From: uunet!infmx!hartman@ncar.ucar.EDU (Robert Hartman)
Subject: Re: Causing crazies to target women (was: ... anti-anti-porn comment)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Organization: Informix Software, Inc.
Date: 27 Jan 93 19:37:08 GMT

In article <1k1iejINN95g@im4u.cs.utexas.edu> turpin@cs.utexas.edu (Russell Turpin) writes:
>
>[Moderator's note: beware potential topic drift here -- pw]
>In article <1ji7gg$bhh@agate.berkeley.edu> cortese@skid.ps.uci.edu (Janis Maria Cortese) writes:
>> ...  Having all the porn all over to the extent that it is --
>> having CONSTANT bombardment by images of women that are dominated
>> and like it, and images eroticizing female fear -- gives people who
>> are screwed up this way a big something to hang their problem on
>> and build it around -- us.  Women.  We are thus targetted by these
>> constant images of which porn is simply a subset (and I define porn
>> quite strictly, I ain't talkin ooh-ooh-baby stuff here) that get
>> people who are loused up and point them right in our direction.
>
>Usually I find quite a bit of substance in Janis Cortese's posts, but
>I must say that the above argument against pornography strikes me as
>extremely strained.  I have no doubt that what Janis Cortese
>describes is a real phenomenon.  There are crazies out there.  Some
>of them will fixate on porn and target women. ...

> ... Remember, these people are crazy, and reruns of the "I Love
>Lucy" show are as likely to cause them to target redheaded women as
>Hustler magazine is to cause them to target women fitting some other
>stereotype.

Two comments here.  First, I find Russell's opening line to be
dismissive and unnecessary to the discussion.  This is the sort of
"positioning" that women in this group often object to.

Second, Janis's contention isn't just that porn provides crazies with
a target.  Her contention is that porn also provides them with a
_script_ that is very dangerous for women.  The egregious comparison
with "I Love Lucy," which I also find to be dismissive, also misses
the mark.  If the crazies were to identify with Ricky Ricardo, they'd
be out there playing bongos and yelling Cuban epithets.  Not a bad
result, really.  ;^)

> ... Third, I suspect that such psychoses are responsible for only a
>small fraction of violent crimes.  Just as only a small portion of
>men are rapists, I suspect that only a small portion of rapists are
>psychotic in the sense described above.  (Perhaps this, though, is
>relevant only with regard to the next comment.)  Fourth, there is the
>issue of whether we should (even if we could) adjust our cultural
>icons because of what a relatively few crazies do.  While not
>diminishing the harm of their acts, it is not clear that this is how
>to deal with this problem.

Neither you nor Janis directly addressed the issue of mass psychosis.
What happens when an entire society agrees to demonize a particular
constituency.  One of the reasons why it is generally considered bad
form to run ads for neo-Nazi groups is that a society succumed to that
stuff, and not too long ago.  So it may be that women see pornography
as hate literature that prescribes individual covert acts of
sexualized violence against them, as opposed to the organized genocide
of the Nazis.  And women have a right to vociferously object to porn
as such if that's how they see it.

Men (and women) would do well to listen to these objections, and to
critically evaluate not just the content of what they're reading, but
the underlying value system in which it is produced, rather than
straining their argumentative powers to dismiss those objections.  If
even one of the "pro-porn" men had said:

	I've thought seriously about whether there might be something
	to these objections, and some of them can be handled with no
	threat to my viewing pleasure.  Although the studies haven't
	yet validated these concerns, my viewing pleasure wouldn't be
	harmed if we took the following mitigating steps in the
	meantime. ...

we'd be getting somewhere.  But here we have a case where a man
virtually concedes the point, and then dismisses the concern anyway.
That's one difference between destructive debate and constructive
discussion.

I wonder, and I suspect that many women reading this group lately also
wonder, why the pro-porn men haven't seen fit to respond in a
constructive way to their concerns.

Perhaps it's time to understand why men might feel a need to use
pornography for gratification in a culture that demonizes men for
wanting sex, deprives men of other emotional outlets, reduces sex to a
commodity, and then attempts to exploit men's sexualized emotional
needs by placing economic conditions on their access to the one form
of emotional release that they're (grudgingly) allowed.  Insofar as
pornography offers a cheap outlet, it may well contribute to the
pacification of men who might otherwise revolt against a system that
oppresses them in that way.  As a side effect (intended or otherwise)
it may also help to perpetuate men's alienation, making them easier to
exploit in various ways.  These are my objections as a man to the
context in which pornography flourishes as it is.  I have no objection
to the availability of sexually explicit material per se.

I don't know whether the women's objections we've heard are
objectively verifiable or not.  But I do know that, given the
barbarity of our so-called modern culture, such concerns ought to be
taken seriously.  Because I happen to like certain aspects of
pornography, I would do well to consider the extent to which it's
pleasures serve as bait, in the same way that the pleasure of
belonging to a powerful movement seduced others into joining the
German Nazis in the 1930s.

I think we'd all agree that explicit sexual material could be a
positive influence in our culture.  But that will never happen so long
as the current bickering over the suppression of porn continues.  I
think that I could sum up the feminsit anti-porn position with an old
saw:

	It's not what porn says, it's how porn says it.

Perhaps many men can dismiss the way porn says it, and don't want to
be forced to confront the how of it.  Entirely understandable.  But I
find that I have increasing trouble doing that.

For my part, my viewing pleasure would be greatly enhanced if I could
be sure that only consensual acts would be portrayed by performers who
I could be sure were enjoying their work.  And no, just as many who've
posted don't want to take it on faith that porn is harmful, I don't
want to take it on faith that the porn industry is all in good fun.

-r

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