Can you please explain to me how *any* woman especially those that call themselves "feminists" can like and support the extremely sexist dehumanizing portrayals of women as nothing but inferior non human F*ck objects just to stick a penis into, to use and ejaculate all over and discard and often called women hating names like cum eating slut,whores and bitches? I know that John Stoltenberg,Robert Jensen,Catharine Mackinnon therapist and anti-violence educator Rus Funk and others have pointed out how pornography makes sexism sexy and how it sexualizes gender inequality,male dominance and male supremacy and hatred of women. So in a very sexist,gender divided,gender stereotyped woman hating society we all live in and given how women are conditioned by sexisim too from the time they are born,and how the portrayal of women as nothing but body parts and sex objects to be used to please men is everwhere, in ads,TV shows,movies and pornography, and how it's been so disturbingly mainstreamed and normalized now,it's easy for women to be influenced to believe that this is what normal heterosexuality is! And that this is how women get attention,importance and value from men!

I myself was victimized by pornography when I was 13 and a half. I was very big busted by that age and considered to be a beautiful girl and I was the only girl in a classroom of all 14 year old boys. Two of the boys repeatedly molested me,they grabbed at my breasts and crotch many times and one of the boys who told me I was a beautiful girl made two references to the women in Playboy Magazine. The other boy had a pornographic magazine in the empty classroom and shoved it into my face and said,Here is a picture of a girl fingering herself.This was in the Fall of 1978 long before pornography was on the internet and mainstreamed and normalized like it is now. And I don't think these boys had seen any hard-core pornography like is all over the internet,popular porn videos and now on mobile public phones! So now we can magnify this danger much more! Just think,if they had seen the hard -core pornography that's all over the place today,they would have wanted and probably tried to ejaculate on my face and body not just grab my breasts and crotch!

One time when one of the boys pinched my breasts and I said it hurt,he said that hurt? He thought I wanted this because I matched the Playboy centerfold image right there in person and because pornography portrays women as if we are only sex objects and body parts to feel,f*ck and forget,and that boys and men have a right to take and use us for their sexual pleasure,and that we want to be used as sex objects to serve them! When I told Rhea Becker At The Women's Alliance Against Pornography in Boston when I spoke to her in the early 1990's about my experience,she said it's very common and that police records are filled with cases of women and children who were shown pornography during the sexual abuse and when I said to her that those boys treated me exactly the way Playboy and all pornography portrays women as nothing but inferior sex objects to be used for boys and men's pleasure, she said they were just doing what they were taught. Also when I went to the male school supervisor and told him about what the boys were doing to me, he was a sxist woman-hating monster with a penis and said,So I'll put you on an island with all girls!

I've spoken with other people at organizations who also told me they hear similar cases of women and children who were victimized by pornography. If any of these women who are liking and using pornography are sexually assaulted or sexually assaulted on the job by a man or men who show them pornography and say to them,this is what you and all women are for,just things to stick penises into to use and discard, then they would have a big wake up call! Or if it happens to a woman they love,their mother,sister,daughter or friend! It's really going to help women's equality to have women going along with pornography now!

I have read on many message boards posts from women saying their boyfriends want to ejaculate on their faces because they are seeing it in the pornography and they don't want them to they feel it's degrading and disgusting! One guy said that because of so many men looking at porn on the internet now,they learn to think this is sexy! One guy even started this as a topic on another message board,The Porn Money Shot and asked how men can get their wives and girlfriends to go along with it. Another guy on another message board asked if women want men to cum on their faces like they show in pornography. On a so called "Adult" site in an advice section, a young guy posted that he couldn't understand why his girfriend who liked to be wild in bed freaked out and left him after he came on her face and hair. He said he watches a lot of porn and the porn stars love the facials! I have also read posts from men who use pornography and even admit it dehumanizes women as nothing but sex yoys and mindless f*ck machines! So how can *any* woman especially a woman who calls herself a "feminist" support it in any way?????

I think a lot of the time, feminist women, women who identify as feminists, say they like pornography because (1) it makes them feel like one of the guys, they identify with the guys, and they (wrongly) think that if they are one of the guys, then maybe the guys won't mistreat them or hurt them the way they hurt other women; (2) to emotionally distance themselves from women and girls who are victimized in pornography so that they won't be moved by those girls' and women's situations (and this is another part of being "one of the guys"); just like "the guys" do, they tell themselves the women in pornography are stupid or that the women in pornography "want" to do what they are doing, that it is "consensual" or that it is "empowering", all the things "the guys" say, which, like the guys, they want to believe because the truth is really scary and painful; (3) sadly, some feminists defend pornography because they, themselves enjoy looking at it, because they use it and want to continue to use it, sometimes because they were exposed to it when they were young and vulnerable and their sexual feelings and impulses got all mixed up; degradation and humiliation and shame became sexy to them; (4) because they like male attention and approval, and approving of porn and defending porn and doing what the women in porn do is a way to get male attention and approval; (5) because men will then prefer them over other women, they think, they will get points other women don't get, maybe attention or money or boyfriends or a husband, a job, connections, patriarchal approval in other words, and they derive a lot of their self-worth from feeling as though they are better than other women (something men cultivate; under male supremacy women are pitted against one another for what appears to be a very scarce supply of benefits and goodies doled out by male supremacists); (6) because they want to be the "fun kind" of feminist, all about being not JUST smart and liberated and successful and empowered but also all about being sexee all of the time, which is another kind of distancing oneself from women, this time feminist women. They don't want to be the serious kind of feminist, the kind of feminist who is only concerned about serving women and who doesn't care about men or serving them or being around them, who doesn't care about men at all, because men don't like feminists like that, men don't think that kind of feminist is desirable and sexy, and again, sometimes women's self-worth is all wrapped up in being desirable and sexy to men. They think that if men want to have sex with them, that's a good thing, that's a compliment, that means they are successful women, they pass muster as women. (7) Some women defend pornography because they sell it, they participate in it, it's how they earn their living, and they have to see it as empowering and valuable because they don't know how they'll survive if they see it any other way; (8) Some women defend pornography because they really and truly believe it IS empowering, or that they can make it in a way that is not degrading or violating, or they believe that what they are participating in is not really pornography, even if other people say that it is. (9) Some women defend pornography because so many otherwise-apparently-intelligent people do, and if that many people defend it, it must be okay; in other words, they don't think for themselves, they make their decisions about things based on what other people do or believe.

Those are some reasons I believe feminist women defend pornography. And women don't and won't stop defending pornography, if they do defend it, until they realize for themselves, believe themselves, are convinced themselves, that it harms women, that it harms them, that it is violating and dangerous. And so, as feminists, we apply ourselves to raising awareness of how pornography harms women. That's important work and there are a lot of us who are doing it and won't stop doing so long as we have life and breath and energy and the wherewithal to continue. Pornography is hate speech, hate speech male supremacy views as men's "freedom of speech." So as feminists we keep working towards the day when it is no longer tolerated.

I hear the frustration in your posts, fullhumanity, and I often feel the way you do. But it doesn't really help to focus our frustration and anger on the women victimized by pornography or even women who defend it (although I do understand that sometimes, we need to vent!) It's pornographers who have the power in the world it's men who have the power, male supremacists have the power; if there were no market for pornography, no woman would defend it or participate in it, and the market is male driven. So I think we look to the institutions men have created, we critique those institutions, we strategize ways to challenge and confront male power, we challenge men to work with men, confront men, deal with issues of sexual harrassment and rape and all the kinds of violation you describe. I feel encouraged because I *do* see more and more decent men engaged in this work. It's by far not enough, but I think there is reason to hope.

Heart

I will say this again, it's totally incomprehensible that *any* woman much les a woman who calls herself a feminist could like pornography and when you say that there are "feminists" who defend it because they like to look at themselves, that is very disturbing and upsetting and I don't understand how they can like to look at such extremely sexist dehumanizing woman hating images that clearly portrays women as nothing but inferior objects and body parts to stick a penis into and men ejaculating on women's faces,bodies and mouths,often calling them woman hating names like cum eating slut,whore and bitch, and that even men who use pornography have admitted it dehumanizes women as nothing but sex toys to serve men's pleasure and mindless fuck machines, so I don't don't understand how any woman could call herself a "feminist" and like it!How can they mistakenly see this as "empowering" it's ludicrous! I don't care what they call themselves they are *NOT* feminists they are traitors and they are on the male supremacy sexist woman hating side,that only gives men validation for their sexist woman hating attitudes and for using pornography and the way it treats women,and they are supporting an extremely sexist woman hating industry,that is a major factor in keeping women in an inferior status in society,and that has been used by many men to sexually assault and sexually harass other women and children:( !

And as I said if they or a woman they love are sexually asaulted or sexually harassed by a man or many men who show them the pornography as part of the sexual assault and sexual harassment and say to them this is what you and all women are for,just something to stick a penis into to use and discard for men's sexual pleasure,*then* they would have a wake up call and we'll see how much they support it then! For any woman especially a woman who callls herself a "feminist" to like to watch pornography is excatly like a black person liking to watch and getting off to racist materials that portrays black people as inferior to whites,and portrays black people as nothing but sex objects and slaves to be used to serve white men and promotes hatred of blacks and makes it seem sexy and right! Or a Jew liking to watch and getting off by anti-semitic materials! And then claiming they believe in Blacks and Jews full equality! How can a woman who calls herself a "feminist" like to see men treating women as nothing but sex slaves and objects to use for the whole male population,and ejaculated in their faces and bodies,and often called woman hating names like cum eating slut whore and bitch? I can't understand this at but as I said the only version of sexuality that is taught and popular mainly from pornography,is not an equal healthy erotic sexuality,but the sexist woman hating male dominated version mostly taught from pornography! And we live in a sick woman hating society largely thanks to pornography so when you say that so many otherwise intelligent people defend it this is why.

This is what former porn star and director Bill Morgold is quoted as saying in Dr.Michael Kimmel's excellent book The Gendered Society,"My whole reason for being in the pornography industry is to satisfy the desire of the men in the world who basically don't care much for women and want to see the men in my industry getting even with the women they couldn't have when they were growing up.... so when we come on a woman's face or somewhat brutalize her sexually,we're getting even for their lost dreams.I believe this.I've heard audiences cheer me when I do something foul on screen.When I've strangled a person or sodomized a person or brutalized a person,the audience is cheering my action,and then when I've fulfilled my warped desire,the audience applauds.

Heart, I didn't post this mostly to vent,I wanted to share my concerns and my experience of being victimized by pornography myself which is not uncommon. I guess pornography isn't really sexist and woman hating and based on male supremacy even though it portrays women as nothing but things to feel f*ck and forget,often calling them woman hating names,and ejaculating on their faces and bodies, since there are woman calling themselves "feminists" who support it. But even feminist gender studies professor Hugo Schwyzer said in his post on his site in January about Defining Misogyny that he is convinced that pornography is the represntative art form of woman hating culture because women just exist to fufill men's desires and have no real agency of their own and exist just to serve men.

so I don't don't understand how any woman could call herself a "feminist" and like it!

Yeah, I hear you and I agree that for those of us who hate porn, it is hard to understand. I didn't mean to be dismissive of anything you have written when I said sometimes we have to vent. Maybe your question in your earlier posts about why a woman would defend pornography was rhetorical; I understood what you said to be a serious question and answered it on the basis of the reasons I have heard feminist women give through the years. I am not agreeing with those reasons.

I agree with you that women using and enjoying porn themselves is similar to any other marginalized group getting off on reading hate literature against their own group. And I think it's important that we say straight up that we do hate pornography, if we do, that we do think it is hate speech, and that we think it needs to come to an end.

At the same time, we're not going to get any woman (or man) to change her (or his) mind or to end her (or his) defenses of, or participation in, pornography by clobbering them with what we believe to be the truth about it, I don't think. I'm kind of getting it that your view is, women (and maybe men) can be talked out of porn-- that if they only understand what it really is, if we invoke the horrible imagery and language the porn industry uses in making our arguments, they will see how horrible it is and stop defending it. In my experience, it just doesn't work like that (although it would be so much simpler if that were the way it worked). That's kind of along the lines of the theory the anti-choice people use. They figure if they carry signs with horrendous imagery affixed and remind people over and over of how the fetus suffers during an abortion using jarring imagery and language, people will become anti-choice stop defending abortion rights. But it doesn't work that way, and thank the goddess, in that instance, or women would no longer have access to safe abortion! If only we *could* just talk people out of defending porn, using it, participating in it. Even the most eloquent and persuasive of us has not been able to accomplish that through our words. It takes women's community for that, and especially, it takes consciousness raising in the context of community.

And I'm saying this in part in response to your own use of porn language and imagery in your posts. I would prefer that you not use that specific language beyond what you've already posted. This is an anti-pornography website, and I don't want girls or women reading to come here unwittingly, encounter the imagery and language of pornography, and be harmed or triggered by it. This is a porn-free site and an anti-porn site. It's safe space for women. It becomes a little less safe, I think, if women come here and find themselves encountering the language or imagery used in porn, particularly if they aren't warned about it ahead of time.

Are there women here who have different ideas about porn from yours and mine? Yes, there are. And when they offer their ideas, we will talk about them. But I don't view women as my enemy when it comes to pornography -- even when they collaborate with the enemy (in my mind), even when they shill. (Although I don't mind getting into debates and arguments with women who do shill and who do collaborate, and I don't mind saying I think they shill and I think they collaborate if I think they do and especially if they are defending what they are doing here.) Those who create and drive the demand for pornography -- men and male pornographers- -- are the real enemy to women. And I would like to maintain this space on the internet as a space that is free of the language and ideology of pornography itself, unless, again, there is a very specific reason to use the language, and women and girls reading here are warned ahead of time that they may be triggered. Using the language of porn for its shock value or in an attempt to persuade women that pornography is wrong -- sort of a shock-talk theory of anti-pornography activism -- while it may be useful in some venues, isn't as useful here, I don't think, where women and girls have so often been harmed by pornography and where most of us are anti-pornography activists and anti-pornography in our views already.

Heart

There's a wonderful feminist quote (to whom I cannot give credit because I can't remember who said it -- someone help me out here?) that goes, "It's hard to fight an enemy with outposts in your head." Sexist oppression is within us. We have been raised to believe certain lies and we have a very difficult time trying to parse out what's true and what's not. The cultural bias is powerful in shaping our identities and that's why feminism can shake a woman down to her core and it often feels threatening to our identities rather than empowering. Ultimately it is freeing and empowering, but we have to walk through the hard stuff to get there.

I don't blame women. Maybe I ought to hold women more responsible for some of their actions, but I always find it difficult to do when I see the scope of male oppression we are all steeped in. Which doesn't mean I think all women are great and wonderful people, they aren't. But I tend to feel more compassion for the sideways stuff we do as a direct result of being bent by patriarchy.

Sophia

I get really really mad at women sometimes, and then I am tempted to blame them for pornography and prostitution and sex trafficking and so on. This is especially true when they are widely read. When Susie Bright wrote garbage the moment Andrea Dworkin had died, I wanted to blame her for Andrea's untimely death among a bunch of other things. Every time Katha Pollitt tries to tar and feather another radical feminist leader, I want to clean her clock good for her and blame her for the problems in the feminist movement. When Jennifer Baumgardner writes the kind of article she wrote about Ariel Levy's book, I get frustrated, because I'm looking for insight, I'm looking for evidence of a raised consciousness, and particularly in someone who is speaking for a generation of feminists.

Then I remind myself, or someone reminds me, thanks, Sophia, that Rome doesn't get built in a day and that male oppression is big and pervasive and ubiquitous and we are indeed steeped in it. If we get to pointing the fingers like that: "How can someone who calls herself a feminist defend pornography?" "How can someone who calls herself a feminist marry a man/be attracted to men/date men/raise male children/call herself heterosexual/call herself bisexual?" "How can someone who calls herself a feminist shop at Walmart?" "How can someone who calls herself a feminist go to church?" "How can someone who calls herself a feminist participate in s/m?" "How can someone who calls herself a feminist get cosmetic surgery?" "How can someone who calls herself a feminist diet?" "How can someone who calls herself a feminist pluck her eyebrows?" "How can someone who calls herself a feminist write for XYZ publication?" "How can someone who calls herself a feminist go to Michfest?" "How can someone who calls herself a feminist eat meat?" "How can someone who calls herself a feminist vote ____________". "How can someone who calls herself a feminist take hormones?" "How can someone who calls herself a feminist go to male doctors?" "How can someone who calls herself a feminist listen to _________music or watch __________films?" "How can someone who calls herself a feminist advocate for violence?" "How can someone who calls herself a feminist be a pacifist?" ... Well, we will just be pointing fingers at one another all day long and there will not be any end to it and the work of feminism will grind to a stop as we all spend all of our time picking at one another. Which is not to say we shouldn't talk about ALL of the above and the problems, from a feminist perspective, of all of the above, I think we should. It's just that we shouldn't be blaming women for the ways they end up finding or choosing or making to survive under male supremacy. And especially given that we can go back over our own lives, most of us, and see that we did things, lived in ways, that we wouldn't live now, do now, having recognized that what we were doing harmed us or harmed women.

I don't like pounding women because of the way they respond to male hatred of women. It doesn't make sense to me.

Heart

Sometimes I feel that though I keep misogynist men like pimps, pornographers and users firmly locked in my sight, they purposefully place the women they "own" between me and them. They do this because they know feminists are not keen on dismissing other women or their experiences, and they do it because it effectively deflects attention from how men treat women and replaces it with a catfight between so-called feminists. They do it because it works marvelously.

So while women are not the cause of pornography/prostitution, they are exactly the people being flung in radical feminist faces to counter our work and that's not easily brushed aside by reminders of fostering sisterhood among all women, even the pornographers' lapdogs. A local publication had a debate between a radical feminist and a stripper, and the whole time I read it I wanted to scream because there are over 100 strip clubs in my city and every one of them is owned by a wealthy man but they send a female employee to speak where the managers should be called to account for their exploitation. A pornography debate I attended at a local college a few years ago had the director of a local prostitution transition agency debating one of the Suicide Girls, not the male and female managers of the Suicide Girls site or any of the many local male producers of pornography, but the lowest level female 'employee' in the prostitution industry ladder.

Pornographers are using prostituted women as human shields against feminist criticism more than ever, and it has been working like a charm for the past 20 years. The so-called "porn wars" fought in the 1980's was not a war between two factions of feminists anymore than the fight for the ERA was between two factions of feminists, it was a fight between capitalists and feminists and to no one's surprise the capitalists won. There's a struggle between my wish to foster sisterhood with all women and the fear that in refusing to speak out critically against these few traitorous capitalist women I am letting down a whole lot more women in the long run, women who are truly my sisters but can't get the boot off their necks long enough to say so.

Argue, debate, get angry even. Get so pissed you storm out of the room. But come back when you chill because women are so worth it.

Sophia

This happened to me recently on the website mentioned in the other thread, where the woman with her finger on the power button never once responded to anything I said in private messages or even after I publicly questioned how totally unfair her censoring actions were and the disingenous way she went about censoring the information posted. Having the power to shove a gag in radical feminist mouths means never having to say anything, never having to account for actions no matter how obviously unfair they are. The editors of the local weeklies with their prostitution ads never have to respond to a letter or phone call of mine so they don't- that's the juggernaut of patriarchal power.

Those with the power to shut feminists up use it, and when they feel like engaging it's on their strippers, Suicide Girls, female porn user terms. I don't want to target these women but if they don't get out of my way as I'm trying to get the men/male power hiding behind them I'm left with little recourse but to try as best as I can to get around them. Men know this, and they know they're the real targets of feminists, but they don't have to worry themselves about it because they use "their" women to attack other women. A woman using her male-given power to do her best to silence radical feminist points of view is the first hurdle I then need to overcome to get people to see the powerful men pulling the strings and propping up the women-shields.

Well, I didn't really want to go there tonight, but that's where I went anyway.

I hear you, thalia. I think the way we get around the way men hold up the women they own as shields is, we write the way we have written today, tonight, where men, but especially women, can read it.

{}

Heart

Hmmmm... I don't think there are any feminists that are pure. If there was such a woman, she'd probably be some kind of goddess!

And so I don't look so much at people to see whether they are feminist or not. I look at their actions to see if the actions are feminist or not.

So take a woman that believes in pro-choice but also supports porn. Her position on the abortion issue is feminist. Her support of porn is not. And that's how the two can co-exist in the same person. Some of a woman's thinking and actions will be feminist. Some of them will not be. When a woman's thinking and actions are consistently feminist, I call her a feminist. But that still doesn't make her every thought or action feminist. And I will call her to the carpet for her non-feminist thoughts and actions and will protest her calling them such. She can call herself feminist all she wants, just not on that particular issue.

Heart: Sally Kempton is the author of the quote about the enemy with outposts in your head and the only reason I remember that is it was somebody's sig line on the Ms boards forever. Whose was that? That I can't remember.

It was Sycamore's siggy.

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