From: akbloom@aplcen.apl.jhu.edu (Keith Bloom)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,misc.legal,alt.postmodern,alt.censorship
Subject: Re: Eros and Capital
Keywords: egnilges
Date: 30 Jul 92 07:41:10 GMT
	<1992Jul27.230108.10941@Princeton.EDU> 
	<1992Jul28.152233.9220@hubcap.clemson.edu> 
	<1992Jul29.031843.4563@panix.com>
Organization: The Johns Hopkins University


gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:

>First, let's remember, as we should know from the low-Q
>newsgroups, it is men and not women who are exploited by the
>likes of Playboy and Hustler.  That is, the male nervous system
>responds strongly to visual images and physical (as opposed to
>emotional) fantasies.  The emotional development of the male 
>is sidetracked and stunted by the constant proffering of images
>from whom there is no real heat, and never can be, so that
>magazines and advertising can be sold at high prices and bottom
>lines can grow fat while the souls of innumerable young men
>grow thin on the vacuous fare.

In other words, most men like to look at pictures of naked women.

>The answer to this problem, however, is not censorship.  

Problem?  What problem?

>....The good answer to the problem is better 
>pornography -- erotica, if you prefer -- and more of it, and
>of the sort in which the girl or boy next door can be 
>imagined.  The vague images of airbrushed pornography 
>correspond visually to the indefinite sight of the infant;
>the better pornography will guide its consumer to discern-
>ment and appreciation of the specific, the individual, the
>real.

More discerning and appreciative it may be, but not nearly
so much like pornography.

>....An undeveloped erotic consciousness in a
>large muscular body can only be disquieting, if not
>frightening, to a person of lesser musculature who at the same
>time is the possible object, however hazily, of this same
>undeveloped consciousness.  Passing in front of any newsstand,
>they are aware at once of this dumbed-down erotism and the
>powerful corporate forces enhancing it; they see bodies like
>their own marketed as oranges are marketed in the supermarket,
>rank upon rank, indistinguishable, to be squeezed out and 
>thrown away....

Women have long since gotten used to the fact that their physical
attractiveness is an extremely large part of their desirability to the
opposite sex, and also that men can be potentially dangerous animals.
Nobody's asking them to like it.

I can't see Dworkin's or McKinnon's proposals changing these facts,
either.  Rather, their purpose seems to be to punish men by closing off
a source of pleasure, thereby making life less enjoyable.  They would
have very little influence, however, if their agenda did not coincide
with part of the religious right's.  Their function is to deflect
feminist opposition.  The right's agenda is mainly quite hostile to
feminism, and feminists would probably oppose it as a whole if Dworkin
and McKinnon didn't provide an ideological justification for supporting
part of it; censorship in particular.

>There are others interested in this process, specifically
>certain corporations and the state, whose profits and power
>increase as the space between male and female widens.  

I.e., Coor's uses pretty girls in bikinis to sell beer, and Playboy
uses pretty girls without bikinis to sell magazines.  Since no one
forces people to part with their money to buy these products, these
companies must be providing at least as much value to their customers
as the value of the money spent.  We call this "capitalism."

>When the space between man and woman closes there is no room for profits
>and power.  

Corporate capitalism has nothing to worry about.  No amount of "erotic
freedom" will appreciably diminish the commercial value of women's
bodies.  IMHO.

>Thus, it is to the interest of the manipulators
>of large capital, and of the faded bourgeoisie who infest the
>government, to back (but discreetly) the pornography-
>censorship structure, to continue the commodification and
>governmentalization of Sex, given to us free by Nature or by 
>Nature's God.  They have taken almost everything else.

I doubt that the pornography-censorship structure, by which I suppose
you mean laws against obscenity, has much to do with the use of
women's bodies to sell products.  Is there less use of women in
advertising in places where those laws are more liberal?

Rather, the chief promoters of censorship are people who are panicked
by modernity, of which capitalism is one of the main driving forces.



Keith
-----
   "Another ad is a closeup color photo of a lovely young woman on ice
    skates coming to a spectacular, bracing "swoosh" of a stop.  Since
    the camera is shooting from below upward and the girl is wearing
    tautly stretched tights and a tiny skirt that conceals practically
    nothing, the view of the buttocks, flung sideways at the lens by
    the sizzling half-turn is unparalleled.  How many points the GNP
    has risen on the feminine buttock is an interesting question."
	   -- Jules Henry, _Culture Against Man_
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