VB Accuses Gail Dines of Profiteering, or Pot Calls Kettle...

Internet barker for all things pro-porn Violet Blue just attacked the "profiteering" of anti-porn activist and academic Gail Dines for her work. Reading Blue's piece, my only thought was, Are you kidding?

In the same piece, to her credit, Blue also questions the recent anti-porn hysteria regarding female porn addicts and the many faith-based, often quite costly, programs that have sprung up in the wake of said "epidemic." These programs, while supplanting secular therapies, also purport to cure women of dreadful afflictions such as masturbation and sexual arousal. I am NOT arguing with Blue on the questionable nature of these groups' claims or the sleaziness of profiting from fearmongering.

But Gail Dines is, as previously pointed out, a sociologist, not a Web celebrity. She is an academic who studies pornography. Yes, she has adopted an anti-porn stance because she claims pornography has various deleterious effects on our culture.

And does Dines profit from that anti-porn work? Sure. Why shouldn't she? As a respected academic, she is also a paid speaker and author. Many other academics do the same thing. And although Dines's work is more widely disseminated than many other academics', I doubt she's making as much money as Blue intimates. Most academics would kill to publish titles that would make the kind of bank Blue speculates Dines is making with her latest book, Pornland. If Dines gets rich from academic work, props to her, as she will be joining a very elite club.

But regarding Blue, who herself profiteers by further contributing to, defending, and aggrandizing the zillion-dollar porn industry, I cannot believe she has the nerve to condemn. As I have said in previous posts, being pro-porn is popular and cool--and profitable, because pro-porn voices (like Blue) can always benefit from the scraps being tossed from the porn table.

Being an anti-porn academic is one profession. Being a Webutante is another. And yes, BOTH should profit from their work in their respective areas. But don't criticize the opposition just for making money when you still represent the more mainstream, popular, cool, and far, far more economically enviable position in the debate.

Violet Blue Versus Stop Porn Culture: Part 3, Critici$m and the Victim Mentality

Why are pro-porn people so opposed to any questioning of their perspective? Furthermore, why do they adopt a victim mentality about it, as though they're oppressed sex radicals whose scandalous enjoyment of porn marks them for scorn and derision? Their attitude toward porn might have been a serious point of contention in the late 70s and early 80s, when the feminist sex wars raged over issues like dildo use, bondage, and porn. Then, pro-sex activists were ostracized by their fellow feminists.

However, here in 2010, with pornography as plentiful and readily available as it is, with so many people watching porn with such frequency, how are those viewers in any way victims of anti-porn scorn? How are pro-porn supporters members of a marginalized minority?

They're not. But Violet Blue doesn't let that stop her from portraying herself and her fellow porn lovers as downtrodden sexual freedom fighters. She tweeted about their negative treatment in this column in the Boston Herald, for example.

Of course, anyone who follows online snits knows that Violet Blue doesn't take criticism well. Beyond a touchy ego, though, what's with the victim mentality and inability to accept even valid, constructive criticism?

Well, pro-porn activists start with an acceptable premise, rightly asserting that sexuality is still repressed in our culture. Sure, we can access idealized, airbrushed, fetishized image of sex presented in porn. But women's sexuality, particularly a liberated and honest sexuality, is curiously absent from scene. Honestly, I don't know exactly what that would look like. I don't think anyone does.

The sexuality we do see expressed throughout our culture and particularly in porn is still predominantly phallocentric. It's the "Samantha syndrome," where being a sexually liberated woman means acting like a man. Because only men are free to express themselves sexually--and a narrow, masculine sexuality, at that--that's the only model we have for what a sexually liberated woman might look like. I guess pro-porn folks believe that protecting this fictional "sexual freedom" is more important than trying to imagine new sexual options.

For example, they could support sexual freedom by pressuring the porn industry to feature more diverse performers. They could try to get porn producers to treat performers more humanely by offering better pay, benefits, and working conditions. They could try to discourage the production of Max Hardcore-type gross-out porn. But instead, they aim their vitriol at academic organizations like Stop Porn Culture. Because pro-porn folks so value "sexual freedom," they interpret anti-porn activists, not the huge porn industry that now largely defines what is sexually attractive in our culture, as oppressive.

Why don't they consider the many other ways sexual freedom is being threatened, like

• abstinence-only sex ed. policies
• rampant photoshopping that creates unrealistic images of the (usually) female body wherever we look
• how sexual difference, like sexual orientation or polyamory or consensual BDSM, is still constructed as deviance?

These are all oppressions, all ways that sexuality suffers. But if porn looks enough like "sexual freedom," if the porn industry keeps repeating that porn is sexual freedom, then opposition will continue to be interpreted as an attack on sexual freedom. It's as if pro-porn forces can't distinguish between sexual behaviors and identities, many of which remain marginalized and stigmatized, and sexual media, which have little to do with sex and more to do with money. Yet pro-porn folks conflate these two, as if porn itself were a marginalized sexual identity.

Or maybe it is all about money. Perhaps "oppressed" pro-porn advocates protest so loudly because rising anti-porn sentiment would eat into their profits. In a clear example of pro-porn's symbiosis with the porn industry, one of the winners of Blue's "Our Porn, Ourselves" video contest is herself a porn star. Blue, too, has an economic incentive to generate interest in porn and inspire people to defend it. Writing a book on porn and having porn sites advertising on one's homepage likely encourage a more zealous defense. I'm not sure anti-porn academics have any such financial incentive, as anti-porn forces (especially feminist ones) do not have a wealthy and powerful political lobby or millions of willing consumers, unlike the porn industry.

If you're riding the coat tales of a $10 billion business, I suppose you might want to cultivate the appearance of oppression. It certainly makes for better press. After all, who would listen to the pro-porn argument if they prefaced it by acknowledging the prevalence of porn and the strength of the industry? And Violet Blue craves coverage. I guess shouting oppression garners attention while obscuring that unconditional, uncritical support for porn, rather than being sexually liberated, is merely anti-intellectual and money-grubbing.

Perhaps pro-porn folks have even more in common with Tea Partiers and Sarah Palin than I'd thought.

(Thanks, Kristie, for the dialogue that evolved into this post!)

Violet Blue Versus Stop Porn Culture: Part 1

We need more dialogue between pro-porn and anti-porn feminists. As someone who has enjoyed porn, respects sex workers, and embraces gender and sexual difference, I identify more with "pro-sex" or "sex-positive" feminists than I do anti-porn activists. Although I respect the contributions of both, I prefer Pat Califia to Andrea Dworkin.

However, I cannot accept that porn is unquestionably a good thing. Porn is a business, and as with any business, I think we need to be critical consumers. Any business that uses women's bodies as its raw material should be particularly suspect for feminists. It's hard to see the sort of women who would never stoop to shopping at Wal-Mart uncritically defending the porn industry in the name of sexual freedom. Would the same argument work if I tried to defend shopping at Wal-Mart in the name of price-rollback freedom?

Anti-porn feminists aren't as prolific as they used to be, either. Among third-wavers, it's way cooler to identify as a "pro-sex" or "sex-positive" feminist. However, among anti-porn forces, Stop Porn Culture is one of the better known organizations, and their conference is coming up this month.

Well, sex-blogger Violet Blue is pissed. Sure, I understand her pro-sex orientation, and the title of her book The Smart Girl's Guide to Porn indicates her attitude toward pornography. In a perfect world, I share that attitude. But we don't live in such a sexually liberated utopia. And as feminists, we are not wrong to question pornography's impact, good and bad, on our culture.

Upon learning of the upcoming conference, Blue decided to wage a pro-porn campaign in response, encouraging pro-porn folks to make short vids about their love of porn to win prizes. Because of her Web presence, she's managed to garner quite a response in the short time she's known about the conference.

Initially, I was taken aback by her sudden outrage. Anyone even cursorily familiar with anti-porn feminism would know about Stop Porn Culture. I wondered how a feminist who makes her living writing about sex, who has written a book on porn, wouldn't have her finger on the pulse of the opposition. Violet's "discovery" of the conference was old news to anyone familiar with the debate.

Unfortunately, the aim of Blue's pro-porn campaign has not been to create dialogue or even to present an opposing perspective. Instead, it has been yet another attempt to construct anti-porn feminists as hopelessly naive, culturally and technologically backward, and generally oppressive to the clearly smarter and more liberated sex-positive feminists. Here's her film introducing the pro-porn video contest:



Her tone of derision is evident throughout, but one highlight is her calling anti-porn activists "douchebags." That certainly elevates the conversation, doesn't it?

I wonder, though...

• How does misrepresenting the anti-porn side's argument and mocking their perspectives contribute to the discussion?
• How is condescension a "sex-positive" attitude?
• Isn't it hypocritical of pro-porn activists to parrot the dominant culture's attitudes about porn while portraying themselves as oppressed sex radicals?
  

Being anti-porn is not a popular stance to take, particularly among a certain brand of tech-saavy, pop culture feminist. Questioning a phenomenon as ubiquitous as pornography takes more than a slick Web site and a slew of user-produced videos as support. It takes guts and conviction.

Does Blue seriously believe anti-porn activists can even make a dent in the veritable tidal wave of pornography currently available? Seriously, anti-porn forces can't force your porn-loving ass "back in the closet" (a questionable appropriation of LGBT terminology). They can't make pornography disappear from the Web. Porn is a fact of modern American life.

But then condescension toward feminists concerned about the impact of porn on our culture is easier than actually listening to them and responding thoughtfully and respectfully. Saying "hooray for porn" uncritically is more popular than questioning it.

I am a feminist who is sex-positive and pro-porn, under certain circumstances. But I resent Violet Blue and others with condescending, hypocritical attitudes toward the opposition being my compatriots.

More on this campaign next time...