Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sdd.hp.com!spool.mu.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!bloom-beacon!ora!ambar From: jeanne@mica.berkeley.edu (Jeanne Dusseault) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: does healthy, mutual erotica exist? Message-ID: Date: 5 Apr 91 18:42:30 GMT Article-I.D.: remarque.JEANNE.91Apr4221319 References: <2995@titan.tsd.arlut.utexas.edu> <1991Mar20.050507.24027@informix.com> Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz) Organization: O'Reilly and Associates Inc., Cambridge MA Lines: 41 Approved: ambar@ora.com In article <1991Mar20.050507.24027@informix.com> uunet!infmx!robert@ncar.ucar.EDU (robert coleman) writes: >In article <2995@titan.tsd.arlut.utexas.edu> ford@titan.tsd.arlut.utexas.edu () writes: >>My partner and I are having an ongoing debate on the harmfulness or >>harmlesness of "light" pornography, specifically "Playboy." My >>normally open-minded and understanding partner insists that it is >>completely innocuous, and he sees nothing wrong with looking at >>these women because they're beautiful, and there is nothing wrong >>with the human body. My argument is that these magazines portray >>women as the playthings of men, and the idea that women in general >>are primarily around for the pleasure of men. >In fact, this is the single most insulting thing about the >anti-pornography movements; they assume, (without any real evidence, >mind you) that men are completely incapable of separating fantasy from >reality, even when bluntly faced with the reality most of the time. >If this were true, there would be no hope; men fantasize with or >without the aid of pornography, and I suspect that they always have. >Two dimensional pictures of models paid to pose do not make that >fantasy world any realer than the one constructed in one's own mind. The role of various representations, i.e. photographs, films, advertisements, is constructing what we know as reality. Since reality can be known only through the forms that articulate it, there can be no reality outside of representation. With its synonyms, truth and meaning, it is a fiction produced by its cultural representations, a construction solidified through repetition. Representation, hardly neutral, acts to regulate and define the subject it addresses, positioning them by class or by sex, in active or passive relations to meaning. Over time and constant repetitions these positions become fixed and acquire the status of identities and of categories. Hence the forms of representations are at once forms of definition, means of limitation, modes of power. I'm not labeling "Playboy" pornographic, however, its representation of women does not further a feminist objective. Jeanne jeanne@mica.berkeley.edu