The 1970’s porn movie Deep Throat is coming to movie theaters near you:
Deep Throat,” the infamous 1972 adult film that led to a government crackdown on pornography, is being re-released in theaters as a new generation of lawmakers wages a renewed assault on smut, trade paper Daily Variety reported in its Tuesday edition.The release of the Linda Lovelace opus, which was banned at the time in 23 states, coincides with the premiere of the documentary “Inside Deep Throat,” which hits theaters in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Boston on Friday.
The original film, which was made in six days for $25,000 and has grossed over $600 million, will not be ready until at least Feb. 18, the paper said. Las Vegas-based Arrow Prods., which owns the rights to the mob-funded “Deep Throat,” started striking 10 prints on Monday, it added. Five of the prints will be edited to garner an “R” rating, which allows admission to children aged under 17 if accompanied by an adult.
The media reports I have read seem to present the relaunch as yet another battle between the freedom of expression gang and those who want to ban pornography, and every one of them so far has taken the side of the freedom of expression. This is not that surprising. Porn is everywhere today and things which were seen as shocking in the early 1970’s are no longer so. That porn, and especially violent and misogynistic porn, might directly or indirectly hurt some women is not a hot topic in the mainstream media, and neither is the possibility that plentiful supply of porn geared towards the sexual desires of mostly men might lead to a distorted view of women’s sexual needs and the expected sexual behavior of women. Instead, when something sexual provokes wider outrage this tends to be about the consequences of porn to its unintended viewers, such as children. The Janet Jackson breast episode is a good example of what the media might address.
All this explains the treatment of Catherine McKinnon’s comments about the movie. She participated in a panel discussion at the New York premiere of Inside the Deep Throat, a documentary about the movie, and she appears to have been the one on the panel who was most vigorously arguing the unpopular points about porn’s possible effects. This is how she was written up later on:
Mitchell looked on helplessly as McKinnon did her thing, claiming that the film we had just watched was promoting the acceptance of rape. At one point, however, her righteous zeal became unhinged when she claimed that it was not possible to do deep throat safely, that it was a dangerous act that could only be done under hypnosis. “What’s so funny?” she snapped as the audience rippled with mirth. Todd Graff’s hand shot up – “I can do it,” he said, and the room echoed with a chorus of gay men going “me too!” (Gigi Grazer – wife of Brian – later told Graff to stop bragging and that she could do it better than him and had the rocks on her fingers to prove it. Touché). But La McKinnon was not to be discouraged; she claimed that emergency rooms were filled with women victims of throat rape, not to mention the ones who hadnt even made it that far and had died in the act.
Former New York Times movie critic Elvis Mitchell moderated, and the group consisted of HarperCollins publisher and controversy lightning rod Judith Regan, journalist Peter Boyer, famed criminal defense attorney Alan Dershowitz and feminist professor Catherine McKinnon.The latter, who turned out be quite mad, I thought, immediately coined the phrase “throat rape” about what happened on screen to the movie’s late star, Linda Lovelace.
That declaration produced hissing, and a few laughs, from the audience.
McKinnon, infamously known in intellectual circles as the “feminist censor,” does not often appear before mainstream audiences. Her “partner in crime” is the militant feminist Andrea Dworkin, who was not among us.
“Inside Deep Throat” producer Brian Grazer’s hair was already standing straight up. More of McKinnon’s theories might have made it curl.
And so on. In other words, Catherine McKinnon is viewed as an extremist, someone quite removed from mainstream ideas, someone who is a safe object for general ridicule. Yet I could list many current commentators whose views are more extremist in some other directions and who still get accorded both respect and a place in public debate. Consider Ann Coulter’s proposal to nuke Islamic countries and to convert them to Christianity or Michelle Malkin’s views on detention camps as a good way to prevent terrorism. To name the men whose ideas are even more outrageous would take me the rest of this post. Clearly, some extreme views are more acceptable than others.
But what does McKinnon really say? The anti-feminist websites tend to have a field day picking out isolated comments from her writings, all of which are intended to show how unreasonable McKinnon is, and sometimes her name is used in debates to tar all feminists with the same brush of freakiness. This is partly McKinnon’s own fault. She likes to use strong statements as a rhetorical device, and they do work to draw attention to what she is saying. But they tend to do this only in a superficial sense and seldom lead to an extended discussion of what her actual arguments are. Or this is what I believe. Though using careful phrazing is not as exciting to begin with, it tends to turn fewer listeners off and ultimately results in a more fruitful discussion.
Consider the often heard argument that McKinnon compares all heterosexual sex to rape. I read the book in which this idea is discussed before I was aware of McKinnon’s mythological proportions among the anti-feminists, and this let me interpret her arguments quite differently. Not necessarily agree with them, but to see what her point might be, and to me it was that if sexuality is defined by purely patriarchal standards women living in patriarchy are unaware of their true sexual desires and needs and therefore cannot in a fundamental sense make free choices to engage in sex. This may not be the reading that McKinnon intends, but it’s quite a different reading from the one which equates voluntary sex with rape. Even more generally, McKinnon writes theory and to understand her arguments one must understand the way she defines the concepts. Not that this excuses her use of the terms in public debates without proper definitions.
All this is background for my argument that when McKinnon called the events in the Deep Throat “throat rape” what she said was quite different from what the audience heard. Linda Lovelace, the actress performing in the movie, stated in her autobiography that swallowing a penis so deeply did not come naturally to her but needed a lot of practice. She also revealed that her then-partner and manager had used physical violence to control her during the making of the movie:
Unlike two earlier autobiographies, Ordeal was not a titillating affair, and the liberation Lovelace talked about was not sexual but deeply personal. Chuck Traynor was not her ‘creator’ as she had previously announced, but her abuser. She claimed that she had made Deep Throat under threat of physical harm, and explained that Traynor would use guns and knives to get his way. There was also a confession that some found ironic: on the set of the movie, Lovelace felt less threatened than she had before; the movie people were a creative family, and she drew strength from her new relationships. Traynor observed this, and would double his beatings.
The generous reading of McKinnon’s comments would take all this into account. But feminists seldom receive generous readings these days and radical feminists practically never, even when the point they are making is one that deserves wider discussion.
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I’m not sure MacKinnon’s point is a good one, though, considering that the discussion was about the film and not about the making of the film. I do think she goes overboard sometimes, such as when she suggested that the rape camps in Bosnia were a result of the widespread use of pornography by Serbian men, without apparently considering that the pornography was symptomatic of the Serbians’ attitudes towards women and that the rape camps were the result of those attitudes combined with hatred of the Bosnians.
I’ve read a few stories on this too, and most remarkable to me is the either complete elimination of Linda’s oft-given testimony that Deep Throat is a recording of her sexual torture and rape or its glossing over as when the NYTimes put it as “Ms. Lovelace claimed she had been coerced into appearing in the film”
http://nytimes.com/2005/02/09/movies/09thro.html
Everyone else in the article “says” or “cites” or “adds”, but only the now-dead rape victim “claims”.
claimed she was coerced
said (wrote, testified in court) that she was raped
What’s in a word?
Poor Catherine MacKinnon. So privileged. So clumsy with words. So misandrist. So misunderstood.
She wants to make a career out of hating men. She gets what she deserves. It’s called karma, d00d.
By “she gets what she deserves,” you mean she gets an enourmously successful legal and academic career, and widespread respect within her field?
Gosh, you’re right – MacKinnon has gotten what she deserves. Or, rather, the due she’s earned.
I want to comment on zuzu’s assertion about Bosnia.
Chris Hedges, foriegn correspondent from the NY Times in Bosnia and other wars and author of the book “War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning” was on KBOO radio last year and he said that within 24 hours of war breaking out in Bosnia pornography sales soared and shelves of pornography were emptied.
You may discount the “if a then b” one-way directional flow of pornography’s effects if you want, and since few things in the world are so clearly unidirectional that would be sensible, but there’s much evidence supporting increased porn usage in militarized cultures (like the modern US) and increased amounts of sexual torture (like genocidal rape) in war, so porn obviously plays some important psychological role in war zones where it’s available and that’s not unconnected to increased sexual violence in war zones.
Of course, Hedges is “allowed” to publicly say such things about pornography and the Bosnian war and MacKinnon isn’t despite her world-changing work on behalf of women’s legal rights.
This is written on the back of MacKinnon’s just out new book, “Women’s Lives, Men’s Laws”, which I’m reading currently and enjoying immensely:
“MacKinnon is a figure of singular importance for the history of feminist thought and for its present. Before MacKinnon, there was no legally usable concept of sexual harassment. Now in any law library there are shelves of publications developing her ideas. Before her work, sexual advances in the workplace were not typically seen to involve an asymmetry of power (although they always did involve this, and women knew it). Now even the most conservative judge will use MacKinnon’s framework of analysis in adjudicating cases. Before MacKinnon, again, issues of sexual equality were commonly dealt with by saying “equals to equals, unequals to unequals” – so if a difference could be shown between women and men, for example that only women get pregnant, not providing employees with pregnancy insurance did not constitute sex discrimination. After MacKinnon the concept of equality was understood in terms of a different antonym – subordination, second-class citizenship. Before MacKinnon, the law of obscenity focused on the alleged offensiveness of the sexy. Now even those who do not agree with her practical proposals agree that issues of violence, subordination, and abuse must be central in coming to grips with the problem of pornography. Finally, it is to a considerable extent due to MacKinnon’s influence that sexual abuse of women is now regarded as a major human rights violation internationally. In short, as even critics of her views will readily agree, there is no single person who has done more to change the course of American law. She is among the century’s most important thinkers, and I can think of none whose theoretical work has done more to improve human well being.”
–Martha Nussbaum, author of “Cultivating Humanity”
Mac has earned my utmost admiration. Yes, her success and her ability to change the face of debate nationally reflects her hard work and great intellect.
[Post edited by Amp.]
Also, I am a very privileged person whining about how ‘oppressed’ I am. How lame and pathetic. Of course, anti-feminist bigots of either sex will support hatemongers like myself. That I consider anything I say worth reading or posting just shows that I need to spend more time baking yummy goodies.
I think I’ll go bake a chocolate cake now. Perhaps a layer cake, with pudding. Yum!
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1. Where is the disclosure that Echidne owns a store that sells porn? Did the Maggie debate teach us anything?
2. The lady’s name is MacKinnon, not McKinnon. Strange to behold someone who has really read any significant amount of feminist discussion about porn get something like that wrong.
Fleezil, do you have any rational points to make, any logical analysis, or a coherent argument about pornography, women, and the media? Or did you just want to spend your time throwing a temper tantrum about MacKinnon and prove Echide right?
Oh, wait. Don’t bother. Your posts speak for themselves.
Fleezil, you’ve made your point. Now please stop posting on my website, ever again. Thanks.
Wait. I had assumed, that since we are all doing the Deep Throat nostalgia bit, that Linda Lovelace had retracted her statements that the film is the document of her sexual torture. Now you are telling me that this is not the case, and all this publicity is going on with the complete elision of this fact? I feel sick.
Well, sexual torture seems to be the rage these days. Woe to our country.
I only listen to critics of MacKinnon who have actually read and understood her work. She approaches the topic of pornography from an atypical perspective, so her views are not likely to coincide with any conventional wisdom, but she’s not the lunatic she is so often excoriated as being.
For that reason, when I read this account of her comments, I’m fairly confident that she’s being misrepresented yet again.
On the substantive question of pornography, I am not sure that sexual explicitness per se is deleterious (it probably isn’t). But take a look at the content of your typical pornography some time, and tell me that the vast majority of it doesn’t say some truly messed up things, not just about women and what women want in sex, but also about what is sexy, what men ought to find sexy, and how sexual relationships ought to be. I know some people say, “Well, we know it’s fantasy, it just gets us off, we can tell the difference.” Maybe they can. I hope they can. But I know that a lot of people are consuming a LOT of porn, and consuming any form of media in large quantities will have an effect on you.
I recently got a spam email advertising a video tape that teaches you how to satisfy your boyfriend by deep throating. What kind of relationships are people having that if they want to experiment with a technique, they have to learn it from TV rather than play with their partners?
I have no objection to pornography that is produced by consenting adults. I have a very big objection to documentation of sexual crimes being glorified in any way. Are we going to let the Heidl film be distributed as well? This film should never be shown because it was a part of numerous criminal acts. It isn’t about censorship. It’s about not allowing sexual predators to profit from glorification of their crimes.
Morgaine, I think part of the problem is that the line between crime and consent is often blurred by coercion, making the choice of what “should” be shown to have a rather large blurry area. Just to pick on “Bang Bus” (I hope I’m getting the name right), is that criminal? Is it degrading? Should degradation be criminal? How does one prove consent in a film?
Here’s an interesting article from feministing:
http://feministing.com/archives/000545.html
True, but in the case of Deep Throat, the star has stated that she was performing at gunpoint and suffered physical and psychological abuse throughout. Sorry, I’m not familiar with the other reference you made.
I followed the link, and left a detailed response over there. As I said, the intent of “bang bus” makes it criminal. The women in question don’t know the actual intent. How do you prove consent? Well, a signed release and a check payable to an actress is a start.
Any form of deception surrounding a sexual encounter should be criminal. It shouldn’t be legal for a guy to tell a girl he’s single if he is, in fact, married. It shouldn’t be legal to tell a woman you are faithful and then father a child with someone else. Women should have legal recourse in those cases.
It shouldn’t be legal to film people without their consent except in public places. It isn’t legal to stalk unsuspecting women to degrade them on film. That’s Conspiracy to Rape. My opinion is that if the man has that intention at the outset, the woman can’t consent. Any act that takes place is non-consensual because he has pre-meditated an exploititve act without her knowledge.
At one point, however, her righteous zeal became unhinged when she claimed that it was not possible to do deep throat safely, that it was a dangerous act that could only be done under hypnosis. “What’s so funny?”? she snapped as the audience rippled with mirth. Todd Graff’s hand shot up – “I can do it,”? he said, and the room echoed with a chorus of gay men going “me too!”? (Gigi Grazer – wife of Brian – later told Graff to stop bragging and that she could do it better than him and had the rocks on her fingers to prove it. Touché).
Haven’t seen the movie + not familiar with CM’s writings, so this is just a guess. Since even controlled fellatio will elicit a gag reflex, I think CM was pointing out that situations where the woman doesn’t [can’t] have control over the fellatio act can be dangerous. Mentioning this, when discussing a fellatio movie, isn’t righteous zeal or a sign of becom[ing ] unhinged. It simply denotes an understanding of anatomy and physiology. On the other hand, the anecdote about TG, GG, and a number of men in the room having a hypoactive gag reflex, or being desensitized speaks poorly of the reporter’s understanding of the topic under discussion. [People, even accomplished fellators, have to work at overriding the gag reflex.]
From the articles I gather that Linda Lovelace was forced to perform fellatio in the movie Deep Throat. This is an outright crime, for which the responsible must be punished.
Now the question seems to be: can the movie Deep Throat be showed in theathers? This is a tough question; can you show a movie whose creation required a criminal act (and which, to certain degree, glorifies this crime)? The three possible answers I can think of are,
a) Yes. All movies should be able to be shown, given freedom of speech.
b) No. You can’t show movies whose creation required a criminal act.
c) We should ask Linda Lovelace’s permission about wether or not to show the movie, given that the crime was, in the end, performed on *her*.
The closest analogy that comes to mind would be snuff, so a) seems extremely unlikely. The liberal in me favors c) , although I wouldn’t find b) bad either.
Chris Hedges, foriegn correspondent from the NY Times in Bosnia and other wars and author of the book “War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning”? was on KBOO radio last year and he said that within 24 hours of war breaking out in Bosnia pornography sales soared and shelves of pornography were emptied.
You may discount the “if a then b”? one-way directional flow of pornography’s effects if you want, and since few things in the world are so clearly unidirectional that would be sensible, but there’s much evidence supporting increased porn usage in militarized cultures (like the modern US) and increased amounts of sexual torture (like genocidal rape) in war, so porn obviously plays some important psychological role in war zones where it’s available and that’s not unconnected to increased sexual violence in war zones.
I do discount the “if a then b” as stated. After all, the sales of pornography soared after the violence started, not the other way around. And you can be sure that there was violence against and oppression of women in the culture — if not on such an organized and wide scale — prior to the availability of porn. In the article I read, and I admit that it’s been quite a while, she made the “if a then b” link, which I found simplistic, given the simmering ethnic/racial hatred of the region and the fact that one of the purposes of the camps were to “breed out” the Bosnians by impregnating Bosnian women with Serbian sperm. That’s a very old strategy, far predating porn.
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1. Where is the disclosure that Echidne owns a store that sells porn? Did the Maggie debate teach us anything?
2. The lady’s name is MacKinnon, not McKinnon. Strange to behold someone who has really read any significant amount of feminist discussion about porn get something like that wrong.
1. I don’t sell porn. But I’m planning to sell t-shirts with snakes peeking out of the armpits, so check my blog in a few months if you want to buy one!
2. I get lots of things wrong with the English language. It’s not my first language. The Mc/Mac thing is something about whether it comes from Ireland or Scotland?
3. You have a good critical approach here.
“After all, the sales of pornography soared after the violence started”
No, it sold like hotcakes *concurrently* with the official announcement of the war’s escalation. There was much violence in the area before the offical announcement, but it was the announcement that brought the immediate surge in porn consumption.
Why?
No one thinks average, non-raping men in Bosnia bought porn by the truckloads as the war began then became rapists during the war because of it. Why did men’s consumption of misogynist, degrading pornography increase so dramatically as they mentally prepared themselves for the coming destruction and chaos of war? Why did a not-feminist war correspondent feel this point was worth bringing up in a radio interview when speaking of the impact the outbreak of the Bosian war had on people there?
“she made the “if a then b”? link, which I found simplistic”
I have read and am currently reading MacKinnon, and if there is one adjective that absolutely doesn’t define her theories it is simplistic.
There was lung cancer before filtered cigarettes, too, but a sharp spike in sales as people mentally prepare themselves for an announced war is worth noting by addictions researchers.
How in the blogosphere did I get that idea in my head?
My humblist apologies, Echidne.
lso, I am a very privileged person whining about how ‘oppressed’ I am. How lame and pathetic. Of course, anti-feminist bigots of either sex will support hatemongers like myself. That I consider anything I say worth reading or posting just shows that I need to spend more time baking yummy goodies.
I think I’ll go bake a chocolate cake now. Perhaps a layer cake, with pudding. Yum!
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Was this intended for me? I am not quite sure, but I am indeed a very privileged person compared to the vast majority of human beings. And so are probably all of us who have access to the internet. Chocolate cakes are excellent, by the way. You should try baking one and eating it with a really good friend.
See, to me the increased use of porn suggests a lot of young men in an all-male environment (without women to court or have sex with). This still leaves the possibility of a link to sexual violence, particularly if the porn in question fed negative views of women. And of course, that last seems disturbingly likely. But we still have no clear proof. Given MacKinnon’s history of backing unconstitutional censorship, you can see why people might take a skeptical view of her arguments.
How does one prove consent in a film?
To satisfy the cops, you mean? Because in court, the prosecution has the burden of proof.
Never mind the legality, let’s talk about what’s right and what’s wrong. Look, I enjoy porn now and again, but I have no desire to see “Deep Throat.” With or without the horrifying accusations Lovelace made about the methods used to make her film it, the supposedly playful theme of the movie is that this woman has a clitoris in her throat.
That’s two big strikes against it, as far as I’m concerned, and two strikes which should be mentioned in any responsible discussion of the film’s rerelease. There are men and women who enjoy performing oral sex, and some who enjoy deep throat, but none of them enjoy it because of stimulation leading to orgasm. It’s about pleasuring a partner, or it’s about oral fixation, or it’s about fantasy and power or any number of things. I’ve always found the idea of “Deep Throat” the movie to be disturbing because it promotes a lie; it gives the idea that deep throat can be pleasurable for the wrong reasons.
I’ve never read MacKinnon, but my sense of her has been that her ideas are sounder than they seem when just turned into slogans and soundbites. That might not make her the best person to put on a panel discussion about pornography, but she doesn’t deserve the vitriol spewed her way, either. But, what do you expect these days? Ideas that are at all complex don’t get a lot of attention from people who want their minds made up fast.
D, you might have mixed up Echidne with flea at One Good Thing maybe?
Oh, I don’t plan to see it and I strongly doubt I’d’ve re-released it. But MacKinnon’s history introduces the issue of law and censorship.
“After all, the sales of pornography soared after the violence started”?
No, it sold like hotcakes *concurrently* with the official announcement of the war’s escalation. There was much violence in the area before the offical announcement, but it was the announcement that brought the immediate surge in porn consumption.
That still doesn’t prove the point MacKinnon made in the article I read, which was that the pornography led to the violence. As you acknowledge, there was violence before that, and only when war was officially announced did porn sales spike. That seems to me not to be a causal factor but a concurrent one.
By the way, Amp, I hate you for making me do math problems.
Dammit!
Now your comments are doing weird things with tags, too.
“That still doesn’t prove the point MacKinnon made in the article I read, which was that the pornography led to the violence.”
I think you probably misread. I’m reading her writings on this issue and I don’t see anywhere this notion that “first there was porn, then there was genocidal rape” any more than she ever said “first there was porn, then there was rape”. It’s my experience that nothing having to do with sexual violence is ever so perfectly clear cut or leaves a bread criumb trail back to The One True Source, but that’s not what I see MacKinnon says.
You should give her more credit than to believe her theories are this preposterously “if p then q” facile.
You know, that Nussbaum quote hits the nail on the head, as it were. Mackinnon is one of those writers (perhaps like a Stanley Hauerwas, or a Peter Singer), who takes outrageous positions and in the process of defending them, forces all of us to rethink basic issues of justice. I’ve been a fan of hers for years — though I vehemently disagree with her proposed remedies, I also find her diagnoses to be apt.
I don’t “believe her theories” in general are anything, Samantha. I’m not sure what you’re reading, but I don’t think we’ve read the same thing. Perhaps the writings you’re referring to are of a more recent vintage of the one I am, which is from 1993, before the true scope of the atrocities were known. She may have amended her theories since then, but I remember being struck by the chicken-and-egg quality of her argument at the time I read it, which was when it came out.
I’m not a fan of MacKinnon or Dworkin. I haven’t studied them enough to speak with authority, but my knowledge of their work includes a sense that they encouraged and even drafted censorship laws, and I am opposed to censorship in any form. When there is violence, have laws against violence, but not against expression. As civil libertarian Aryeh Neier said: “Those who call for censorship in the name of the oppressed ought to recognize it is never the oppressed who determine the bounds of censorship.” And while there is dispute over whether MacKinnon encouraged Canadian censorship that ended up backfiring, it is a concern.
Additionally, it appears to me that that the MacKinnon/Dworkin school is dangerously close to sliding (clear around to the far right) into paternalism in that it promotes a view of women as victim needing protection (even from themselves and their own desires), rather than promoting a view of empowerment.
While I have no studies to point to, my sense from years of watching the news and reading case law is that oppressive religion that teaches shame while suppressing sexuality is far more a factor in violence to women than pornography is.
Finally, although my knowledge of feminism is limited, I admire the work of Avedon Carol, Nadine Strossen, and also Feminists for Free Expression http://www.ffeusa.org/
zuzu, you had two beginning italics and only one ending italic code in one post. Everything after that came out in italics. I fixed it. I hope you don’t mind.
Pete, let me put this gently. Lots of men like the work of Feminists for Free Expression and Nadine Strossen (whose work I know well). One key reason: if porn is positive for women, then “nice guys” can enjoy it guilt-free! Hurrah! Pro-porn feminists sanction sexual self-indulgence for men; Mackinnon and others call men to accountability and transformation. No wonder she is so vilified.
I’m not suggesting that your reasons for liking the pro-porn feminists are anything other than purely intellectual. But please know that many men have an ulterior motive for embracing the Feminists for Free Expression of the world!
MacKinnon wasn’t on a quest to censor porn as she wasn’t requesting that the government force pornographers out of business.
She sought to allow people who have been harmed by a product to sue the makers of the product that harmed them, to allow women to make their cases in court about how porn has harmed them and may be harming others. Why shouldn’t women have a chance to make their case in court and, if successfully proven harmful, have the harmful product removed from the marketplace just as other harmful products are?
These aren’t unreasonable goals, but just as Hooters calls its food-serving waitresses ‘entertainers’ to avoid gender discrimination labor laws, so too do pornographers hide this mass-produced product behind empty claims of artistic merit and political speech to avoid laws that have often ruled certain products in the workplace constitute gender discrimination. Women fought hard for sexual harassment laws and the right to a discrimination free workplace, now more women are fighting hard for sexual harassment laws and the right to discrimination free public and private places.
There is the unfortunate neoliberal misconception that free markets are the best kind, that the economic marketplace has the ability to regulate itself through the cause and effects of competition, supply and demand. Is Walmart really the world’s largest private employer because they are “better” than other companies? In light of the evident failures of free marketism to produce diverse, consumer-driven and fair business practices, how well should the free marketplace of ideas fare under the same laissez faire system? Why wouldn’t we expect the same opportunistic consolidations, narrowing of the agenda, money equals the right to speech, more powerful trampling of the less powerful?
Pornography isn’t free speech, it is costly speech manufactured by corporations who market their products aggressively and profit enormously. Am I supposed to believe that in this so-called democracy the weight of my antiporn speech is the same as Hugh Hefner’s pro-porn speech and the free marketplace of ideas will triumphantly, evenhandedly let the best, most viable and most socially responsible ideas rise to the top? Martin Luther King, Jr. once mentioned it is unfair to start a black man 300 years late into a race and expect him to compete equally with the white frontrunners, and I think of that when told by my progressive peers that economic, political, sexual, and social gender oppressions faced by women for thousands of years are no noteworthy hinderance to the participation of women’s voices and opinions in prostitution and pornstitution. I am told all voices are equal and the free marketplace of ideas will sort it all out for the best in the end.
Missing from the discussion is how the ideas of an oppressed, objectified people whose very bodies are needed to create the ‘speech’ of wealthy men could ever be able to begin to compete with the privileged big boys in this stacked system.
By Steve: the supposedly playful theme of the movie is that this woman has a clitoris in her throat.
Uh, Steve – this was a fantasy element, not meant to be taken literally; I have seen the movie, and that was presented as an anomaly of the character, not as an anatomical fact. The movie was intended to be a comedy, not a biology lesson.
DT was, in fact, different from its predecessors in an important thematic way: the sexual satisfaction of the female protagonist was the issue; unlike the run-of-the-mill porn movie, male pleasure was not of paramount importance.
Given that Traynor was frequently sent away from the set, Lovelace’s tales of being forced to work at gunpoint beggar belief. Was she manipulated by him? Certainly, but it should be noted that her subsequent tales of violent abuse only surfaced after her failed foray into mainstream movie making, when she was fading into obscurity. At the time that she turned state’s evidence in the obscenity trials, she could easily have asked for protection and pressed charges against Traynor; she did not – and any DA would have been happy to prosecute him, if only for the publicity. Becoming the darling of the anti-pornography movement made her famous again. [Am I cynical? Oh, definitely…]
I sincerely hope MacKinnon doesn’t truly believe ‘that it was not possible to do deep throat safely, that it was a dangerous act that could only be done under hypnosis’. That’s an idiotic assertion, unsupported by fact. [Hasn’t the woman ever seen a sword-swallower? Practice, practice…] She damages what credibilty she has with comments such as that.
It should be noted that I am not a fan of MacKinnon; I believe that she is the architect of the woman-as-victim model that weakens women – if she had striven to play into a patriarchal vision, she could not have done more damage to our gender. Her involvement with the discredited Meese Commission and her effective support of Donald Wildmon, founder of American Family Association, a conservative pro-censorship group, was intolerable, and gave ammunition to organisations whose mission it is now to destroy any pretext of adequate sex education for American youth. [Ironically, the law she influenced in Canada caused one of Andrea Dworkin’s books to be banned there…]
Frankly, if people wish to become activists against female exploitation in pornography, it would be better to focus on that industry in countries like Brazil. Conditions in Brazil are a frightening contrast to the American industry, with not even feeble attempts at safer-sex practices, starvation wages and no pretence of vetting the ages of their actresses.
A major problem is that the implementation of anti-porn and obscenity laws is going to be in the hands of Christofascists and their neocon fellow travelers.
Would you trust Alberto Gonzales to tell you what was appropriate for adults to read or view?
There is also a serious causation problem with MacKinnon’s proposed tort against porn producers allegedly causing rape. How can you determine which one of hundreds or thousands of tapes/DVDs was *the one* causing the criminal to do his deed? Do you assess industry-wide liability? (Then you have to determine what is porn, and then assess fines against both violent porn and Good Vibrations’ porn.)
This issue has been addressed; parents of children killed in a Kentucky school shooting sued the makers of the movie The Basketball Diaries because it supposedly prompted the crime. The judge dismissed the case, probably at the summary judgment level, citing precedent that media is not subject to product liability law, and that an individual’s criminal actions are unforeseeable.
There is a big difference between persuading people that they should avoid a particular work and advocating it be banned or subject to liability for imitation. The first I agree should be done; the second is censorship, and I think the obscenity exception to the First Amendment is one of the touchstones of badly fabricated law.
I remember reading an interview with Linda Lovelace back in the 70’s. She specifically stated that Traynor married her so that she could not testify against him; that she was physically and psychologically controlled and abused; and that there was an automatic weapon pointed at her most of the time she was filming. The details she told were horrendous, and it didn’t impress me as a person trying to save a career, it impressed me as a person who had been to hell and wanted to warn others about it.
I don’t agree with censorship either, but I’m not objecting to DT on basis of content. I’m objecting to it as being produced as a result of criminal activity. Would you let a serial killer who filmed his crimes sell copies of the film? Would you show it in a theatre? Of course not. I consider this the same thing.
A fascinating issue, and discussion. The issue of pornography and how it represents female sexuality is something I’ve always found alarming, but that’s pitched at odds with my strong belief in freedom of speech and expression. I don’t know where I’m left.
I certainly think that what was done to Lovelace sounds horrible, but on the more general issue of pornography, I think that this discussion generally is being had with the assumption that it’s overwhelmingly watched by men or something. I think it’s still mostly consumed by men, but far less lopsidedly than it used to be.. I think.
Le Driver– maybe the same place I am – where nobody is getting hurt. They can depict anything they want, but at the point where we know a crime is being committed before the camera, we have to draw a line. Otherwise those evil kids out in California who filmed their gang rape of an underage girl could sell the tape and make a profit. Ugh.
Also, porn is obviously more mainstream now. I know that because they got away with joking about it on “FRIENDS”- ha ha. It’s still mostly a guy thing, though, especially the more hard core stuff.
Also let me point out that the scene in DT where the guys are drinking through a straw, the container inside her was made of glass. That woman was in every conceivable kind of danger.
Morgaine – yes, I generally hold the view that people can consume what they like, as long nobody has been hurt and it doesn’t involve a criminal act. In the case of DT, it seems like someone was being hurt – and if the actress has claimed that she was abused on the set, then the film simply shouldn’t be shown.
As for the question of porn in general, if all parties are consenting adults, then there’s nothing that can (or should) be done. Still, I have doubts about its broader effects, the way in which it depicts male power, that a good woman should do all kinds of painful things to please her man, etc. If asked whether I thought it was good for the advancement of women, I would say no.
I agree, but there’s the reality of the bad sexual imprint that needs some form of outlet. I’d rather someone indulge a fantasy than act out a compulsion that had no other outlet.
Morgaine said:
“Otherwise those evil kids out in California who filmed their gang rape of an underage girl could sell the tape and make a profit. Ugh.”
Knowing how our society works it’s a good bet that someone, somewhere will make a profit off that footage. Probably on the internet too, where it will live forever. Truly ugh.
Amp, I have to disagree with your conflation of several issues.
Yes, Mackinnon is vilified (as is every prominent feminist), and statements like ‘all heterosexual sex is rape’ are presented as things she has actually said.
Yes, the relationship between Linda Lovelace and Chuck Traynor was abusive. If you’ve ever read Ordeal, Lovelace had a lot of positive things to say about many of her co-workers, at least the ones who she didn’t think were lesbians.
But why do you think we should refrain from pointing out when Mackinnon isn’t reasonable? Using “strong statements as a rhetorical device” is just stupid, when the strong statements themselves are ridiculous, because it obscures any good points she might have. Anf I’m not quite as confident as you that she simply uses those rhetorical statements, Al Sharpton-like, as rhetoric.
I also have friends who attended her law classes at Michigan, so I admit I have a less charitable view of her than some might. I honor her achievements in reforming sexual-harassment litigation, but her pronouncements about what is Good and Bad for All Women are just nuts.
I really need to fix the design to make the author of posts more explicit. This post was authored by Echidne, not by Amp. :-)
By the way, “Christofascists” is more than a little offensive. , even in today’s polemicized climate.
Doesn’t that refer to people who are fanatic devotees of the artist who just wrapped Central Park in saffron cloth? ;)
This issue has been addressed; parents of children killed in a Kentucky school shooting sued the makers of the movie The Basketball Diaries because it supposedly prompted the crime. The judge dismissed the case, probably at the summary judgment level, citing precedent that media is not subject to product liability law, and that an individual’s criminal actions are unforeseeable.
There is a big difference between persuading people that they should avoid a particular work and advocating it be banned or subject to liability for imitation. The first I agree should be done; the second is censorship, and I think the obscenity exception to the First Amendment is one of the touchstones of badly fabricated law.
Thank you, Aaron.
Kait Williams: I sincerely hope MacKinnon doesn’t truly believe ‘that it was not possible to do deep throat safely, that it was a dangerous act that could only be done under hypnosis’. That’s an idiotic assertion, unsupported by fact.
Without a direct quote, we have no way to know if she actually said this.
Morgaine, as far as I know, we have not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the makers of DT committed a crime. Lovelace’s accusations disturb me — otherwise I wouldn’t make any decision about the film without having seen it — but I don’t see them as proof.
By Morgaine: She specifically stated that Traynor married her so that she could not testify against him
That isn’t how spousal privilege works in the legal arena. Essentially, one spouse cannot be forced to testify against the other re: actions committed, and communications between spouses during the marriage are sacrosanct. However, three of the exceptions allowing testimony by one spouse against another are:
1. Prosecution for crimes committed by one spouse against the other, or against the children of either;
2. Suits by one spouse against the other (e.g., a divorce);
3. Communications made for the purpose of planning or committing a crime.
Lovelace could have testified against Traynor without any problem.
that there was an automatic weapon pointed at her most of the time she was filming.
People who were on the set have stated unequivocally that that didn’t happen; Damiano said he sent Traynor away from the set because Traynor exhibited signs of jealousy during Lovelace’s scenes with Harry Reems, on whom she reputedly had a crush.
Lovelace certainly wasn’t the only actress in the porn industry who could perform fellatio at that level; it would have been idiotic for any producer to use someone who was being coerced at gunpoint.
IMX, reformed “sinners” tend to tilt wildly in the other direction – look at Norma McCorvey. An attempt to rehabilitate reputation often means demonising and over-exaggerating one’s past, in order to portray oneself as a completely innocent dupe/victim, when the reality would have been sufficient. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not defending Traynor, who was, by all reports, an asshole with a nasty temper who found himself a woman he could play Svengali with. But I find the rush to give credibilty to Lovelace’s more extreme assertions to reflect a disturbing lack of rational consideration.
I don’t know the truth of Lovelace and Traynor’s relationship, but its entirely possible that Traynot thought marrying Lovelace would give him immunity from her testimony. It’s a fairly fine point of law, one that’s been mangled by the popular culture many times, so it’s not unreasonable for him to have had a false understanding of the rule.
My understanding of spousal privelege, which is meager as I have not studied law, is that it is applied differently in different states. I believe that the case is that in some states not only can a spouse not be compelled to testify against the other, but is not permitted to testify at all. Someone please correct me if I am mistaken.
My position is that the final word rests with Ms. “Lovelace”? since it is film of her that is in question. I believe in such a case it would be preferable to err on the side of the “victim”? and I’m not going to be a stickler for proof that no crime has been committed. It might not be enough to prosecute, but it should be enough to prevent the distribution of the film. Again, I do not believe that is censorship. We are not talking about preventing anyone from expressing an idea. We are preventing the distribution of film to which the subject does not consent. It is a privacy issue, not a free speech issue.
Unfortunately, Linda Lovelace has passed and so there’s really no way to get her permission or not.
She testified in court that she was raped in the course of making the film, right?
Seems that what’s missing here is either a religious or feminist (or a religiously feminist) group with some cash to burn and a vicious lawyer or three. Get an injunction against the display of the film on the grounds that its evidence in a criminal matter. They wouldn’t win, but the proceedings could raise a stink about this shitty film, and maybe put some egg on the face of the isn’t-porn-chic media promoting it.
Mythago, sorry if I conflated the issues. Perhaps that was my point, in a minor way, that these issues are conflated in the so-called mainstream debates. In other words, a particular viewpoint is ridiculed when MacKinnon’s way of presenting it is ridiculed. I don’t know if she’s volunteering for these panels or if she is sought out by the organizers, and it would be interesting to know which the case might be. Is she picked for the way she is seen?
I don’t have the answers to this, but ridicule is an old trick that is used against opinions that one doesn’t wish to discuss.
She’s a good debater. Very smart, very analytical. Even when she has wacked opinions, there’s still coherence. That might be why they pick her.
Lots of people have some wacked opinions but are still pretty smart.
They wouldn’t win, but the proceedings could raise a stink about this shitty film
In other words, they’d be deliberately filing a frivolous lawsuit in order to stop the film from being shown. Anti-SLAPP laws, anyone?
Mackinnon is unquestionably smart and coherent. Echidne, the problem I see here is that while anti-feminists overblow her stupid stuff in order to paint her as irrational, you seem to be doing the opposite–minimizing outrageous or stupid statements in order to paint her as thoroughly reasonable. I note that as a law professor at Michigan, Mackinnon did not permit any taping of her lectures.
Oh, and on Traynor marrying her–Kait is correct. Lovelace may have been told by Traynor that marrying him disallowed her testimony against him, but that’s not the case. I know of no state where one spouse is FORBIDDEN to testify against the other. Spousal privilege means that one spouse can say “I refuse to offer testimony against my husband/wife.”
I note that as a law professor at Michigan, Mackinnon did not permit any taping of her lectures.
That wasn’t really commonly done with any professor’s classes, though. Her class was only offered once while I was there (she was spending a lot of time in Connecticut, because she really wanted to be at Yale), but I didn’t take it because I wasn’t interested enough to attend for three hours every weeknight for two weeks.
I agree with you that silly statements are silly statements even if they’re meant to be provocative and stimulate debate. We’re not getting the most objective account of her statements, but if she really claimed that the only way you could deep throat is hypnosis or throat rape, then she’s talking out her ass (hypnotherapists will tell you that you absolutely will not do things under hypnosis that will harm you or that you do not want to do).
I also take Lovelace’s accusations with a grain of salt, particularly the claims about an automatic weapon being pointed at her head. You’d think someone else would have noticed.
Mythago, I don’t think that she was thoroughly responsible and logical. I tried to show the generous reading of what she was saying. Because the issues are worth discussing, and the current treatment is not getting there. I have really enjoyed these comments, by the way, some very good analysis and points of view. That was really my hidden hope! :)
As for Lovelace, grain of salt or no, she should have the right to withdraw her consent to be filmed and to prevent that film from being shown. We shouldn’t allow the glorification of a crime.
Can someone give me a good link to learn about McKinnon’s opinions? I’m not familiar with her work.
That wasn’t really commonly done with any professor’s classes, though
Depends on your school, I suppose. It certainly prevented anyone from verifying some of the odder things she was alleged to have said.
As a POI: Lovelace stated, in two interviews, that she had been “exploited and abandoned” by MacKinnon, much in the way she had been “exploited and abandoned” by the porn industry.
I’ve read MacKinnon, heard her speak, and firmly believe that her positive work – helping define sexual harassment as sexual discrimination – is far outweighed by her insistence that woman are all victims, her denial that women can make rational decisions re: sexuality for themselves. [“Matronising” is the word I’d use.] Hell, even the concept of sexual harassment has got way out of hand, encouraged by the woman-as-victim culture she encourages – I got to testify on behalf of a gay friend whose company was being sued by a female subordinate “because it’s well known that gay men hate women, so that made the workplace a de facto hostile environment.”
I find MacKinnon’s hypocrisy interesting, as well: She married a man who has boasted that he had sex with over 1,000 women. Now, of course, he has “repented”…
My standard comment: I didn’t let the patriarchy tell me what to do with my life; I’m damned if I’ll let the matriarchy.
How does Catharine MacKinnon tell you what to do with your life, Kait?
“I find MacKinnon’s hypocrisy interesting, as well: She married a man who has boasted that he had sex with over 1,000 women. Now, of course, he has “repented”…”
She was never married to Jeffrey Masson.
And I find it interesting that you would take the position that men can’t repent of their sexist ways.
And, FYI, her name isn’t Linda Lovelace. It’s Linda Boreman. Show some respect for her desire to be called by her name, not by the moniker she was forced to use by the man who pimped, raped, and beat her.
And further FYI, Linda Boreman bore the scars and physical infirmities of the sexual, physical, emotional, and psychic abuse visited on her by Trainor until the day she died.
I’d find your opinions about MacKinnon and her work a bit more believable if you were able to get the basic facts right.
“I also take Lovelace’s accusations with a grain of salt, particularly the claims about an automatic weapon being pointed at her head. You’d think someone else would have noticed.”
What makes you assume that anybody would have cared?
And it’s funny — the words of the guy who made the film, who has every interest in covering his as re: abuse of Ms. Boreman, are given so much more veracity by certain posters than the word of the woman who was abused.
After all, *he* said he sent Chuck Traynor away because he was “jealous”. *She* said Chuck Traynor put a gun to her head and forced her to be in the film. Why is *he* so much more believable?
Not to mention, the two statements aren’t even logically inconsistent. He could have held a gun to her head in some instances and been sent away in other instances. I mean, he wasn’t sent away because he was being violent to Ms. Boreman. He was sent away because he was disrupting the shoot.
Heart was right, ‘There is too much contempt there, there is too much hatred, there are too many lies. And yet what is in there, I guess, passes for civil enough discourse nevertheless. But it isn’t civil. It is civilly hateful. And it will keep committed feminists away.”
I’m stunned by how many here give the benefit of the doubt to men pornographers who profited 600 million (so far) from Deep Throat over the woman who died poor and in her last interview said she supported MacKinnon’s goals and hoped she would some day succeed with her ordinance. Linda was upset feminists could not give her more money, but til the end she supported MacKinnon’s goal of establishing a way for porn prostituted women to have legal redress.
“You’d think someone else would have noticed.”
How many times have abuse victims been told their word is not good enough and that surely such evil things would have been noticed? Mothers who ‘didn’t notice’ the men in their lives sexually abusing the children in their lives, pornographers who ‘didn’t notice’ a 15-year-old drug addicted Traci Lords snorting coke and being child prostituted, strip club owners who ‘didn’t notice’ 16-year old runaways performing lesbian sex acts onstage.
The average age of entry into US prostitution is 13 because thousands of men ‘don’t notice’ the children beneath them.
With all the thousands of pages MacKinnon has written, why focus on old unrecorded lectures? If you want to know how MacKinnon thinks about something you can find it easily and no one is prevented from verifying her beliefs on any of the topics she speaks of.
I find Kait’s assertion that Deep Throat was about fulfilling women’s pleasure beyond absurd. Almost all porn is about fulfilling women’s pleasure if you stop at “she looks like she’s enjoying it!”, but men have depicted women orgasming from being raped, cut up, spit on, fucked by animals and worse and really it’s about men’s pleasure seeing women acting like animalized dirty whores than women’s pleasure at doing the sex.
The vibe in this thread of “if it were so bad, why didn’t she just leave and/or prosecute?” leaves me with a sick, cold feeling in my stomach. The rape victims I know who didn’t report, the women whose husbands kicked the crap out of and choked them who didn’t report, these women come to my mind when I see “someone would have noticed” and “she could have called the cops if the abuse were really that bad” used as excuses for disbelieving abused women.
There’s something suspicious about the “Bang Bus”. If it really is what it appears to be, then each installment is evidence of a crime, and it would require only a single one of the women involved to go to a D.A. to put the participants behind bars. Given that, it’s more likely the whole thing is staged, and the “reality” aspect is just part of the marketing. (The fact that something is marketed on such a basis is in itself creepy, though.)
This is on porn in general, not on DT. If Linda Lovelace *was* forced to do that film against her will, that falls into a whole other argument. But I’m going to talk about porn in general.
First of all, it is a myth–and a dangerous one, if you carry it to its logical conclusion–that porn is exclusively consumed by men. This is especially true when deciding how you *define* porn. Is written, explicit erotica ‘porn’? Trust me when I tell you that most anti-porn crusaders would consider it as such. I am an author of erotica, so trust me when I tell you that. If I saved some of my hate mail I’d share it with you.
Because it’s pretty well established that women are less aroused than men by visual stimulation but *more* aroused by a more literate presentation, there are a lot of women who consume and enjoy written erotica. There are a bunch who write it, and many who are damn good, including one of my best friends (I edit her stuff, which is the easiest job in the world!) And because my erotica is of the romantic gentle variety (if you want rape erotica you can find it, but that’s not what I write), I have a rather large female readership.
Now, obviously, there is a difference between visual porn and written erotica, as written erotica doesn’t involve exploiting real people. If I *did* write a rape story, the only person being raped is a complete figment of my imagination, not even an actress. I understand that puts written erotica in a whole different light.
The problem with *that* is that too many of the anti-porn crusaders aren’t capable of making that distinction. This has been hammered home with me because many of my stories feature characters that are under the age of consent. Now, that means *both* of them–pedophilia ain’t my thing–but one of the most popular things I’ve ever written is a long novel in which my two protagonists do the nasty for the first time when both are only 14. Believe me, to some people, that’s ‘kiddie porn’. Funny–to me the problem with ‘kiddie porn’ is it exploits and damages children. How can a written piece of erotica damage figments of my imagination? *sigh*
Anyhow, because I have a personal stake in this issue, anti-porn crusades worry me, because we get caught in the undertow. You and I know that it’s not the same thing. But, let’s face it, too many anti-porn crusaders aren’t worried about ‘exploitation’, they just hate sex. The fact that anyone might actually be getting off to my little non-exploitative works of fiction frosts them.
As for the ‘regular’ visual porn world, I’d never say that exploitation never happens. However, this is not 1972. One of the most famous ‘adult film stars’ is a woman named Jenna Jameson. She’s famous not just for appearing in films–she *makes* them. She owns her own production company. She’s the creative brains behind the whole operation.
Another one I’ve heard of is Zara Whites. According to a couple lesbian friends of mine, her lesbian films are considered classics, they’re not made to tittilate male viewers with threesome fantasies–they’re made for women. So, there’s an example of a woman making porn *for* other women. Obviously, if my lesbian friends are any indication, there’s an audience.
It’s a complicated issue. I think too many people tend to make it simple: women in porn *must* be exploited, anything that creates sexual feelings *must* be bad. I, as you might have guessed, reject all that. Exploitation of women is one thing, porn is another. Sometimes they’re the same thing. Sometimes they’re not.
re Hugo’s comment in message #48 – conservatives started it by calling those seeking to replace secular Muslim governments with theocracies based on sharia “Islamofascists.”
Likewise, fundamentalist and otherwise conservative Christians seek to replace secular laws with their own dogma, stripping people of rights.
Christofascists seek to abrogate the First Amendment by punishing “obscenity” and “indecency”, the Fourteenth Amendment by prohibiting same-sex marriage, and penumbral U.S. Constitutional rights and many states’ right to privacy by making abortion illegal or very hard to obtain, prohibiting contraception, and seeking the reinstatement of anti-sodomy laws.
Christofascists also seek to gut secular education by mandating teaching of creationism in public schools (now creationism is called “intelligent design”) and seeking federal money to open charter schools with heavy doses of proselytizing.
You started it. Us liberals will finish it.
My standard comment: I didn’t let the patriarchy tell me what to do with my life; I’m damned if I’ll let the matriarchy.
Why yes, because we have such a problem with matriarchal power here, what with a female president, female-dominated congress and judiciary, female-dominated Fortune 500 executives. . . oh, er, nevermind.
You can disagree with MacKinnon without spreading misinformation and hyperbole. Save the fiction for novel writing, okay?
Sheesh.
“Because it’s pretty well established that women are less aroused than men by visual stimulation but *more* aroused by a more literate presentation, there are a lot of women who consume and enjoy written erotica. ”
Oh-so-civil. Oh-so-much psuedo-scientific bullshit used to support a pornograher’s oh-so-civil woman-hating crap.
Kait Williams:
During the Victorian period, one of the most popular forms of pornography was the Turkish Harem story, in which a white European virgin is abducted and sold into sexual slavery in the harem of a Turkish Sultan. The pornographic content is a story of repeated rape; the arc of the plot invariably involves the once-reticent virgin coming to love being sexually violated. Sometimes a European rescuer comes along at the end of the story; the rescued woman is often reluctant to leave the harem.
These stories were told from the female protagonist’s point of view and are superficially about her sexual pleasure. Do you honestly think that that makes a story like this one in which “male pleasure was not of paramount importance”? Do you think that Deep Throat — a story based on a wild anatomical fantasy that makes the “female protagonist” take orgasmic satisfaction from sex acts that are normally only sexually stimulating to men — is different in any important respect? If so, how?
How is this any different from demanding of any other battered woman “Well, why didn’t you leave?”
How is this any different from smearing any other woman who testifies that she was raped as a “gold-digger,” “publicity-slut,” etc.?
Whether you believe what Linda Boreman said or not, using these kind of smear tactics in order to discount her testimony is, frankly, despicable.
Sheelzebub: You can disagree with MacKinnon without spreading misinformation and hyperbole. Save the fiction for novel writing, okay?
I’m doing neither. Believe me, I tried to like MacKinnon; at the beginnning, before I had actually read her work, I thought she stood for the things I deemed important. To my disappointment, I found MacKinnon and her pronouncements infinitely “matronising”; she is profoundly condescending in both her writing and in person. She routinely portrays women as unable to overcome “patriarachal” brainwashing – her contention that consent is impossible because of that essential inability is a continuing theme in her work. That is treating women as if they were second-class intellects, incapable of rational thought.
And there certainly is a “matriarchy” within the feminist movement, both of yore and modernly – I don’t know how old you are, but I grew up in the ’60s, back when equal pay for equal work was a pipedream, when abortion was illegal [and even birth control in my state of Massachusetts], when teachers told girls their minds weren’t good enough for science. I got tear-gassed at demonstrations for equal rights for women, helped get a professor fired for suggesting that an “A” was only available to those women who boffed him, and got really tired of Pronouncements from The Goddesses on what was politically correct. [Don’t shave your legs, don’t wear skirts, don’t do this, don’t do that…] I come from the generation of feminists who fought, who stood up to socials inequalities and who refused to be victims. I went into a male-dominated profession [law]. MacKinnon has set herself up as an arbiter of What is Right for Women, and that, whether you like it or not, is insulting to our gender.
Paige: And, FYI, her name isn’t Linda Lovelace. It’s Linda Boreman
And why did you not upbraid anyone else in this thread for calling her “Lovelace”? [wry grin] FYI, in her later years, she was appearing publicly as “Linda Lovelace”, modelling erotic lingerie and signing nude pictures of herself from several of her movies. She referred to herself offstage as Linda Marchiano. [And FYI, it’s “Traynor”, not “Trainor”…]
Masson has been referred to as MacKinnon’s husband several times, including in reviews of his books; she was certainly officially engaged to him for many years. Whether they actually went through a ceremony or not is really immaterial, isn’t it? By MacKinnon’s own standards, he was a serial rapist, who used women casually and discarded them. A “repentant” rapist is still a rapist… You might feel comfortable hooking up with one; I sure as hell wouldn’t.
BTW – if you feel that any statements Linda Marchiano made must be absolutely true, where is your criticism of MacKinnon, whom she accused of having exploited and abandoned her? After Marchiano was no longer the darling of the anti-porn crowd, she switched sides again and went back to promoting herself as Linda Lovelace.
Samantha: “How many times have abuse victims been told their word is not good enough”?
Herb Streicher [“Harry Reems”] is a born-again Christian. He has categorically denied that she was forced at gunpoint. Given that he has copped to drug use, alcoholism, “waking up with excrement in [his] pants and sleeping in [his] vomit”, and worse, I find it hard to believe that he would dissimulate over this point. My point was that the over-the-top accusations that are contradicted by more than one other witness detract from the more believable claims that she was beaten by Traynor [which allegations, BTW, both Streicher and Damiano opined were absolutely true.]
Just so you know where I’m coming from: I have done pro bono work as a child advocate, so I’ve heard far worse than the DT allegations, and have had no doubt that they were true. My mother was, until her retirement, a police liaison for child sex crimes in a state where religious fundamentalism has led to horrifying numbers of incest-abused girls. I’ve heard horror stories from her, as well. I spent several years working for a rape crisis centre. Personally, I think paedophiles should be locked away permanently, and I’m all for executing child pornographers. Slowly and painfully. Just so you know.
I find Kait’s assertion that Deep Throat was about fulfilling women’s pleasure beyond absurd
From a semiotic standpoint, that was the essential theme. Prior to Deep Throat, women were shown responding orgasmically to every encounter, thereby feeding the standard male fantasy; in Deep Throat, the character finds her sexual encounters unfulfilling. This was a departure from the norm, and one that discomfitted a number of men. [Underlying message: Size does matter, and you ain’t big enough, bucko.]
One of Damiano’s subsequent films, Memories within Miss Aggie was an even further departure from the standard porn film, in that the protagonist kills her lover, and enshrines his body in her living room; his skeleton is shown in the final scene. It was not popular with men.
Whether you are pro or anti-pornography, that is an intellectual analysis. Was it porn, meant to titillate? To be sure – but the subtext was decidedly transgressive and essentially unerotic.
Paige: Oh-so-civil. Oh-so-much psuedo-scientific bullshit used to support a pornograher’s [sic] oh-so-civil woman-hating crap.
I’m curious, Paige – how do you view queer porn? “Herotica”, made for women, by women? It exists, quite independently from straight porn. Are the women who make it and who watch it and find it arousing “woman-hating”?
I’m sure that Linda Lovelace/Boreman was abused and misused during the filming of “Deep Throat”. Porn was a quasi-criminal activity back then, and therefore it was going to be wildly attractive to the uglier elements, the violent and sexist elements, of society. My concern is that the censorship will keep it that way, that if pornographers have to work on the edges of society then abuse is inevitable. I do have to admit that I am concerned about people conflating what they find odd of distasteful about DT (the act itself, which is weird-looking for sure) with genuine concerns about rape and abuse. The personal ickies with deep throating are beside the point–to my mind, the issue is whether or not an actual crime has occured. The weirdness of certain sex acts isn’t evidence of their criminality.
What Amanda said. To put it another way, the discussion question here quickly changed from whether or not we like the re-release to whether or not we should “let” the film appear in theatres, and whether or not ” it was a part of numerous criminal acts.” With this question, the burden of proof shifts to the prosecution.
It seems entirely possible that my male privilege allows me to take a more detached view. This has no bearing on the legal or factual question. (At least, not the factual question about the film.)
Rad Geek: Do you think that Deep Throat ““ a story based on a wild anatomical fantasy that makes the “female protagonist”? take orgasmic satisfaction from sex acts that are normally only sexually stimulating to men ““ is different in any important respect? If so, how?
I hate to break it to you, but there are women who find giving head a pleasurable – and sexually stimulating – act. Which is neither here nor there. ..
The difference between DT and Victorian abducted-to-the-harem porn is simple: a) In DT, the men are held to be inadequate, unable to satisfy the female protagonist in any conventional way and b) whatever the reality of the filming situation, the character is not at all constrained. The former was not typical of run-of-the-mill porn, where every man was a stud who made women swoon into orgasm just by taking his shirt off. For the times, the movie was atypical, which is all that I said.
Keep in mind that this is an analytical assessment of the movie, not an endorsement. One can make dispassionate observations of psycho-sociological anomalies in presentations from a purely intellectual standpoint. I’ve found it amusing that so many people don’t seem to be able to grasp that.
How is this any different from demanding of any other battered woman “Well, why didn’t you leave?”?
A little intellectual honesty would be helpful: My contention was that I disbelieved her allegations that Traynor literally held a gun to her head on the set, in part because he not always present. I didn’t ask why, if the other members of the production were, as she stated, a “creative family” from whom she “drew strength”, she didn’t manage to escape Traynor then and there, which appears to be what you’re accusing me of saying.
I did and do wonder why, after she’d been taken in to the DA’s office, she didn’t make the same claims re: the gun as she did so many years later.
Whether you believe what Linda Boreman said or not, using these kind of smear tactics in order to discount her testimony is, frankly, despicable.
I am stating facts: Although there were two previous bios, neither of which contended that she’d been compelled to act at gunpoint, Ordeal did not come about until years after she had left Traynor and married someone else, when her then-husband [whom, BTW, she later accused of physically abusing her] had lost his business and they were living on welfare. I find the timing a little too coincidental for comfort. After her involvement with the anti-porn movement faded, she went back to promoting herself as Linda Lovelace, signing autographs and appearing in a pictorial in the men’s skin magazine Leg Show in 2001. Not exactly behaviour one would expect from someone who had ostensibly been fervently anti-porn. [wry grin]
Sheelzebub: You can disagree with MacKinnon without spreading misinformation and hyperbole. Save the fiction for novel writing, okay?
I’m doing neither. Believe me, I tried to like MacKinnon; at the beginnning, before I had actually read her work, I thought she stood for the things I deemed important. To my disappointment, I found MacKinnon and her dogmatic pronouncements infinitely “matronising”; she is profoundly condescending in both her writing and in person. She routinely portrays women as unable to overcome “patriarachal” brainwashing – her contention that consent is impossible because of that essential inability is a continuing theme in her work. That is treating women as if they were second-class intellects, incapable of rational thought.
And there certainly is a “matriarchy” within the feminist movement, both of yore and modernly – I don’t know how old you are, but I grew up in the ’60s, back when equal pay for equal work was a pipedream, when abortion was illegal [and even birth control in my state of Massachusetts], when teachers told girls their minds weren’t good enough for science. I got tear-gassed at demonstrations for equal rights for women, helped get a professor fired for suggesting that an “A” was only available to those women who boffed him, and got really tired of Pronouncements from The Goddesses on what was politically correct. [Don’t shave your legs, don’t wear skirts, don’t do this, don’t do that…] I come from the generation of feminists who fought, who stood up to social inequalities and who refused to be victims. I went into a male-dominated profession [law]. MacKinnon has set herself up as an arbiter of What is Right for Women, and that, whether you like it or not, is insulting to our gender.
Paige: And, FYI, her name isn’t Linda Lovelace. It’s Linda Boreman
And why did you not upbraid anyone else in this thread for calling her “Lovelace”? [wry grin] FYI, in her later years, she was appearing publicly as “Linda Lovelace”, modelling erotic lingerie and signing nude pictures of herself from several of her movies. She referred to herself offstage as Linda Marchiano. [And FYI, it’s “Traynor”, not “Trainor”…]
Masson has been referred to as MacKinnon’s husband several times, including in reviews of his books; she was certainly officially engaged to him for many years. Whether they actually went through a ceremony or not is really immaterial, isn’t it? Hell, half the people I know think of themselves as “married”, despite what every state but Massachusetts tells them they are. By MacKinnon’s own standards, Masson was a serial rapist, who used women casually and discarded them. A “repentant” rapist is still a rapist… You might feel comfortable hooking up with one; I sure as hell wouldn’t.
BTW – if you feel that any statements Linda Marchiano made must be absolutely true, where is your criticism of MacKinnon, whom she accused of having exploited and abandoned her? After Marchiano was no longer the darling of the anti-porn crowd, she switched sides again and went back to promoting herself as Linda Lovelace.
Samantha: “How many times have abuse victims been told their word is not good enough”?
Herb Streicher [“Harry Reems”] is a born-again Christian. He has categorically denied that she was forced at gunpoint. Given that he has copped to drug use, alcoholism, “waking up with excrement in [his] pants and sleeping in [his] vomit”, and worse, I find it hard to believe that he would dissimulate over this point. My point was that the over-the-top accusations that are contradicted by more than one other witness detract from the more believable claims that she was beaten by Traynor [which allegations, BTW, both Streicher and Damiano opined were absolutely true.]
Just so you know where I’m coming from: I have done pro bono work as a child advocate, so I’ve heard far worse than the DT allegations, and have had no doubt that they were true. My mother was, until her retirement, a police liaison for child sex crimes in a state where religious fundamentalism has led to horrifying numbers of incest-abused girls. I’ve heard horror stories from her, as well. I spent several years working for a rape crisis centre. Personally, I think paedophiles should be locked away permanently, and I’m all for executing child pornographers. Slowly and painfully. Just so you know.
I find Kait’s assertion that Deep Throat was about fulfilling women’s pleasure beyond absurd
From a semiotic standpoint, that was the essential theme. Prior to Deep Throat, women were shown responding orgasmically to every encounter, thereby feeding the standard male fantasy; in Deep Throat, the character finds her sexual encounters unfulfilling. This was a departure from the norm, and one that discomfitted a number of men. [Underlying message: Size does matter, and you ain’t big enough, bucko.]
One of Damiano’s subsequent films, Memories within Miss Aggie was an even further departure from the standard porn film, in that the protagonist kills her lover, and enshrines his body in her living room; his skeleton is shown in the final scene. It was not popular with men.
Whether you are pro or anti-pornography, that is an intellectual analysis. Was it porn, meant to titillate? To be sure – but the subtext was decidedly transgressive and essentially unerotic.
Paige: Oh-so-civil. Oh-so-much psuedo-scientific bullshit used to support a pornograher’s [sic] oh-so-civil woman-hating crap.
I’m curious, Paige – how do you view queer porn? “Herotica”, made/written for women, by women? It exists, quite independently from straight porn. Are the women who make it and who watch and read it and find it arousing “woman-hating”?
[Accidental duplicate post deleted by Amp.]
Hey, Sheldon. Long time, blissfully, no see. But where the carcass is, there the vultures gather. I knew you’d who up, under some alias or another. You live to celebrate the humiliation and degradation of women.
I have one thing to say and one thing only: As though Reems ‘ “conversion” makes him any different than all the other religiously converted men in the world who incest, rape, batter, and violate women and girls in the same percentages as other men, I’d argue in greater percentages, but I have to be “civil”.
Maybe I’ll say one more thing. I heard you sidled up to a very fine woman a while back, a sex worker, thinking she’d agree with you about me. I loved hearing she told you to stick it where the sun don’t shine. I loved hearing you slunk away like the weasel you are.
You disgust me.
And if this gets deleted, I’m posting it to my website, and you’ll find it there.
Heart
Ugh, what a string of misogyny. Thank Goddess for the few matriarchs the movement has managed to produce. Considering that equal pay for equal work is STILL a pipedream, maybe we’d better start listening again.
Terms like “Matronizing” are positively self-loathing when uttered by a woman. I’m not concerned with the fashion bullshit of who shaves what, but I’m very concerned about such vitriol aimed a discussion that is essentially about a woman being victimized, and another woman trying to shake women out of their patriarchal indoctrination.
That kind of contempt being aimed at the actress in the movie is frightening to me. When did we get back to this? Has the Women’s Movement failed so completely that victimization is seen as a woman’s own fault? How sad.
Something smells v-e-r-y familiar in here.
I realized after posting that I didn’t specifically address Morgaine’s proposal: As for Lovelace, grain of salt or no, she should have the right to withdraw her consent to be filmed and to prevent that film from being shown. I don’t know how this would work in practice, or how it would affect the law.
Some posts here seem, to me, harsher than the evidence warrants. Hugo didn’t start everything bad in the world, I don’t think ChurchofBruce said anything about hating women (I don’t trust my memory, but Paige, didn’t that quote pretty much rephrase what feminists have said on this website?) and Kait, why do you accuse RadGeek of dishonesty so quickly?
I’m not sure if this is a reference to the lag time or not. Just in case it is, let me explain: The blogging software has a spam filter, which puts posts it thinks are suspicious into a moderation area until I (or Bean, if she wants to) look it over and approve the posts. That’s the reason there is sometimes a delay between when you post and when the post appears.
Discussions of porn seem particularly likely to have posts be delayed.
As long as your post isn’t commercial spam generated by a spambot, it’ll eventually be approved.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Hey, Sheldon. Long time, blissfully, no see. But where the carcass is, there the vultures gather. I knew you’d who up, under some alias or another. You live to celebrate the humiliation and degradation of women.
Wtf? As to Kait’s Christian remark, after a moment’s confusion I interpreted that as a reference to the annoying stereotypical-born-again habit of going on and on about past sins: Given that he has copped to drug use, alcoholism, “waking up with excrement in [his] pants and sleeping in [his] vomit”, and worse, I find it hard to believe that he would dissimulate over this point.
Thanks, Amp.
Heart
Omar, male religious converts, especially to conservative religious groups, rarely confess to abusing, battering, raping and incesting their wives and daughters. But that doesn’t mean they don’t, in significant numbers. Sometimes they do it thinking they have a right to do it; they dont’ think there is anything to confess.
Heart
In other words, Reems’ conversion doesn’t give him credibility. And given the misogyny of porn performers and the industry as a whole, not a one of them, including “Kait,” is credible when it comes to what happened to Linda Boreman at the hands of Chuck Traynor. Not a one of them.
Heart
“Oh-so-civil. Oh-so-much psuedo-scientific bullshit used to support a pornograher’s oh-so-civil woman-hating crap.”
Woman-hating? You must be joking. Nobody who’s ever read a *word* of my stuff could *ever* come to that conclusion. My female characters are one of my calling cards, thankyouverymuch–why the hell do you think I attract female readers?
If you’d like me to prove it, you can email me at churchofbruce99 at yahoo dot com, and I’ll send you the URL to my website. You can read my stuff and watch your worldview twist on its head. As an added bonus, I’ll send you the URLs to the sites of some of my favorite *female* erotica writers. There’s a story written by a friend of mind that will *really* make your head explode–it’s a very explicit and very beautiful lesbian romance. If you’re open to it, you might even get aroused at the good points–and, at the end, you’ll need half a box of tissues. It’s that good.
“I’m curious, Paige – how do you view queer porn? “Herotica”, made/written for women, by women? It exists, quite independently from straight porn. Are the women who make it and who watch and read it and find it arousing “woman-hating”?”
Yeah, and I referred to that in my original post.
And, as I just said in my last post to Paige, a friend of mine and one of my favorite writers is a lesbian who writes gorgeous lesbian romances. (She also writes parodies of ‘straight erotica’ with every cliche in full evidence, and they’re absolutely hilarious *and* can be arousing when she wants them to be. A neat trick, that…)
But, anyway, her lesbian romances aren’t particularly arousing to a straight guy like me–and she knows that. “You’re not my audience” she once told me. And she’s right. But my reply to her was, “The sex is different, but the emotions are the same,” and she agreed with that.
Bruce: I love it when men try to tell me about lesbian sex and romance. Do go on.
“I’m curious, Paige – how do you view queer porn? “Herotica”, made/written for women, by women? It exists, quite independently from straight porn. Are the women who make it and who watch and read it and find it arousing “woman-hating”? ”
First, if it’s a film about women, for women, about women’s sex together, it isn’t “queer”. It’s lesbian. Big difference. Secondly, women having sex with women, and women being in emotional relationships together does not preclude “woman-hating”. We’re all indoctrinated in sexism. Thirdly, it is impossible IMO for “lesbian” porn to exist “quite independently” from straight porn. The central meme’s of porn do not shift significantly between male/female porn and female/female porn. Certainly not when the end game is visual titilation leading to orgasm. Porn is formulaic — simply replacing characters does not make something affirming to women. Lesbian porn still relies on a disconnect between the actors and the audience resulting in a disembodied orgasm. Objectification is objectification, which is the foundation of heterocentric/heteronormative sex.
And there certainly is a “matriarchy”? within the feminist movement, both of yore and modernly – I don’t know how old you are, but I grew up in the ’60s, back when equal pay for equal work was a pipedream, when abortion was illegal [and even birth control in my state of Massachusetts], when teachers told girls their minds weren’t good enough for science.
First of all, thanks for the patronizing–or is it “matronizing”?–comment about age.
But let’s look at the sixties, compared to today:
back when equal pay for equal work was a pipedream
We’re still not getting equal pay for equal work.
when abortion was illegal [and even birth control in my state of Massachusetts]
Abortion is not illegal, but it’s very difficult to get in most parts of the country. As for birth control, access to that can be very limited by cost, lack of insurance coverage, and the right granted to pharmacists to deny women BC pills.
when teachers told girls their minds weren’t good enough for science
Oh, yeah, because there’s just so much representation of women all throughout the sciences in the US. It’s pretty consistent through the undergraduate and graduate levels, and there are so many doors open for women scientists in academia. Just ask Larry Summers.
I got tear-gassed at demonstrations for equal rights for women, helped get a professor fired for suggesting that an “A”? was only available to those women who boffed him, and got really tired of Pronouncements from The Goddesses on what was politically correct.
Yeah, and? I’ve gotten assaulted and threatened at clinic defenses and demonstrations. We’ve seen a judge who sexually harassed women get appointed to the supreme court, and sexual harassment.
I mean, exactly what is your point? That you grew up in the sixties, therefore you are the Goddess and Arbiter of all Things Feminist? That things were Really Hard Then and we have it oh so good now? I don’t fucking think so.
I mean, really, some feminists didn’t approve of leg-shaving or makeup and this caused you to lose sleep? This is what you spend your energy on? Get over it, already. I don’t agree with every feminist out there, but I’m hardly going to waste my time trashing the entire movement because of it. And frankly, if you’re tired of feminists who were “PC”–I’m tired of former feminists who complain about victim tripping when women like me have the fucking gall to go out and fight for our rights. You’re throwing the same rhetoric about now that got thrown about in the sixties. It reeks of mothballs.
I come from the generation of feminists who fought, who stood up to social inequalities and who refused to be victims.
Which is what feminists are still doing today–with no help from self-satisfied people who blather on and on about how women are acting like “victims,” might I add. Check the news–the things you fought for are still relevant today, and this idea that everything is just fine now is so much naive bullshit.
MacKinnon has set herself up as an arbiter of What is Right for Women, and that, whether you like it or not, is insulting to our gender.
You could argue that any person who talks about women, gender, or feminism has done so. And what’s insulting to our gender–and to women like me, who still fight for equality and human rights for women–is a patronizing post that betrays stunning ignorance about what’s going on today, in this decade; a sermon directed to us lowly feminists about victim tripping and how hard it was back in the day. As if things are any better now.
Hey, Sheezlebub, I think Kait might be exaggerating when she says she was a feminist. Otherwise she’d have noticed those current issues that you’ve pointed out and might even be somewhat pissed off that the fights she fought in the good old days still haven’t been won.
I’m still waiting for my directive from feminist HQ telling me not to shave my legs or wear lipstick. They must have left me off the mailing list.
Because it’s pretty well established that women are less aroused than men by visual stimulation but *more* aroused by a more literate presentation, there are a lot of women who consume and enjoy written erotica. There are a bunch who write it, and many who are damn good, including one of my best friends (I edit her stuff, which is the easiest job in the world!) And because my erotica is of the romantic gentle variety (if you want rape erotica you can find it, but that’s not what I write), I have a rather large female readership.
How is this well-established? I’m pretty visually oriented, and I like literate presentation. And what is “gentle” erotica? Seriously. I’m not into brutality or any of that, but I don’t need fluffy pillows and candles, either.