On March 17, I (Heart) got an e-mail from Constance of William and Mary College which read in pertinent part:
My name is Constance. I’m a student at the College of William & Mary. I’m currently working with three other women to put together a panel on feminist perspectives on pornography at our school.
This project is a direct response to the debate around a recent rendition of the Sex Workers Art Show performed on our campus. We found that the discussion surrounding the SWAS over-simplified and glossed over many issues that the feminist debates around pornography and sex work have (I think productively) complicated and delved into. Our goals with this panel are to further explore the types of issues brought up by having the SWAS on our campus. We’ve chosen to focus primarily on pornography because we feel that narrowing our discussion in this way will allow this conversation to go into more depth.
…We’re currently working to find panelists who can add to the breadth of perspectives on our panel. In particular, we’re trying to find people who have worked in or with commercial pornography or who have been long-time activists around pornography, and who are feminist-identified and can speak to their relationship with feminism. …I’m hoping that you might maybe have contacts sort of close to Virginia who could present an anti-pornography position that is informed by leftist, radical feminist, and/or anti-capitalist views.
This sounded to me to be a sincere inquiry prompted by an interest in productive and honest debate of feminist issues around pornography, so I responded cordially and immediately, saying I had a few people in mind who I thought might be right for this panel and that I would forward the information along to them, which I then did. I wished Constance the best in what I thought sounded like an interesting project.
Sam Berg ultimately accepted an invitation to appear on this panel. However, she will not be attending. I fully and completely support her in her decision. Her statement follows. I have a few comments.
Sam Berg will be far from the the only feminist who will reject public debates with people she has encountered online. These rejections will have nothing to do with being intimidated by proposed opponents’ superior arguments or debating skills or with lacking confidence in one’s own. I would not expect any committed, woman-centered, feminist with an established internet presence to make herself available for debates with others on the internet who have demonstrated that they are willing to play fast and loose with the truth, who lie outright, who are malicious and hateful, who seem unstable or unbalanced, or who have dedicated themselves to harming the reputations, credibility or lives of committed feminist women. I likewise would not expect any woman to present for debate with those who cannot be depended upon to report events honestly or to act in good faith and with good will. Those of us who stand for girls and women, for the lives of girls and women, who stand against pornography, the prostituting of women, sex trafficking, and objectification of women’s bodies have been and continue to be the recipients of rape threats, death threats, and threats to harm us in every conceivable way. Given the risks already inherent in the work that we do, it would be foolhardy for us to present for public debate with those who have demonstrated that they do not care about our work or the risks that we take, or who have actively, publicly caused us specific harm, or attempted to cause us specific harm.
I’m posting Sam’s statement in order to support her and also to make the point that the harm done to us, as woman-centered feminists, on the internet, the risks we take, the dangers we face — these are serious, real and material. This isn’t funny. This isn’t “just the internet.” We must take this harm into consideration all of the time, and especially when we make decisions about invitations to appear publicly.
Following is Sam’s statement.
On March 19th I was invited to a panel debate on pornography at William and Mary College. My contact for the organizing group was Constance Sisk, who told me funding assistance could likely be found to fly me 3,000 miles across the country so I agreed to be penciled in until enough money could be raised. A call for donations among anti-pornography feminist colleagues covered airfare, and I had just enough vacation days earned at work to take off.
On March 24th I confirmed that I would gladly join the two other two confirmed panelists, on the anti-pornography side, John D. Foubert, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the College of William and Mary, and on the pro-pornography side Amanda Brooks, a former escort and sex work advocate.
Constance told me April 2nd that they moved the panel date to the 21st and the rest of April slid by without communication until April 16th when an anti-porn friend informed me that Jill Brenneman and RenEv blogged they would be on the panel. I had received no word from Constance of this and was dumbfounded that wholesale changes were being made to the panel just five days before the event without informing me. I had agreed to do the panel with John and Amanda, and I hadn’t gotten any emails saying she couldn’t attend or that they were looking for a replacement.
If they had told me Amanda couldn’t make it I would have suggested that pornographers and strip club owners are very easy to find through legal channels so they could have been asked to appear on the panel. I would have also suggested that the number of porn-using men on campus should have been able to produce just one pornsturbator willing to defend his porn consumption. Because I was under the impression that Constance & Co. were being honest with me about their intentions, I chalked up the lack of a pornographer or porn-using man on the panel to inept organizing and the extreme amount of publicity given recently to sex work advocacy at William and Mary.
How much sex work advocacy has been given a voice there can be answered with the name Constance. I spoke with John Foubert for the first time Thursday and he told me that Constance is a big pro-sex work advocate on campus and she brought the sex worker show to campus the past three years. A woman named Audrey invited John to the panel because Constance didn’t think he would agree if she asked him. Constance was a guest on Jill’s radio show a few weeks ago, and Jill did a pro-sex work chat with William and Mary college folks a few weeks ago, but in her emails Constance claimed ignorance of the lengthy pro-porn and radical blogosphere debates on this contentious subject.
Constance. Constance said she was excited to have me coming and offered to let me spend Monday night at her place, where she planned on cooking dinner for a group of people post-panel. How do you think it would feel if a pro-choice feminist were invited to a predominantly pro-life campus by a predominantly pro-life group and the pro-life organizer did everything Constance did without revealing her pro-life politics to her pro-choice panelist and house guest?
Little story: Heading home from presenting at a prostitution conference I was in the airport shuttle with a middle-aged black social worker with her name tag still pinned to her blouse. I’m a young, white, tattoo-bearing woman and at the time I think my hair was blue. We exchanged delicate pleasantries and danced around how we talked about the conference until she sat up earnestly and cut to the chase, “So, are you for or against?” When I replied, “Against,” she slouched down and sighed and we grooved on the same anti-prostitution track until we got to the airport.
I agreed to do the panel with John and Amanda three weeks ago. Though it was unethical to make major lineup changes at the last minute like that without telling me and things started feeling really fishy due to the lack of notification about the event anywhere besides pro-john blogs (it’s not listed on W&M’s events calendar or advertised around campus), I agreed to debate Jill. I could not agree to debate Ren, and I don’t suppose I have to tell most of you reading this why but I’ll touch upon it a tad anyway.
Here are Ren’s thoughts on sharing a panel discussion table with me:
“So serious I am taking it very seriously. And looking forward to it in my uniquely grim and serious way. Planning and preparing with a very serious, serious sneer on my face.And also laughing like a super villain the whole time. Why?
Once upon a time, I had a wish, a dream, a surely wank worthy fantasy of some anti-porn sex work types having to face down, in a forum, and debate those from the other side. And I wanted to be there.”
“And, yes, oh yes, I am seriously looking forward to it. I have so lusted for such an opportunity. Very seriously. And yes, if possible, I will have the whole thing on video. Get your cerebral wanking tissues ready.”
Serious serious sneers, super villain mocking laughter, wank worthy fantasies, whole thing on video, get your tissues ready.
Those are the words of a malicious person licking their chops in anticipation of a messy, humiliation-inducing scene they will relish. Those are the words of a person trying to waste my time with personal attacks when my time is best used educating audiences about the facts of human trafficking, prostitution, and pornography. The trash talk began within hours of being surreptitiously offered the spot on the panel, and that sort of smug pugnaciousness and disrespectful engagement was instrumental in prompting John to cancel his appearance on the panel and he suggested to me that I do the same. I believe we were right to cancel. I refuse to pose for the pornographically spiteful scene being painted.
What to do when a woman who says she’s happy in prostitution says, “Take me, for example” when you know if you actually do take her as her own example by quoting her own words and deeds she will complain, “How dare you make an example of me?” Say you’ll speak with her about prostitution as a global system and of all women’s oppression as the core problem but you don’t want to talk about her personally and she’ll reply, “You refuse to hear my truth.” If you talk about her personally like she insists then you’re the baddie radfem who makes it personal. It’s a lose-lose ruse.
I’d love to debate a porn-user, and there are tens of millions of them. I’d love to debate a pornographer and there’s no lack of those either. I’d love to debate a john. They don’t want to debate anti-pornography and anti-prostitution feminists. They want women in the prostitute supply pool to subjectively defend them against the objective mounds of testimony and undeniable data that anti-pornstitution feminists can produce proving pornography and prostitution violate women and girls human rights immensely. Most of you have seen how deftly I wield the wealth of information I’ve collected in my noodle to make the case against men’s right to economically coerce sex from others. Some of you have seen me do it before with Ren.
Saturday morning I woke up to an email from a professor asking if I can come speak to a few women’s studies classes of hers in May. It turns out I can make the date. Life skedaddles on and so do I.
Sam
Thanks Heart.
Not sure why the links aren’t working, but try these
http://punkassblog.com/2006/08/21/each-prostitution-post-is-a-beautiful-and-unique-snowflake/
http://punkassblog.com/2006/08/10/blow-is-totally-feminist-though/
Thanks for posting this. I had a stalker a few years ago who used threaten that he and his friends would show at places where he knew I would be present, like conferences and so forth. So I can imagine how Sam feels. Thanks for exposing the bait-and-switch or extreme incompetence (they didn’t find the time to tell her that they changed the person would she would be debating?) of the organizers.
Thanks for posting this Heart. Sam, I think your decision cancel your appearance was the right one to take whichever way you look at it.
I’ve seen this situation arise several times. A group or organisation of pro-pornography women organise a debate and go looking for anti-pornography speakers. In their invitations they invariably lie about the nature of the debate, who is organising it and how it will be chaired. If they cannot secure an anti-pornography speaker they will sometimes just find someone willing to pretend. The show must go on.
Thank you so much, Heart, for publishing this. It’s so great to have the truth finally exposed out here on the rad fem blogosphere!
[...]I’m not the only one to expose it. There’s also… Heart[...]
I’ve been asked to do many formal interviews and debates over the years. The essay I wrote for Feminista, I guess, made its way across many campuses across the U.S. and was the subject of hot debate for a few years. But not only don’t I call or email back those interested in interviews or debates, I don’t even acknowledge them. As far as I’m concerned, women are either human beings or they’re commodities that can be bought and sold. They can’t be both.
Well, I consider women to be human beings. Therefore, there is no discussion, debate, or controversy. I find it absurd to argue about whether women are human beings or not.
Thanks for posting this. I am not familiar with Sam’s work but this statement helps clarify her position. I AM familiar with Ren’s work and I’m not surprised Sam wouldn’t want to be on a panel with her — I wouldn’t either.
[...] background, read Heart’s opening paragraphs preceding Sam’s [...]
I don’t think these types of debates are really very effective.
Imagine using women’s basic human rights as pro and con!
Reminds me of the times when neo NAZI would be brought on TV shows to debate Jews, or when homophobes debated gays or lesbians.
Women’s real selves and human rights are on the line. Let the men who sell this stuff and the men who read porn get on the debate panel, or let a john get on a panel to face a crowd of feminists. The thing is the scum hide behind the prostitutes and sex workers they pimp in the first place.
Kind of reminds me of how the men are in hiding now that the polygamy cult has been exposed to the world. The men behind all of this are the ones who should face the glare of public light, but like the cockroaches they are, the minute the light comes on, they run for cover behind the women who argue for them. Real men indeed? Even patriarchy doesn’t follow its own rules when it comes to stuff like this.
I’m glad you women who were asked to be on the panel caught on to the deceit. The Ren quote was truly creepy.
What luckynkl said ressonates with me. To take part in a debate where women’s humanity is up for discussion amounts to giving validity to such a question. To take women seriously is to refuse to entertain the question of whether or not women are human, or to indulge the people asking it.
I am very glad that Sam didn’t “debate” for sounded a set-up.
I find so sad that the voices of radical feminists are silenced by the pro-pornography and pro-prostitution lobby. They do use tactics of intimidation and threats of violence. This cannot and should be dismissed, for the sex trade is not run on pacifist lines.
The constant attacks made on radical feminists for daring to say that the sex is highly damaging is scary. This is not a false fear. The mental abuse done by these attacks has silenced radical feminist bloggers.
What makes me very angry, is the implying that radical feminists know little or nothing about the “sex industry”.
There are many women who have become radical feminists because of their experiences of the sex trade.
Working in the sex trade shown me the realities of male hate and violence. I like other radical feminists tend to know through my body, how damaging the sex trade is.
For any radical feminists it is not an academic mind-game, but a lived reality.
[...] perspectives on pornography at the College of William & Mary, Virginia – read here, (also here, here, here, and [...]
Whether by design or not, the debate turned into a trap, and I think Sam is very smart to have called “game off.” Unfortunately, to publicly support the humanity and autonomy of women and girls can be dangerous. I certainly can see the point of those bloggers like Amy’s Brain who don’t permit comments on their sites. Those feminist bloggers who do allow comments get the contents of the kitchen sink flung at them with regularity. And those like you and Sam, who actually go out in public, are, no exaggeration, heroines who have every right to make sure they’re not walking into even more hell than usual!
Rebecca: What makes me very angry, is the implying that radical feminists know little or nothing about the “sex industry”.
There are many women who have become radical feminists because of their experiences of the sex trade.
Working in the sex trade shown me the realities of male hate and violence. I like other radical feminists tend to know through my body, how damaging the sex trade is.
Yeah, Rebecca, so so true.
My good friend Karla Mantilla is one of the women I forwarded on Constance Sisk’s e-mail to. She did participate in the panel, and I’m waiting to hear from her how it all went. It made sense to me that Karla would participate because her work has been as an academic and in paper publications primarily (off our backs) (in addition to the fact that she is GREAT in debate). But so far she hasn’t personally come across the radar internet-wise to the pro-porn/prostitution crowd in the way Sam and others of us have.
I talked with Karla — she says she will write about the panel, and then I will post it here as a guest post. She also says you can listen to the panel if you go here:
http://www.pornographypanel.blogspot.com
She told me a lot of interesting things that I am itching to say but I will restrain myself! But I am looking forward to her guest post and will put it up as soon as she sends it along to me.
Heart
From what I can collect on Google it seems the organizer in question has a history of making “sex worker” voices out to be the marginalized perspective of this debate. People who do this make me highly suspicious.
While I have heard the choice based argument for the sex industry on countless occasions covering mainstream radio, tv, print and internet I can count maybe on one hand where these same mass media outlets allow a radical feminist perspective.
I do believe marginalized voices deserve extra careful consideration and that includes full disclosure of how said debate events will unfold. And that very much includes radical feminists. It seems odd to me that the organizer, knowing she herself had been over campus events a radical feminist would oppose, would be so careless in keeping Sam informed of any changes.
Volatile subject matter merits a certain assuredness that opposing sides will be comfortable and treated fairly. The organizer should have recognized her own part in making Sam cautious given her track record and accounted for it. Sam would have been at the organizer’s mercy for how the debate was orchestrated and thus should have had her situation as a radical feminist, as well as someone making extra sacrifices (i.e. distance traveled, feeling indebted to friends lending financial resources), waaaay better considered and respected.
I support Sam 100% in her decision.
I took a quick look at the pornography panel blogspot, and I can see why this would be such a strange debate.
You just have to wonder about the quality of the people involved. Any man who stands up against pornography is a true hero! It’s a very scary thing for men to stand up against other men; they almost never do it in public.
When I read taglines like “sexual mercenary” I just throw my hands up and think, “we’ve got another wacko out there who wants to show off, embarass people in public with inappropriate sex talk, and they have decided to join the enemy rather than fight the enemy.”
Our culture, and by this I mean womanist culture, or feminist spaces or whatever, have become very vulgar. I’ve noticed how vulgar language has become in the U.S. Language itself is filled with “pornified” words, and drug referenced words.
Think of food being described as drugs, “I need my doughnut fix” “I need my sugar rush…” etc.
Pornography and the objectification of women have won this culture war. Young women think it’s hip and cool to be so vulgar that I just had to quit leading lesbian drop-in groups entirely, for the first time in about 25 years. I was disappointed in the decline of large lesbian urban communities once they lost connection with feminism.
It was a very sad day women. I’m not sure young women even know what they’ve lost in the process.
Ironically, the only men I hear publically condemn pornography and tell other men to get out of their “porn addiction” are right wing christian therapists on christian talk radio. I have never heard liberal men on liberal talk shows ever stand up against it. This really makes me wonder.
I often get the feeling that a lot of women just shrug their shoulders and let “boys be boys.” Women out in the general public seem cut off from their emotions, and largely unaware of how vulgar, and woman hating men have become.
From a personal point of view, I have never really understood the appeal of pornography. It seems cheap and flawed from an artistic point of view. The people involved in it are always menacing and creepy to me. Why would any woman support this?
You wouldn’t believe the sleaze that gay men buy into either, so men do this to other men, not just women. Gay men engaged in consensual mass murder “the AIDS epidemic” and could care less about the results. Their entire urban culture have become one vulgar sexual scene. Where once the guys talked about liberation, now you see signs all over the place in West Hollywood talking about the dangers of meth addiction.
So porn really destroys men and women.
When I hear women argue a pro-porn “feminist” position, I often wonder who I am dealing with. Are they incest survivors? Did they make the mistake of going out with too many boys, partying too much, and pretty much using up their valuable youth doing all this creepy stuff? Have they simply become jaded, and like the jaded and the pornified, they have no idea how they now look to the world at large?
Pornography has always horrified me. Sexual excess and the degradation of women horrified me. Heck, women with make-up pastered on their faces with breast implants horrify me.
I see the degradation of women, and it’s hard to bear. I see the lack of education, the dumbing down, the vulgarity and the creepiness of big city life.
We are really in very big trouble women. We have wolves invading feminist spaces claiming to be feminist. But it is really the women who have sold out to something really awful.
If even right wing christian men see this huge danger out there to society and to men themselves, then it makes you wonder about liberal men.
So there is something rather futile about pornography debates on college campuses. When I was in college, they were debating the ERA and the end of apartheid in South Africa. We were uncovering women’s herstory and starting women’s centers. We were concerned with women getting good educations, and for rape prevention to be available on campuses. We didn’t have words like “sex worker” –yuck, you had a more respectful attitude toward knowledge itself.
Now we are in the den of garbage, and I feel sorry for young women today. The good gets dragged into the vulgar mud. Goodness is made fun of, women who don’t want this type of world are also made fun of.
Then something really bad happens like warren jeffs and his creep-o cult, and you see the monsters being exposed. You see what women are conditioned to do by these men. You see how women can be brainwashed just as porn brainwashes women.
We’re in deep trouble when pro-porn can be considered a “feminist” position to begin with. It’s just an excuse of corrupt people to co-opt feminism. It is woman who want to justify their lives at the expense of all women.
A debate is just a set up for the creepiness of people who call themselves “sexual outlaws” “sexual mercenaries” or whatever other fake identity they take on for their own perverse enjoyment. In my book, they are simply corrupt, and they will not rest until they poison every woman’s mind with this porn propaganda. I’d never have debates to begin with. I wouldn’t debate evil, I would set out simply to educate women on the dangers of pornography. Let the creepos find some other slimy box to play in, but not on my radical feminist time!
P.S. The U.S Treasury department and banks train their employees to spot counterfeit money, by having them study in great detail authentic currency. This way they are so familiar with the real thing, that they can more easily spot the fake bills.
It seems that female sexuality may be about the same concept. Porn is the fake, and love is the real. We need to provide places for women to learn what real love and sisterhood is, and then women will gain strength, the strength they need to flee from the counterfeit in human behavior.
I just sent a little P.S. spam after this post :-0 well not a spam, rather my P.S. becamse spam
See how porn even degrades an ability to write sentences well!!! 
From Karla Mantilla:
Karla so rocks. For those of you who may not be familiar with her, here is her bio from the recent Come Together podcast we did together:
Feel free to comment on issues Karla raises here — so many good thoughts! — but since she’s not here to respond, let’s try to keep comments issue-oriented as opposed to directed to Karla herself, specifically.
Thanks Karla for those wonderful insights. I really think your ideas might have worked. Although I tend to think “debates” are a rather bad idea in terms of porn or no porn, I do believe your motives and preparation put you in the right place at the right time.
Students do need to hear about radical feminism from real radical feminists! This is a point of view and an entire way of life that has been erased in academentia. There has been a war on radical feminism for a long time, precisely because it so accurately names the enemy, provides the tools to overthrow patriarchy, and because it requires study and determination.
Most students these days are pretty badly prepared for in-depth philosophical discussions of any kind. It’s all about the hip, the snide and the mockery, precisely because I believe these kids are running scared. They are afraid to stand up for women’s rights, because patriarchy changes and shape shifts.
Young women don’t know their own herstory, because it isn’t taught. Just ask Mary Daly.
So thanks Karla. No apology was necessary. I look forward to actually hearing the podcast because I know my knowledge is way behind the times, and I want to learn more from you!
Oh my goddess I have so much to say about this! First of all, I also graduated from George Mason University so it’s awesome that you are in contact with Karla Mantilla. Wow!
Second of all, I went to see SWAS perform recently, about a couple of months ago, at GMU. I am vehemently anti-pornstitution and when I heard through email that the leader of the Women’s Coalition on campus was inviting and hosting SWAS to perform at GMU I wrote a letter to the leader of the Coalition as well as all the members of the listserv saying that while I supported these sex workers’ rights to come and perform, I also wondered whether this performance would be bias in favor of the pro-sex industry side of the debate.
What’s so funny, and annoying, is that the leader of the Women’s Coalition said that the performance “goes beyond the anti/pro-sex arguments” about pornography and prostitution and would not be biased, and yet, perpetuating this dichotomy and being very biased is EXACTLY what the performance did. It presented an extremely rosey and sanitized view of sex working, and despite the fact that WC’s leader promised a formal discussion to be scheduled regarding the performance they never had one. The SWAS performance, while getting me to chuckle every now and then, didn’t really tackle any issues at all, except for perpetuating the image that sex workers are these free and fun-loving women and if-you-don’t-like-naked-ladies-you-hate-sex! kinda deal. It was basically a series of 4 or 5 white middle/upper class women, one gay white guy, and one gay male-to-female Black guy doing burlesque/strip performances in between telling stories about their personal experiences, all just happy and rosey, of course.
What an insult to radical feminists who have worked really damned hard doing research and discussing with thought and seriousness the effects sex working has on women, men, and society as a whole. Only one person, a middle-aged white woman, talked about the less sparkly aspects of working in a strip club, and that was even watered down (she read from a book she wrote and almost a third of the audience got up and left for a piss break or whatever while she read). Anyway, it was pretty damned stupid. And this is what young feminists are learning on our college campuses: that sex workers are having a GRRREAT! time at their “jobs” and that any feminist who doesn’t like cheering for stripping ladies and their repulsive “johns” is “anti-sex.”
Just great. Hope that wasn’t too off-topic, but I thought I’d add about my experience of the SWAS performance, which was what got this whole thing started.
Based on some of the responses from the pro-porn or nonabolitionist side, I think Karla accomplished her goals:
Link
Jill Brennemann, one of the pro-porn speakers:
Link
Karla’s goals (or a couple):
Why I think she accomplished them (among other reasons):
I’m moderating this thread strictly and won’t allow it to be pissed upon in any way, shape or form. At RE’s the male pornhounds — including a fairly scary hardcore sm pornographer — are there full force; some of the threads about this over there are about 90 percent men. I’m also going to be careful about approving men’s comments here, even friendly fire. Every woman here supports Sam and her decision and has said so very strongly, including Karla. I think we are in solidarity and it’s important that we stand in solidarity.
Thanks, Heart, for all the additional info in your comment thread.
“At RE’s the male pornhounds — including a fairly scary hardcore sm pornographer — are there full force; some of the threads about this over there are about 90 percent men.”
Ha, ha, I’m not surprised!
Thank you= That’s another thing that proves our point when we say that pro-porners are mostly male as a matter of fact!
“Every woman here supports Sam and her decision and has said so very strongly, including Karla. I think we are in solidarity and it’s important that we stand in solidarity.”
Yeah, we stand in solidarity for you, Sam!
And your article was great.
Heart. Reading the comments you’ve posted by ‘Ren’ and ‘Jill’, I get the impression that these comments were made out of spite towards Sam. I find their comments patronising.
Yes, I know what you mean, Arantxa and I know that they are spiteful towards Sam. But, in light of what they’ve said here, in the future they cannot claim (1) that radical feminists refuse to debate them so far as pornography goes; (2) that they all showed up for a debate and no radical feminist came; (3) that radical feminists mistreat them in debates. (4) that radical feminists are afraid to debate them; (5) that radical feminists cannot hold their own in debate. Posting their comments here creates a record of what has happened, a history. Whatever ends up gone in the future, for whatever reason, if posts or blogs are deleted, the record here remains and will not change.
Any attempts to come between radical feminists or to bracket off the good ones as against the bad ones fail and will continue to fail. Karla has clearly stated that she understands why Sam didn’t attend and that she supports Sam. Karla didn’t go at the last minute or anything like that. She intended to go all along to support Sam; when Sam withdrew, Karla participated in the panel. I think Karla is in a completely different situation from Sam just from the standpoint of history, the inernet, etc. (not to be redundant, I know I already said this, but it’s important, so I’m restating it.)
Very well presented everyone, and good to know that as we all suspected the “90% male porn-hounds” are really behind the billions being made off of pornography. They use naieve pro-porn adjitators– I wouldn’t even call them feminists in any way shape or form.
Karla was brave, and Sam was right on too! I feel proud of our radical feminist heroines today!
P.S. “Porn-hound” — we shouldn’t compare evil porn men to “hounds”{ hounds have dignity and love people. The porn men just hate women and celebrate rape and sexual degredation of men and women. Sorry dogs…
We know the creepy are out there on the internet, so I’m glad Heart is building a record of how radical feminists really do respond to this stuff on college campus panel discussions. Radical feminists have always 100% supported women’s human rights above all. The porn-men have nothing to do with the rights of women or their dignity.
Wow, this subject is so contaminating, even writing this little bit is horrifying to me.
Satsuma:
Wow, this subject is so contaminating, even writing this little bit is horrifying to me.
This is exactly the way I feel, too.
Mary
Good point about “pornhounds,” Satsuma, I will have to retire my use of that word out of respect for hound dogs, those cuties. I love all animals. My land is pretty much a wildlife preserve. There are four deer, a doe and three yearlings, regularly in my yard. Often they come within 20 feet or so of the house. The bird choirs this time of year are absolutely amazing! They are all outdoing themselves to get their part out there.
And the bunnies, little brown ones with white tails, raccoons (yeah, annoying, but so very lovely), mice, coyotes, foxes. I do feel so privileged to keep these six and a half acres safe for them. One reason they are here more and visible more is, up the road a mile or so land has been cleared, houses built. Not here. Just a few humans, some sheep, kitty cats.
I love animals too- I have seen mice, squirrels, rats, mandarin ducks, mallard ducks, a heron, magpies and more on the campus at University X. It makes me so happy to see them, it can really make my day. This may make me unusual, but you know that thing about how you’re never more than 3 feet away from a rat? I find that rather comforting. (Obviously I’m not suggesting that vast colonies of rodents are not problematic, but I like to see how animals going on living around us, despite the damage men do the planet and their habitat).
Maybe I should post some more pictures on my site. But those damn mice… they run away too quickly!
A clarification from Sam Berg:
http://maggiehaysagainstporn.blogspot.com/2008/04/message-from-sam-berg-just-to-clarify.html
In case someone is interested, Heart.
I went to the links you suggested Maggie. Thanks for posting them. It was very disturbing reading.
The key to all of this is to stand firm in opposition to pornography and prostitution, and to get this information out to as many women as possible.
We need more support groups for women who have been raised in porn and sexually abusive homes. We need to educate mothers on how to protect their children from sexually abusive men. We need to get women educated so that they don’t date men involved with any of this stuff.
The fact that liberal men defend this, and conservative men secretly buy porn and prostitutes, should tell you something.
It’s very rare for men ever to stand up against porn or even rape. I don’t think I have ever heard a man say in a group setting that all of this is evil, and that it must end.
The most heart breaking thing is of course women who defend this stuff and pervert the very point of feminism as a vast human rights movement for women worldwide. I don’t think a lot of these women have any idea of what feminism is, and they get seduced by male arguments surrounding free speech. Do women have free speech when their websites are attacked by the porn-meisters? Does Sam have free speech when she gets attacked? Or how about the Genderberg online support network for anti-porn feminists?
The truth is, these men have no intention of supporting freedom of speech for radical feminists. They are afraid of our arguments, but most important, they fear that women will finally wake up. The porn labor supply will refuse to come to work! That’s what they fear! Men will defend their sexual entitlement till the day they die. They believe their p—- rule the world, but they are wrong. Women will gain in power, men will be put in jail for their sexual crimes, and pro-porn feminists will be challenged.
I still believe that a lot of pro-porn women were badly sexually abused as children. Women into S & M had terrible lives, and most of the time, these women have never had the help they need. Or they had a boyfriend who got them into it. I’ve seen this creepy sexually inappropriate behavior more and more in the young lesbian community. With the decline of lesbian feminism, I’ve seen a lot of lesbians stuck out in the world, without an ideology or philosophical system to help them defend themselves and thrive. Lesbians are at a huge disadvantage in the world without radical feminism in my opinion. It is a huge advantage to be free of the sexual colonizers IN OUR HOMES, but if we don’t know how to use the power of radical feminist thought, lesbians will be subject to the evils of the unexamined market place or the contaminating world gay men have created.
When you see the effects of porn in other countries, and see how it destroys gay men as well as women, you see a larger picture.
Pro-porn women and the billion dollar industry they are supporting (it’s about money, and men feel they have a right to exploit anyone for money in any way they can get away with), are rarely honest about what their motives truly are.
Since I grew up in a time when all of this was far less pervasive than it is today, I can kind of see the “before” and “after” affects of what is hate speech and hate pictures with women as the victims. Pornography is also racist and filled with racially contaminating messages too, but that’s another subject.
Now porn has invaded lesbian spaces, and I can see how it preys on women who are clearly very mentally ill. I’ve seen the very worst of this in lesbian drop-in groups over the last four years. To add insult to injury, now we have MTFs who are allowed into lesbian spaces by LGBT “centers” (read “no feminists allowed), and these people have brought the pornified male mind right into the room. It’s so shocking that you wouldn’t believe it if I explained what those MTFs actually said!
I don’t know what it is going to take to get this message across that pornography harms women, and degrades all it comes into contact with.
The key to standing up to evil and the advocates of evil, is to respond consistently with the truth. It you provide the spaces for women to come to and air the human rights message that porn and the buying of women is a violation of half the world’s human rights, then you help change the world.
The porn marketers and pimps are counting on vulnerable women to fall into their spider traps (sorry, spiders, how about “metal traps), they want to make their money. They are very much like drug dealers; they try to get people addicted. Pornography is addicting, and internet porn is very incideous. Even men call into right wing christian radio to tell how they are trying to overcome the addiction to internet porn and how it ruined their lives.
We had millions of gay men die in the early 80s to the early 90s precisely because gay men created a really sexually sick subculture. They didn’t care about sexually transmitted diseases, they didn’t care about the safety of other men, and they thought flooding gay male social spaces with drugs was fine and dandy. These guys died by the millions. The gay male porn industry is huge, and it uses men and does not have safe sex standards at all. Men buy this stuff and over time they become extremely sleazy and corrupt.
I’ve seen it rot the minds of friends of mine, and this is male on male sleaze. This is what men do to each other.
We often think it is a war of men against women, but the gay male porn culture proves who is really behind all of this — sleazy profiteers, who don’t care about anyone. They have no ethics. They sell the heroine of the soul, and they will fight with every sleaze weapon they can, because if women woke up to the danger and refused to get into it, if gay men gained self-esteem and self-respect — if the world realized the power of human rights for women, this world would really change.
If we had enough love and support for all women out there, and if men were respected for being themselves and not taken for a ride in patriarchy as well, the porn producers would go out of business.
They fear the day when the sexual colonization of women comes to an end. It’s what we have always worked for. Only technology has made all of this worse.
P.S. At least dogs give me hope, no matter what, they still run up to humans to teach a very valuable lesson — tails wagging, they look at you and say “just show love!”
Spam ship launched … Spam Nina, Spam Pinto, Spam Santa Maria sailing the ocean blue in 1492. I’ve always loved that little song from childhood… couldn’t resist sharing part of it here
Heart, I’ve just put up the audio and transcripts for FAC’s (Feministst Against Censorship) contribution to a debate at Ladyfest Newcastle 2006. I have observed or listened to three such p*rn debates in the last couple of years and what I found is that once I’d heard the pro-p*rn arguments I had no reason to worry about my ability to refute them: all they do is lie and distort. It’s a good learning opportunity for women to actually listen to how people defending p*orn lie and distort and to really hear the underlying assumptions and beliefs they hold. It’s not that I think debates are positive but sexism is showed in our faces every day and recognising it for what it is is a positive thing.
http://xtan.wordpress.com/2008/04/23/ladyfest2006/
I agree with everything you said, Satsuma. Thank you for all those very insightful comments you’ve made above.
Yeah, Satsuma, that was great (and this time, even your post alerting me to spam went into spam!).
Thanks, Arantxa and Maggie, looking forward to checking out all of these links.
This is just a response to a previous spam alert, nothing of great political consequence
The spam alert going into the spam
Put the spam in the coconut and call me in the morning…
Heart says:
“(and this time, even your post alerting me to spam went into spam!).”
This silly thing had me howling with laughter. I must be getting on the hysterical side lately. But sometimes the littlest things strike me funny
I edited my comment in 23 from “pro-porn side” to “pro-porn or nonabolitionist side”. Jill Brennemann says she is not pro-pornography and I have no reason not to believe Jill as to that.
Thank you. I appreciate the clarification.
[...] does the best job of “keeping a record”, as she says, of what has been happening in On the Pornography Debate at William and Mary College – in support of Samantha Berg. Sam Berg will be far from the the only feminist who will reject public debates with people she [...]
This story is so sad. I started reading Constance’s e-mail and I felt really happy that someone was doing something, and then it all fell apart.
I support Sam’s decision too. This whole situation is proof that “freedom of speech” only applies to some people.