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Post by xmelaniex on Nov 19, 2017 8:00:40 GMT
I'm sorry if this is a silly thread to have, but I really would like a place to process the intense emotions this book (and this subject in general) has been evoking. That has to be a crucial part of activism, right? As Andrea writes, the courts got to have sanitized, abstract discussions about speech, but these are real women living horrific experiences. I don't know, I also think it could be a way of building bridges between liberal feminists on this subject. It feels like whenever this comes up outside radical feminist circles, it's this abstract discussion or people feel they are being judged for consuming porn. And, to be perfectly honest, I was a porn consumer when I was younger, (young, naive, influenced by much older boyfriends) and I would see things that seemed cruel and abusive, but I thought "this would be illegal if it was real, so it must be all acting! this must be safe or professionals wouldn't be doing it!" and then when I started hearing these stories of women who had been coerced, lied to, injured, outright forced...then I realized you could be watching a woman actually just being tortured and abused.* It's hard to think of any feminist I know (and I know mostly sex positive liberal feminists) being unswayed by some of these stories. I feel that if more people knew how these videos are made (well, women at least), they would be less accepting of porn.
*Of course, I think even if everything in these hardcore porn videos were 100% consensual and safe, it's still problematic and harmful to all women, but it's a starting point, isn't it?
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Post by Paige (Admin) on Nov 19, 2017 18:16:51 GMT
Starting this thread is such a good idea. Thanks for doing that!
I just finished the first chapter of the book about power, and I think you're right to say that it evokes some intense emotions. Dworkin writes so poignantly; that's actually what turned me on to radical feminism in the first place. We read the part of the chapter about "Beaver Hunters" in an introductory women's studies class that I took as a freshman, and I thought, holy shit, this woman really knows what she's talking about and she knows exactly how to say it.
I also used porn for a long time (who doesn't in our porn-saturated culture?) and my feelings about it were similar to yours! I think, in order to rationalize the kinds of things we see depicted in porn, we really do convince ourselves that some women really do want these things and consent to them. It's so difficult to get out of that kind of self-comforting hole. I think that's one of the things that separates radical feminism from liberal feminism, that willingness to leave your comfort zone and imagine in a real, un-glamorized way the things that these women go through.
Part of why the porn industry is so successful is because it plays into that! They film those little mini-features where women talk about how much they love doing porn, and it's convincing if you want to be convinced. (But again-- it's not like they have much choice. You can't bash the industry you work in and still make money doing it.) They mix pleasure and pain so thoroughly that it's hard for people to distinguish between the two, especially for our generation, who grew up on the stuff. To that end, I think most of the work that needs to be done to produce lasting cultural change is to dispel these myths that women are doing this of their own volition and that nobody gets hurt. It's simply not true.
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Post by xmelaniex on Nov 19, 2017 19:53:51 GMT
Yes, it's especially easy the more privilege you have. I have a lot of class/racial privilege and sometimes when I read about women exploited and abused like that, in the US, it seems almost unbelievable that we could be living in the same cities, passing each other on the street but our experiences are so different. The women's rights movements gave me, an educated upper middle class white woman, SO much. But it seems like it left a lot of less privileged women in the dust.
"Dworkin writes so poignantly" - agreed 100%! Damn, she was gutsy. I read Intercourse and she was NOT messing around. Every sentence is like a punch.
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Post by Paige (Admin) on Nov 19, 2017 22:35:13 GMT
Yes, exactly! I know that one of the current wave's biggest criticisms of the second wave is that it overlooks the unique experiences of women of color and especially poor women of color. I hope that Dworkin will address the way that pornography affects black and brown women's experiences; if not, I think we should definitely think about supplementing the reading for a more thorough analysis of the industry.
Yes! Intercourse was so good! Maybe we can read it one day!
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