Cheers!
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.
Webster disagrees with you. Using bad analogies multiple times doesnt make them more true.
Typical FR “God, family and country” fare isn’t it?
Ah, so it's about "controlling" people... in a supposedly free society?? And you're here on FreeRepublic??
"Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" means just that, and just as much as "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" means (should mean) just that.
You may not like some libertine individuals' pursuit of happiness any more than they like you keeping and bearing arms. Too bad.
Perhaps you are confusing laws forcing or restraining certain actions from laws forcing attitudes or forcing people to love others.
To put it simply, we have a house "law" that requires our boys to take out the garbage but this house "law" does nothing to make their hearts change so that they want to take out the garbage.
Likewise, we can create laws that ban certain actions but doing so does not change the underlying nature of the person and just like our boys will find a million excuses to avoid taking the garbage out so laws that force people to adopt a behavior will likely fail because their heart is not in it.
Cheers!
“Wilberforce acheived his goal through legislation over the course of his entire career, eventually managing to pass the bill. How is that coercion?”
With respect, all government is force. As Washington said (paraphrasing), it is a fearful master and a dangerous servant.
A bill is coercion of at least some people. Otherwise, the bill wouldn’t do anything.
Women and Men are clearly different.
Visual presentations of Female Surface Anatomy
cause a direct hit to the Endorphin Pathways - in Men
might as well be a narcotic rush
Visual Presentations of Male Surface Anatomy cause
... No response ... in Women
The Genders might as well be Different Species in this regard
Women sort of figure this out - by the age 4
Commanding the consequences of this
is what Adolescence is all about
If one does not learn to command self
the behavior is sub-adult
One might as well be pooping in their diapers
Cheers!
But you forget that the interstate system was proposed under the Eisenhower administration to help in the defense of the country to mobiles troops and supplies. Also, IIRC, originally 1 mile in every 5 was to be straight, so that is could potentially be used as a runway.
Once one builds a road, it is imperative that they maintain it; otherwise you risk injury and death of those who use it.
So highways were partially designed to support self-defense, a moral issue, and their maintenance is to prevent injury and death, also a moral issue.
Pretty much my position.
Do you really want to continue trying to defend sexual degeneracy on Freerepublic discussion threads? I don’t go to Webster’s for affirmation of morality. It is sad that you would. Have you ever heard of the thing called ‘spiritual discernment’?
“Which one of these is not like the other?”
Other than shooting guns, they are not addictive? :)
“Which one of these is not like the other?”
Other than shooting guns, they are not addictive? :)
“Which one of these is not like the other?”
Other than shooting guns, they are not addictive? :)
Yes, but she’s not pretty, so that’s all that counts on a site like FR.
You asked why I thought prostitution was a physical relationship and I told you. Im not using it to affirm my beliefs on anything, other than affirming the definition of a word that you compared to a different word. Have you ever heard of not writing a check you cant cash?
Make sure you wash up afterward... [/duck]
When you grow up, I might continue the discussion ... but that is a big ‘when’ question. Pornography is wholesale prostituting of the people displayed sexually/for sexual excitation or inticement of others.
So you support the left and you are here on God loving, social conservative freerepublic?
You may not like traditional, pre-1960s, pre-leftism, America, but this is the wrong place to push the left’s modern agenda.
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