Posted on 12/18/2010 8:01:19 AM PST by IbJensen
Pornography has invaded the world’s imagination. It is everywhere: On the Internet, in films, in movies, in rap music videos. Five-year-old girls dress and are taught to behave like pornography stars in order to win beauty contests. Ten- to twelve-year-old girls both dress and behave like the pornographic images that surround them—and they provide sexual services to young boys.
Opera—high culture—has also been increasingly “sexed up.” I have seen productions of “Carmen” and “Lulu” in which the lead diva was half-naked and in which she, too, sang the role as if she was a contemporary pornography star and prostitute.
No, I do not like any of this.
Yes, I take it all very seriously—as many Second Wave feminists and our Christian and conservative allies once did.
No, I do not think that hiding women beneath burqas is, therefore, any kind of solution. In fact, both pornography and prostitution are booming businesses in most Muslim countries.
Before we go any further, let’s play twenty questions. I really want your answers.
1. Is pornography “work” or is it a violent crime?
2. Is pornography “free speech” in action or is it a violent, often murderous crime?
3. Is pornography really a “victimless” crime?
4. Are pimps, johns, traffickers, and landlords being victimized? If so, why are they not complaining?
5. Are the people, mainly men, who buy and watch pornography being victimized? If so, why are they not complaining? Is anyone forcing them to consume pornography?
6. Are the seductive, taunting, smiling, naked girls and women who are being paid “good” money–victims? If so, why don’t they complain, leave, find some other job?
7. Isn’t working in pornography a job just like any other job–like any other acting job?
8. Aren’t pornography actors there of their own free will—for the easy money, the attention, the “stardom?”
9. Isn’t our right to see and read whatever interests us essential to our fundamental liberty?
10. Doesn’t the First Amendment guarantee us this right? If we criminalize one kind of “free speech,” where will it end? Who will decide what information or images we are allowed to see? Won’t state or religious censorship chill our rights, even our very thoughts?
11. On behalf of “free speech,” and privacy rights, didn’t Second Wave feminists avidly collaborate with pornographers to ensure that pornography remained a civil right?
12. Didn’t Second Wave feminists launch the battle against violence against women, which included sexual harassment, rape, incest, domestic battering—as well as the most serious battle against pornography and prostitution? Weren’t they vilified for collaborating with Christians and conservatives on the issue of pornography and prostitution?
13. How many women from wealthy and prominent families, or with advanced educations, “choose” to work in pornography or as prostitutes?
14. Did you know that, by definition, pornography is that which has to do with “prostitutes.” “Porne” in Greek is a “prostitute.” The so-called actresses in pornography are treated as if they are–and usually soon are–also “working” as prostitutes.
15. How different is being a prostitute from being a stripper, massage therapist, or a nurse?
16. How many prostituted girls and women are actually free to leave, walk out, give it all up?
17. Where might they go? Where might they call “home?” Who will help them get off drugs and alcohol, restore their ravaged health, support them as they deal with the sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS, with which johns have infected them?
18. Do you have any idea of what the average age of a pornography actress/prostitute is?
19. How long a shelf-life does a “working girl” (prostitute, pornography actress) actually have?
20. Why does pornography “turn” people on?
I lived through the great feminist Sex Wars. I was both a participant and an eye-witness, as well as a confidante to feminists who were on both sides of this War. But before I share memories and analysis, I really want to hear from you. Your answers will help me understand how to share a vast body of knowledge and history with you in the most productive way. Here’s a hint to help you think through these questions.
Pornography is a multi-billion dollar industry, right up there with guns and drugs. It is enormously profitable but not to the “workers,” most of whom are girls and women who have been sold by their parents, captured in war, kidnapped off the street, forced by their husbands, or who have been driven by poverty, racism, incest, and the most violent sexism into the arms of pimps, traffickers, landlords, advertisers, law enforcement officers, and johns.
Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D is an Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies at City University of New York. She is an author, psychotherapist and an expert courtroom witness. She has lectured and organized political, legal, religious and human rights campaigns in the United States and in Canada, Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. A popular guest on campuses and in national and international print, television, radio and online media, she has been an expert commentator on the major events of our time. She has lived in Kabul, Afghanistan, and in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. She currently resides in Manhattan.
15. How different is being a prostitute from being a stripper, massage therapist, or a nurse?
OK, now you've opened up the bad humor floodgates...
Q. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
A. The Rooster.
Q. Isn't there something wrong when the Spanish translation of the Perdue "It takes a hard man to get a chicken aroused" ?
You must be the type who goes scoping for chicks because you just want cheep sex.
And don't even get me started about the pornographic picture on the Corn Flakes box...
Cheers!
I don’t know. Might be too tough for Laz.
What? Starts out with porn and then goes to hookers? poorly designed “quiz”.
So you approve of the Columbia University poli-sci prof who's banging his daughter?
Or are you ready to move to Switzerland once they rescind their anti-incest laws?
Or do you, like Peter Singer of Princeton, approve of bestiality?
Stay away from my cat!
Sounds like you do *that* all the time: which explains why your love life is pretty much "Han Solo"...
Cheers!
Oooh, big words mr junior high. Too bad your still wrong. It is kind of funny that you are now changing your original analogy. Have fun being righteous.
...I'm told one of the main fetishes (besides French Maids and Litte-Bo-Peep outfits) is Nurse Uniforms.
Some people need a life...maybe then they could land a wife. Or vice-versa.
Cheers!
I really don't care if it is “oky doky” with you or other Christians or not. It's none of your business. Just like it's none of your business how many guns I have or what I read or what groups I associate with.
And before the attack begins, no, I don't watch or look at porn. But I do own many guns and will associate with who I choose.
...I'm told one of the main fetishes (besides French Maids and Little-Bo-Peep outfits) is Nurse Uniforms.
Some people need a life...maybe then they could land a wife. Or vice-versa.
Cheers!
IF two adults want to do something together, what business is it of mine. As far as I know, animals cant give consent.
boys will be boys, eh?
I temper my social conservatism with the Oath I took to uphold and defend our nation's Founding Documents, and the freedom enshrined therein.
hmmm...
I think that would be
Mrs. Junior High, to you
Where would you believe the fight best fought? Do you believe that girls are too weak to say no?
I think boys are too weak to say no. Young women are easy on the eyes.
As a sixty-five years old grandfather, I’m wondering if you were just trying to be insulting and cannot carry it off?
Visual Presentations of Male Surface Anatomy cause
... No response ... in Women
Uh, no. I’m female and visualizing “Male Surface Anatomy” definitely produces a reaction in me. That said, I never use porn because it is an exploitative industry and contributes to seeing BOTH sexes as either sex objects or mere consumers of sex, not as human beings.
“I guess some social conservatives will have to choose between the Constitution and morality, not an easy one.
I know one who would say that “porn” leads to marxism. So does throwing out the right to free speech.
In the Citizens United case, a movie was considered free speech. I know what I would choose.”
Actually, there is no conflict. The USSC has already ruled speech that is harmful may be prohibited; yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Porn is always harmful—to participants and viewers, and the viewers’ families and the participants’ families. I prefer the ability of local communities and states to forbid it—or permit it. This ought to be a states’ rights issue, not a federal issue. All such crime is at a state and local level.
It does not surprise me though that so many of the childish posters have no idea who Chessler really is, what she fights for or how much they (should) have in common with her.
How do you explain all the centuries when porn was so effectively prevented and limited by the colonists, and then the American people?
I don’t think that your pro-porn arguments would have carried much water in 1800.
Your arguments are the 1960s, and 1970s, arguments of the left, that the Constitution allows everything, and that the first 200 years was illegal repression of freedom by Christian America.
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