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.
lol - it never stops being funny.
No, all laws are rooted in morality of some sort. I think that if you present any law, I can show you a moral component behind it.
Pornography is not the same as prostitution. Prostitutes have sex with clients. Porn actors sell pictures to clients. A porn actor doesnt interact with the end user. Good hyperbole though.
Law and infrastructure are morality neutral???
Huh? We have LOTS of morality issues in our laws and in infrastructure as well....abortion or no abortion; child sexual exploitation or abuse or not; crime rackateering in the porn and prostitution industry; prostitution, etc etc.
Yes, free speech and choice are important...that does not mean we can’t have discussions and bring up issues or that we can restrict certain behaviors which are detrimental to society. its not that simple, but in a free society and one with a Constitution like ours, its not easy...but to have a decent society AND protect our Constitution is worth the struggles.
What is the difference between kinky and perverted?
It is kinky to use a feather.
It is perverted to use the whole chicken.
And the dude has his shirttail out.
These are all morality based. In fact, Moses dealt with what constitutes self defense as well as how and who is supposed to be in the military.
In law, the basis of debts, agency, property etc are all morality based and also the bible is the basis for most of what we base our fundamental ideas of fairness.
Finally, the infrastructure is a morality based construct. Arrangements from feudal systems, class systems, slavery, kingship's, constitutional systems are all based on an inherit understanding of morality.
Because it’s all about “God, Family, Country, Life & Liberty” .... until it isn’t, on sites like FR.
I had an uncle who always said
"There is no such thing as an ugly woman, there are some though, who are just barely pretty."
Pornography is wholesale prostitution. Where did you learn that all prostitution culminates in sex with the physically present female or male? ... Your argument sounds vaguely familiar, similar to the one Jimmy Swaggert tried, to exhonorate himself for hiring prostitutes but he didn’t have physical sex with them. Your perspective is vaguely like sinkEmperor clintoon’s, telling the world his oral sex with Monica was not sex. But nice rationalization for your desired behavior.
I guess if you want to say it is moral to let everyone have free speech, I could see where you are coming from. I look at it differently, though.
Some laws have moral components, but some are just plain legislating morality. I dont think raising funds for a highway is legislating morality, but I guess some people might.
It's kind of depressing, isn't it? I, too, am sick of the sexualized images that are EVERYWHERE. I mean, geez, the billboards here in Los Angeles are like Playboy. Even selling women's shoes and purses, they use naked girls who look like they're 14. I dress to cover myself more and more out of pure reaction.
>>“Pornography is a multi-billion dollar industry, right up there with guns and drugs.”
>Which one of these is not like the other?
Guns. You cannot defend your property or life using pornography or drugs.
Naked woman = basic biology = boner. Thank you for letting me explain
No truer words have been said,LOL
The issues seem simple to me:
(1) Most men and women like sex. That’s biology.
(2) Most men and a surprising number of women like watching attractive people having sex. That’s biology, too.
(3) We “legislate morality” all the time.
(4) Legislating morality gives the government power.
(5) Because of (4), morality should be legislated ONLY when (a) effective and (b) necessary to protect innocent people from bad people.
(6) Because of (1) and (2), legislating porn will be minimally effective at best, esp. in the internet age, without trampling everyone’s rights.
(7) Because of (5) and (6), we should not legislate porn unless producing it involves physical force, coercion, kids, etc. There’s also that First Amendment thing.
And here’s the kicker where our society is failing:
(8) Legal doesn’t mean moral or something we should treat as virtuous. Fight porn culturally, not legislatively. After all, a culture where “legal” is the sole determinant of virtuous is already dead.
OK, I’ll don my asbestos suit now...
We should restrict behaviors harmful to individuals - theft, murder - but not behaviors that two individuals willingly do that offend a third person who is not involved. That is the path to serfdom.
Why not? They are the same type of people, they just chose a "side" based on what scared them earliest in life.
Kathryn Jean Lopez interviews Phyllis Chesler
http://old.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/chesler200603080754.asp
A Radical Feminist Comes Out for Bush
http://www.phyllis-chesler.com/127/a-radical-feminist-comes-out-for-bush
Legislation, by definition, involves coercion, as in the use of government force to compel compliance. Non-coercion would mean the use of persuasion to get people to voluntarily stop.
Also, England had no significant number of slaves IN ENGLAND where the voters were. The legislation also paid off the slave owners in Jamaica and elsewhere for the price of their slaves.
some excerpts of Chesler’s writing
...the “Left” is aggressively secular and anti-religious; considers pornography to be “protected” hate speech; considers prostitution and trafficking to be forms of “sex work” which should be de-criminalized or legalized; views paternal sole-custody of children as the feminist solution to the problems that mothers have when they juggle child care and career responsibilities; believes that men and women are actually the “same”; has absolutely no foreign policy except that of opposing whatever President Bush and America do or ever have done...
I mourn the Stalinization and Palestinianization of the feminist postcolonial and postmodern academy and media. Because such feminists refuse to “judge” Islamic gender apartheid, they and their institutions and organizations have become anti-activist, anti-American, anti-Israeli, isolationist, and, at best, tools of the Democratic party. At worst, they are apologists for Islamist jihad. To avoid the McCarthyite charge of “racism,” such feminists have been willing to sacrifice the victims of Islamism on their “multicultural” altars. …
Today, the level of anti-American and anti-Jewish propaganda in the Islamic world is lethal, toxic, and has unleashed a global jihad against both Israel and the West. We cannot afford to tolerate the intolerant nor can we afford to minimize the dangers to our civilization posed by Islamist fanatics who have successfully hijacked their religion and peoples. There were also “good” and moderate Germans during Hitler’s reign. What matters is that they did not stand up to Hitler. What matters is that otherwise “good” people appeased him as well....
If someone thinks for herself in an independent and creative way and dares to come up with non-party-line conclusions, she or he is then, in classic Orwellian style, deemed the enemy, a traitor, a non-person. Their work will not be read or discussed. They will not be invited to debate or to debate in a civilized and honorable way. They will be called a “racist” and a “neoconservative.” If a feminist dares raise the specter of Jew-hatred and the demonization of the Jewish state among leftists and feminists, she will quickly discover that she has become unwelcome in the mainstream media and among leftists (who actually think of themselves as liberals), and among feminists. Palestinianized Western feminists are more concerned with the so-called occupation of a country that does not exist (Palestine), than with the occupation of women’s bodies worldwide under Islam. The fact that feminists and leftists still continue to call for boycotts of Israel and to actively demonstrate against a war-time president even after 9/11, 3/11, and 7/7 tells me that they have literally been brainwashed and that reality has no defining role in determining their thoughts or their actions.
http://jerseynut.blogspot.com/2006/05/work-of-phyllis-chesler.html
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