Posted on 12/18/2010 8:01:19 AM PST by IbJensen
Pornography has invaded the world’s imagination. It is everywhere: On the Internet, in films, in movies, in rap music videos. Five-year-old girls dress and are taught to behave like pornography stars in order to win beauty contests. Ten- to twelve-year-old girls both dress and behave like the pornographic images that surround them—and they provide sexual services to young boys.
Opera—high culture—has also been increasingly “sexed up.” I have seen productions of “Carmen” and “Lulu” in which the lead diva was half-naked and in which she, too, sang the role as if she was a contemporary pornography star and prostitute.
No, I do not like any of this.
Yes, I take it all very seriously—as many Second Wave feminists and our Christian and conservative allies once did.
No, I do not think that hiding women beneath burqas is, therefore, any kind of solution. In fact, both pornography and prostitution are booming businesses in most Muslim countries.
Before we go any further, let’s play twenty questions. I really want your answers.
1. Is pornography “work” or is it a violent crime?
2. Is pornography “free speech” in action or is it a violent, often murderous crime?
3. Is pornography really a “victimless” crime?
4. Are pimps, johns, traffickers, and landlords being victimized? If so, why are they not complaining?
5. Are the people, mainly men, who buy and watch pornography being victimized? If so, why are they not complaining? Is anyone forcing them to consume pornography?
6. Are the seductive, taunting, smiling, naked girls and women who are being paid “good” money–victims? If so, why don’t they complain, leave, find some other job?
7. Isn’t working in pornography a job just like any other job–like any other acting job?
8. Aren’t pornography actors there of their own free will—for the easy money, the attention, the “stardom?”
9. Isn’t our right to see and read whatever interests us essential to our fundamental liberty?
10. Doesn’t the First Amendment guarantee us this right? If we criminalize one kind of “free speech,” where will it end? Who will decide what information or images we are allowed to see? Won’t state or religious censorship chill our rights, even our very thoughts?
11. On behalf of “free speech,” and privacy rights, didn’t Second Wave feminists avidly collaborate with pornographers to ensure that pornography remained a civil right?
12. Didn’t Second Wave feminists launch the battle against violence against women, which included sexual harassment, rape, incest, domestic battering—as well as the most serious battle against pornography and prostitution? Weren’t they vilified for collaborating with Christians and conservatives on the issue of pornography and prostitution?
13. How many women from wealthy and prominent families, or with advanced educations, “choose” to work in pornography or as prostitutes?
14. Did you know that, by definition, pornography is that which has to do with “prostitutes.” “Porne” in Greek is a “prostitute.” The so-called actresses in pornography are treated as if they are–and usually soon are–also “working” as prostitutes.
15. How different is being a prostitute from being a stripper, massage therapist, or a nurse?
16. How many prostituted girls and women are actually free to leave, walk out, give it all up?
17. Where might they go? Where might they call “home?” Who will help them get off drugs and alcohol, restore their ravaged health, support them as they deal with the sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS, with which johns have infected them?
18. Do you have any idea of what the average age of a pornography actress/prostitute is?
19. How long a shelf-life does a “working girl” (prostitute, pornography actress) actually have?
20. Why does pornography “turn” people on?
I lived through the great feminist Sex Wars. I was both a participant and an eye-witness, as well as a confidante to feminists who were on both sides of this War. But before I share memories and analysis, I really want to hear from you. Your answers will help me understand how to share a vast body of knowledge and history with you in the most productive way. Here’s a hint to help you think through these questions.
Pornography is a multi-billion dollar industry, right up there with guns and drugs. It is enormously profitable but not to the “workers,” most of whom are girls and women who have been sold by their parents, captured in war, kidnapped off the street, forced by their husbands, or who have been driven by poverty, racism, incest, and the most violent sexism into the arms of pimps, traffickers, landlords, advertisers, law enforcement officers, and johns.
Phyllis Chesler, Ph.D is an Emerita Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies at City University of New York. She is an author, psychotherapist and an expert courtroom witness. She has lectured and organized political, legal, religious and human rights campaigns in the United States and in Canada, Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. A popular guest on campuses and in national and international print, television, radio and online media, she has been an expert commentator on the major events of our time. She has lived in Kabul, Afghanistan, and in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. She currently resides in Manhattan.
You said my premise was wrong, so why would I need to look at your post to find my premise?
when was porn illegal? We’ve had pinup girls since the World War.
Im pretty sure I did not misstate my own premise.
For my part, I have no problem in morally condemning pornography, though there are degrees of degradation.
But as a Christian I also believe that people have the right to sin and freedom is defended only at a cost.
Sharia law is the enforcement of moral behaviour - our law is about preserving freedom and limiting the excesses of damaging behaviour. It sounds good but look where it leads.
Nor is it wise to ban that which cannot be enforced in a pluralist society.
Me? I like some porn, that is why I steer clear of it. I have to pluck my eye out as it offends me. Gets bloody but that's the cost of following Jesus.
This is different from the *preconditions* which is a description of the situation under consideration.
Cheers!
OK, so pro repleal of laws against incest among consenting adults then, as is currently being debated in Switzerland?
I think we're getting to see the fault lines in the term "conservative" here quite nicely. You are really a libertarian / libertine, not a conservative. Would you agree?
Nope, just mistaken
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law
Natural law or the law of nature has been described as a law whose content is set by nature and that therefore has validity everywhere.
The handy-man at the 400 unit apartmnet building I lived in in the 1980s was an interesting old fellow. He's played drums in big bands in the Buddy Rich era, but didn't quite have the chops to make it big time. He drifted down to Florida in the 1950s and was making porno. He was arrested, tried and convicted and went to prison for a number of years. To this day (if he's still alive he is a felon whose crime was pornography).
It wasn't that long ago this was the norm in almost all parts of the USA. Larry Flynt, famously, was tried for pornography. Ed Meese, Reagan's attorney general attempted to prosecute some of the more disgusting pornographers.
I guess a lot of libertarian pseudo-conservatives think that this part of Reagan's legacy was wrong. I suppose of lot of them are supporting DADT repeal too.
“How consenting adults choose to exercise that freedom should be their choice, and they should live with the consequences.”
This.
Boy, folks who think all Conservatives think alike should stop by and browse one of these threads sometime. Or, one of the evolution threads.
Pro-porn is the lefty position, and it is one of the great victories of the radical left since they started winning in the 1960s.
originally 1 mile in every 5 was to be straight, so that is could potentially be used as a runway.Urban legend.
Please explain the moral basis behind Roe v Wade.
Agree with you there...conservatives aren’t prudes...they just hate the over the top sexualized everything all the time.
Yeah... us guys.
Perhaps you haven't noticed the recent slippery slope we've all been sliding down when you cede just an inch of authority to the Govt in the name of "Homeland Security." We're also sliding down another in the name of "health care."
Next up is the slippery slope of "Internet Security" to prevent a future Julian Assange, or so they tell us.
How slippery do you think a slope will get if we cede an inch or two to the clowns in DC on legislating morality... who's morality... Pat Robertson's, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, Fred Phelps, or maybe Jeremiah Wright's under this Administration?
That's why we have a Constitution. FMCDH.
Who is arguing with that?
the porn industry hurts a lot of people, including women and children...that’s where the complaint is..no one is arguing about banning Playboy.
the Stoics asserted the existence of a rational and purposeful order to the universe (a divine or eternal law), and the means by which a rational being lived in accordance with this order was the natural law, which spelled out action that accorded with virtue.
Christians believe that "rational and purposeful order to the universe" is created and controlled by God. They believe, based on the revelations of the prophets going back to Abraham, that there are clear moral precepts that are required as part of this rational order.
Vikings believed the the there was a purposeful order to the universe, controlled by a pantheon of Gods. These Gods had their moral precepts, but they were quite different from the Christian ones.
If you try to deduce laws from nature would your 'natural law' include the Judeo/Christian "thou shalt not kill" and "thou shalt not steal" or would it support the Viking 'fight and kill as many men as possible to secure your place in Asgarrd, take the spoils of those you defeat as your choose'?
If you really tried to discern laws from nature (purely) you would be a materialist. People like Hitchens and Dawkins take exactly this approach in their defense of atheism.
The "social darwinist" believes in natural law. At the height of that rejection of god-based morality and in favor of natural law someone with the pseudonym Ragnar Redbeard wrote the book "Might is Right", which posits that the only natural law is "might makes right" and the will to power, in the sense Neitzsche uses it.
The article you linked goes on to explain that "natural law" as used in the West is really "Christian Natural Law" as developed in the middle ages and codified into English law in the second millenium.
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