Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!att!pacbell.com!ucsd!sdd.hp.com!usc!jarthur!ucivax!gateway From: pepke@ds1.scri.fsu.EDU (Eric Pepke) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: Pornography AGAIN (was Re: Posting re. Andrea Dworkin) Message-ID: <1430@sun13.scri.fsu.edu> Date: 21 Nov 90 02:10:21 GMT References: <272090CA.26470@ics.uci.edu> <1741@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> <45691@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> <658778710@grad17.cs.duke.edu> <46878@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> Organization: Florida State University, but I don't speak for them Lines: 96 Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu Nntp-Posting-Host: zola.ics.uci.edu In article <46878@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> feit@acsu.buffalo.EDU (Elissa Feit) writes: >This is Dworkin's argument: MEN are the victimizers, WOMEN, the >victims. "Pornography reveals that male pleasure is inextricably tied >to victimizing, hurting, exploiting; that sexual fun and sexual >passion in the privacy of the male imagination are inseparable from >the brutality of male history" [p. 69] In the gay men's porno she >looks at, the men who are explicitly equated with WOMEN (Garry places >Dave on his back "like a girl" [p.36]) are treated degradingly BECAUSE >THAT'S HOW ONE TREATS WOMEN. Thus, according to Dworkin, all-men gay >porno may in fact degrade women. Dworkin's argument is transparently circular. Her main method is to allow the preconception to color the perception. Assume for a moment the postulate that "male pleasure is inextricably tied to victimizing, hurting, exploiting." This assumption requires a suspension of sanity: any sane person who has known men knows that at least some of the pleasure that men feel is not so tied, for the purposes of the argument assume it. In colloquial terms, there are four forms of pornography (there are actually more, but they are not germaine to the current discussion). 1) Man "on" woman 2) Man "on" man 3) Woman "on" woman 4) Woman "on" man 1 can pretty easily be fit into the postulate. 2 can be fit in simply by stating that, inasmuch as men sometimes play the "receptive" role in pornography, they are "being women" or "acting as women." 3 can be fit in simply by stating that the women are "being men" or, even more easily, by paying attention exclusively to the "receptive" woman and ignoring the other. 4 can be fit in by applying a double switcheroo, but it is much easier to shift one's perception by highlighting some point of view and dismissing another to make it seem like 1. So, no matter what kinds of pornography actually exist, they can all be viewed in such a way that they satisfy the postulate. How do we know that men are like this? "Pornography reveals" it. No matter what the actual nature of pornography, every iteration strengthens the belief. It is a belief designed so that it cannot be loosened, no matter what the facts. Like the child's toy, the Chinese finger trap, the harder you pull, the more tightly you are entrapped. Why is it that lovers of circular logic never seem to get dizzy? Perhaps they are always dizzy, so there's no difference to notice. >MY big disgreement with Dworkin is her insistance that MALE=VICTIMIZER >(akin to her earlier PENIS=AGGRESSION formula), that male pleasure is >"inextricably tied" to victimizing. I don';t believe that the cycle >can't be broken. I don't believe that men REALLY want to be as >disassociated from women as that. I know MANY men who are trying to >be free from that shit. Good for you. I believe that most of the shit originated in Dworkin's tiny brain, buttressed by her painstaking sifting through pornography to find that which supported her deepest fears and nastiest fantasies, and that little of it has anything to do with men, and that which does has only to do with a tiny minority of men and a minority of women as well. However, the cycle as she defines it, under her rules, gets tighter and tighter until a believer becomes nothing more than a knot of anger. I heard Dworkin speak a couple of weeks ago at FSU. It was fascinating, though pathetically sad, to watch her work. Her main technique had three stages: hyperbole, commonality, and riducule. The hyperbole stage consisted of alarmist statements about extreme, or imagined pornography. She must have mentioned the "woman on a meat hook" three or four times, snuff films, kiddie porn, and even (SubGeniuses note) skull fucking. The commonality stage consisted of asserting something like, "This stuff is available in every supermarket, in every drugstore, from coast to coast." I am not making this up. The ridicule stage consisted of her monologue against some bastion of male authority who was supposed to be denying her true heartfelt anger. "'Oh,' they say, 'she wants it.' Well, she's up on a MEATHOOK! I don't think she LIKES IT! I think she's IN PAIN! These fancy scholars may need their PhD's and stuff, but we don't need it. We women know it in our bones!" The net result, in the minds of the gullible of the audience, was that sexually explicit pictures of women on meathooks were available in every supermarket in the country, and all the police thought that women enjoyed being on meathooks. I suppose this kind of nasty Dworkinesque fantasy appeals to a certain type of nasty-minded person. Would that they were as rare and unobtrusive as the afficionados of S&M pornography. -EMP