Open Mike 24: Assessing pornography in a feminist framework

Folks, we will be having our regular Tuesday open mike session today.

Thursday Open Mike 24 (now on Tuesday)
Topic: Assessing pornography in a feminist framework
August 5, 2008 [Tuesday]
@ 8PM in Gaurav's House.
1781 Spyglass Drive, #244
Austin TX 78746

Sorry about the late notice, been a little busy. Some links below.

Thanks,

-Murali

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I havent had much time to collect good information or read up much on it, but anyways, here are some links:

Robert Jensen, UT journalism professor, has come out with a new book, Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. The book expresses some strong opinions:

Pornography is big business, a thriving multi-billion dollar industry so powerful it drives the direction of much media technology. It also makes for complicated politics. Anti-pornography arguments are frequently dismissed as patently "anti-sex"—and ultimately "anti-feminist"—silencing at the gate a critical discussion of pornography's relationship to violence against women and even what it means to be a "real man."In his most personal and difficult book to date, Robert Jensen launches a powerful critique of mainstream pornography that promises to reignite one of the fiercest debates in contemporary feminism. At once alarming and thought-provoking, Getting Off asks tough but crucial questions about pornography, manhood, and paths toward genuine social justice.

Pornography is a civil rights issue, by Andrea Dworkin
http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneChaptIVF1.html
http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/WarZoneChaptIVE.html

A great many men, no small number of them leftist lawyers, are apparently afraid that feminists are going to take their dirty pictures away from them. Anticipating the distress of forced withdrawal, they argue that feminists really must shut up about pornography--what it is, what it means, what to do about it--to protect what they call "freedom of speech." Our "strident" and "overwrought" antagonism to pictures that show women sexually violated and humiliated, bound, gagged, sliced up, tortured in a multiplicity of ways, "offends" the First Amendment. The enforced silence of women through the centuries has not.

A different take on the issue, reviewing Jensen and his book:

A mixed review
http://briarpatchmagazine.com/2008/02/28/getting-off/

Getting Off is likely not a book that will achieve the widespread cultural awakening Jensen seeks, simply because both his arguments and tactics will alienate most readers. In his attempt to shock readers out of their complacency by forcing them to face the misogyny reflected in the worst aspects of pornography, Jensen leaves little room for the off-screen realities of complicated, contradictory, conflicted sexuality.

The tyranny of Anti-porn Feminism
http://www.priceofliberty.com/freesex.htm

Feminists for Free Expression
http://www.ffeusa.org/html/statements/statements_pornography.html

Defining sex-positive feminism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_positive_feminism

Another very personal account tying pornography to sexual violence:

Getting the Monster in My Cupboard: A Personal Account by Rebecca
http://manufacturedcontempt.wordpress.com/2007/06/30/getting-the-monster-in-my-cupboard-a-personal-account-by-rebecca/