoltenberg, in "Pornography and Freedom", in Michael S. Kimmel Ed., Men Confront Pornography; 1990.


And after reading quotes like these knee-jerk pro-porn people are still gonna tell you that pornography is not harmful and has no effect... What a bunch of horseshit those porn apologists talk!!!

"Ponography doesn't burn by itself; it needs your help"
-Nikki Craft (?)

"They said, 'You are a savage and dangerous woman.' I said, 'I am speaking the truth. And the truth is savage'" - Nawal El Saadawi

I just added it to my signature, so it's gonna look a bit repetitive, but I love that quote.

There are some awesome quotes here. If no one minds, I am going to add some of them to my myspace profile. Let me know if you would prefer I didn't.