Feminist Perspective on Pornography

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1. <v Speaker 0>Feminist perspectives on pornography,
2. <v Speaker 0>a panel discussion produced by Carla Tonella and moderated by Sabrina Sojourner.
3. <v Speaker 1>With me tonight are Margaret Sloan, Kathy Berry, Valerie Minor, and Bridget
4. <v Speaker 1>Winn, and and we're gonna be discussing pornography
5. <v Speaker 1>and its effect on women. That's a synopsis short synopsis.
6. <v Speaker 1>But why don't we start with an opening statement from Kathy?
7. <v Speaker 2>Thanks.
8. <v Speaker 2>I think probably the the strongest connection I wanna make with pornography is in terms of female sexual slavery because that's how I've been looking at it a lot in the past,
9. <v Speaker 2>few years. What I found when I was working on female sexual slavery and
10. <v Speaker 2>interviewing women and listening to their experiences of being sexually enslaved and prostitution
11. <v Speaker 2>and,
12. <v Speaker 2>other practices
13. <v Speaker 2>was, and at the same time, looking at pornography to see what it was, what it what was involved in it, what,
14. <v Speaker 2>kinds of things were going on in it. I found that what was actually happening is the lives of these women is what's
15. <v Speaker 2>portrayed in pornography,
16. <v Speaker 2>literally.
17. <v Speaker 2>If you take out of Linda Lovelace's
18. <v Speaker 2>description
19. <v Speaker 2>of her enslavement
20. <v Speaker 2>by Chuck Traynor,
21. <v Speaker 2>her objections to that enslavement,
22. <v Speaker 2>You get the story that is used to titillate
23. <v Speaker 2>and,
24. <v Speaker 2>to, you know, inspire,
25. <v Speaker 2>as it were.
26. <v Speaker 2>In that context, I think what we have in pornography
27. <v Speaker 2>is literally a blueprint for genocide
28. <v Speaker 2>and something that we cannot afford to tolerate in our existence
29. <v Speaker 2>and in our presence any longer.
30. <v Speaker 2>I guess that's a best way to start I can think of. That's a very powerful start. Margaret?
31. <v Speaker 3>I guess what I wanna say is that for,
32. <v Speaker 3>I'm caught in a dilemma of being somebody who really
33. <v Speaker 3>recognizes
34. <v Speaker 3>that women
35. <v Speaker 3>need to celebrate the fact that they're sexual beings
36. <v Speaker 3>And realizing that,
37. <v Speaker 3>when I
38. <v Speaker 3>learned about my sexuality and who I was, I had to kind of go to male medical books, which were very sterile and dry,
39. <v Speaker 3>and talk to other female friends, girl friends, at that young age who knew less than or the same as me, which added up to nothing.
40. <v Speaker 3>And coming into adulthood realizing that I wanted
41. <v Speaker 3>images of
42. <v Speaker 3>women, sexual images
43. <v Speaker 3>of people, as it were,
44. <v Speaker 3>in erotic movie scenes, photos, or whatever.
45. <v Speaker 3>And that's the frustration of wanting that and and turning and seeing that all there is is pornography, which basically is violent and dehumanizing and certainly doesn't celebrate,
46. <v Speaker 3>to say at least,
47. <v Speaker 3>the the sensualness
48. <v Speaker 3>and the passion and the beauty of women that for so many years has been suppressed.
49. <v Speaker 3>And so I really am pushing and hoping and encouraging
50. <v Speaker 3>women who are artists and filmmakers and writers and and, whatever
51. <v Speaker 3>to develop
52. <v Speaker 3>female erotica
53. <v Speaker 3>so that women can
54. <v Speaker 3>participate in it, not feel like they're they're selling out or or being bad because that's what the nuns told us. Right? And we took a peek.
55. <v Speaker 3>Yes. Exactly.
56. <v Speaker 3>Valerie.
57. <v Speaker 0>Well, I'd like to approach it as a journalist and a writer and and talk a bit about covering pornography as an issue. I think it's a little bit like covering the Nuremberg trials that no no matter how many atrocities we reveal, no matter how many victims we dig up, someone will always say it's hard to place the responsibility.
58. <v Speaker 0>Personal conscience is obscured by broad theoretical concerns. And isn't pornography a conspiracy of the mob or capitalism?
59. <v Speaker 0>How do we know what a person derives from pornography? How can one individual be held responsible for the crimes of his culture?
60. <v Speaker 0>These are the voices of good Americans who believe that they're defending the First Amendment and other foundations of democracy.
61. <v Speaker 0>And I'm concerned about it as a writer. I'm I'm worried about the first amendment. And as a woman, I'm worried about my my safety and my dignity. And so perhaps we should begin with some kind of definition, and I'd like to
62. <v Speaker 0>suggest this one, that pornography is a representation of images
63. <v Speaker 0>often including ridicule and violence, which degrades human beings for the purpose of entertaining or selling products. And an important corollary is that pornography is more about the exercise of power than about the exercise of sex.
64. <v Speaker 1>And last but not least is Bridget.
65. <v Speaker 4>Well, I'd like to begin by echoing Valerie's definition.
66. <v Speaker 4>I think that a lot of us, when we hear the word pornography,
67. <v Speaker 4>think of sex.
68. <v Speaker 4>And it's become real clear to me in my work in the anti pornography movement that pornography is not about sex. Pornography is about violence,
69. <v Speaker 4>and pornography connects sex and violence.
70. <v Speaker 4>And I'd like to make a distinction there. Margaret was talking about erotica and about the importance of developing an erotica that we as women can feel good about, and that is real different from the kind of pornography
71. <v Speaker 4>that I pose.
72. <v Speaker 4>I'm a coordinator of a very organization
73. <v Speaker 4>called Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media.
74. <v Speaker 4>And, my perspective on the pornography issue is one of an organizer,
75. <v Speaker 4>someone who's interested in building the feminist movement.
76. <v Speaker 4>And I think that the anti pornography end of the movement
77. <v Speaker 4>is, very important in right now that we are part
78. <v Speaker 4>of a number of groups who are working against violence against women. And we see pornography
79. <v Speaker 4>as sort of the propaganda
80. <v Speaker 4>arm
81. <v Speaker 4>of the culture, which really encourages violence against women in a lot of obvious and a lot of subtle ways.
82. <v Speaker 4>And,
83. <v Speaker 4>so I see this as a real important organizing issue.
84. <v Speaker 4>And
85. <v Speaker 4>I'd also like to say a bit about pornography's effect on women's self image and on our ability to work for political change.
86. <v Speaker 4>As a member of Wave PIM, I've seen a lot of women join our organization
87. <v Speaker 4>and talk about the ways in which working against pornography
88. <v Speaker 4>has affected
89. <v Speaker 4>their feelings about their ability to really make changes in this society.
90. <v Speaker 4>I think a lot of us women view ourselves
91. <v Speaker 4>as unable to really take power over our own lives, unable
92. <v Speaker 4>to decide
93. <v Speaker 4>how we want society to change and then to go about working to make those changes. And I think that images of us as passive, as victims,
94. <v Speaker 4>as people who are here to please men,
95. <v Speaker 4>really encourage that kind of attitude in us and that working against those kind of images
96. <v Speaker 1>can give us the power and the feeling of power to make changes not just in the pornography issue but in a lot of other issues that are important to us. You know, I think one of the things that you're talking about in terms of women in power and and its relationship to pornography and how women are denigrated in pornography is very important because we are in this society programmed to fail. And that's something that we're just beginning to really look at on a broad level basis about how it gets so integrated into our lives and and into our self images.
97. <v Speaker 1>I wanna go back to
98. <v Speaker 1>differentiation
99. <v Speaker 1>between pornography and erotica because there and also talk about the First Amendment.
100. <v Speaker 1>A lot of people who are
101. <v Speaker 1>anti pornography often have problems with
102. <v Speaker 1>the struggles against pornography because of the First Amendment
103. <v Speaker 1>and what that means for us and for ourselves and and free speech, etcetera, etcetera.
104. <v Speaker 1>And it all come always comes down to, well, how can we get rid of pornography
105. <v Speaker 1>and still protect our first amendment rights? And who's gonna be making that decision?
106. <v Speaker 4>Well, I have an answer for that.
107. <v Speaker 4>In women against violence in pornography and media,
108. <v Speaker 4>we are working to get rid of pornography,
109. <v Speaker 4>but we don't feel that we are violating anyone's first amendment rights.
110. <v Speaker 4>First of all, a point about the first amendment is that the first Amendment is talking about the government.
111. <v Speaker 4>It's talking about the government's
112. <v Speaker 4>the fact that the government is not allowed to keep us from speaking,
113. <v Speaker 4>to keep us from putting out certain ideas in the media.
114. <v Speaker 4>So we at WavePAM
115. <v Speaker 4>are exercising our First Amendment rights
116. <v Speaker 4>as individuals and as an organization to be expressing our ideas about pornography.
117. <v Speaker 4>So that's an important distinction to keep in mind is that the First Amendment is talking about the government rather than about groups and individuals who are not part of the government.
118. <v Speaker 4>And another important point is that we at WavePam are working to change community standards.
119. <v Speaker 4>We're not working
120. <v Speaker 4>to ban pornography or to make laws against pornography.
121. <v Speaker 4>Clearly, there are certain things that the community tolerates that the community does not tolerate. There's material that sells. There's material that will not sell. So we're working to educate people so that portrayals of women being murdered, raped, bound, and so on for sexual stimulation
122. <v Speaker 4>will be seen as unacceptable.
123. <v Speaker 0>And, I don't feel that that's in conflict. I feel that we're, like I said, exercising our First Amendment rights. Valerie, do you have a comment to that? Yeah. I'd say that as a feminist journalist, the thing that I'm most concerned about is being censored myself, and I look to the media for self regulation and for some kind of ethical consideration of the whole issue. In fact, this isn't such a wild dream when you consider, for instance, that the Los Angeles Times has stopped running display ads for pornographic movies, and that wasn't a small concession on their part. It cost them a million dollars a year. A number of papers across the country have also done this, including the New York Times.
124. <v Speaker 0>It's also important to look at other countries like Sweden and journal and,
125. <v Speaker 0>England, for instance, where the journalists' unions have pressured the newspapers and the other periodicals
126. <v Speaker 0>into having certain standards about how women should be treated in the media. I think there's a lot of potential for consumer remedies within the press itself.
127. <v Speaker 2>Kathy. I think the legalistic solution is a very conservative one and something that's somewhat antithetical to the goals of feminism.
128. <v Speaker 2>At least in terms of my concept of what the goals of feminism are, and I hope I'm sharing it with a lot of other people, is that I really don't see us being able to coexist with this state.
129. <v Speaker 2>The our goals cannot
130. <v Speaker 2>be made real and and manifest,
131. <v Speaker 2>and this state continue to exist in its present form. It is an inhuman,
132. <v Speaker 2>racist, and misogynist state.
133. <v Speaker 2>And
134. <v Speaker 2>as long as we
135. <v Speaker 2>assume
136. <v Speaker 2>that its laws somehow
137. <v Speaker 2>can be used for our protection,
138. <v Speaker 2>we are, I think, at the same time assuming that the level at which we are confronting the state
139. <v Speaker 2>is not going to bring
140. <v Speaker 2>a retaliation
141. <v Speaker 2>on their part
142. <v Speaker 2>through whatever mechanism they care to use, whether it is the first amendment
143. <v Speaker 2>or to such things as the disappearance of Karen Silkwood.
144. <v Speaker 2>I mean, we just,
145. <v Speaker 2>I think that we end up in a very kind of
146. <v Speaker 2>accommodating
147. <v Speaker 2>position
148. <v Speaker 2>when we start talking about
149. <v Speaker 2>how we can protect first amendment rights and still get what we want. The fact is that we can't get what we want within the state, that we have to change the state. We have to make those first those rights that are inherent in being a human being in any society
150. <v Speaker 2>manifest for us.
151. <v Speaker 2>And I think that what we are facing right now is the first wave that we face with every new issue we we get that gets brought up
152. <v Speaker 2>within the feminist movement.
153. <v Speaker 2>And that is the cry that we are going to inhibit somebody else's rights
154. <v Speaker 2>or that, in fact, we're gonna even make our own rights less. You can't make them. You I mean, there's only so far you can go to make them much less in this society right now when you consider the arbitrary
155. <v Speaker 2>behavior of this state. The discussions, the legalistic istic discussions around first amendment issues
156. <v Speaker 2>assume some kind of honor and integrity
157. <v Speaker 2>on the part of the state, be it the courts,
158. <v Speaker 2>the judges, lawyers, or whatever. I don't assume that. I don't assume
159. <v Speaker 2>that they have any more vested interest in,
160. <v Speaker 2>helping us protect our rights. I think we're gonna have to fight for it right down the line as we fight for every change.
161. <v Speaker 1>Valerie, do you have a response for that?
162. <v Speaker 0>I'm awed by the momentum in Kathy's response, but I think it's very naive. I think that, ultimately, as as writers, that we have to be aware of the fact that there is something that does protect us a little bit in this country. And granted, it's not very much, and granted, it's it's not often well applied, but it is something. And it's the only thing that we have, and I think we have to fight to keep it. Margaret, I would like to respond by saying that,
163. <v Speaker 3>I would really have to back up where Kathy's coming from because, what oppressed people have been
164. <v Speaker 3>have had to do is get in the position of react to an oppressive situation in order to get about a nickel's worth of freedom. There was a law at one time that said my grandparents couldn't vote.
165. <v Speaker 3>There was a poll
166. <v Speaker 3>tax that kept many of my
167. <v Speaker 3>my foremothers and forefathers from participating
168. <v Speaker 3>in the election
169. <v Speaker 3>process.
170. <v Speaker 3>There was a law that says that colored people had to drink at one fountain and white people had to drink at another. Those were laws that people fought and blew away and said, you know, hey. And so I think that every time a movement gains momentum,
171. <v Speaker 3>there is always something used to, in legalistic jargon, of course, to keep us,
172. <v Speaker 3>to keep us anal, you know. The the feminist movement at the at the beginning of it was brain blamed for the high rise in divorce rate and the fact that children were running rampant because mothers suddenly were out of the home. My god, they've been at home for years. So I I don't think that I want us to stop taking this defensive position, you know. It's only been jangled in front of us when we talk about pornography because some of these judges have Playboy magazines in their desk drawers and some of these people that sit on these juries are going to these massage parlors at lunchtime. So I think that's, you know, we have to who is who is pushing these laws down our down our throats? And if you think they're existing to protect me and you, then I think you're naive because they weren't cons they weren't even thinking about me and you or Linda Lovenace when they designed that First Amendment and no woman sat there and helped design it anyway.
173. <v Speaker 3>Okay.
174. <v Speaker 0>Valerie, I'll let it go back to you since some of the comments were directed specifically at you. Okay. I couldn't agree more with the the level of oppression that women and and minorities have experienced in this country. I think, though, that the censorship issue is drawing a blind down on the work that we have to do against pornography. We have to educate people about the fact that it exists, that it's brutal, that it's racist.
175. <v Speaker 0>We have to educate people through the press. We have to educate people in the classroom. We have to educate people through WavePen by taking them on tours. We have to have take back the night demonstrations. It seems to me we spend a hell of a lot of time sitting with each other arguing about first amendment rights, where we should be talking about how to educate people that pornography exists and what it does to people that that it incites violence against women in this culture. That's true, Valerie, but that's always used as a response to women. Some liberal liberals should be blown off the face of the earth saying, oh, boy. I really don't believe women should be beat up on screen, but, hey, what about First Amendment right? You tell them to get the hell out of here. They're not our friend. We don't need that kind of somebody sitting on the fence talking about our bodies and our lives. That's crazy. But I think a lot of women who could be part of our movement are fooled by that kind of argument. And I feel like
176. <v Speaker 4>as people who want to
177. <v Speaker 4>get the word out to as many women as possible, that we need to be ready to answer those arguments. And I think that they're very simple arguments to answer, but that we need to I'm ready to hear that and to respond to that. I totally agree. And some of those same women would say, I'm I'm I'm not for equal, you know, I'm not for that women's lib stuff, but I'm for equal, you know, pay for equal work. I mean, there's always gonna be victims
178. <v Speaker 3>who still don't withdraw their consent to oppression, who still who still are not wholeheartedly committed feminists. And I'm not saying we should not be there to educate and to build our movement. All I'm saying is we can't get caught in this anal position,
179. <v Speaker 3>this constipatory
180. <v Speaker 3>position of of of shirking back because, oh, we don't wanna dance over the First Amendment right while women are getting killed. Right. There's snuff films killing us on the screen. I mean, that's insane. Sure. I agree with you.
181. <v Speaker 1>Move on just a little bit and and kind of conjunct this because we brought up educational issues, which are really important, and that's one of the reasons why we're all here, is to talk about the need to educate people around issues of pornography.
182. <v Speaker 1>There's been a number of articles
183. <v Speaker 1>in the
184. <v Speaker 1>very recently
185. <v Speaker 1>in Mother Jones and The Advocate,
186. <v Speaker 1>so on and so forth, and we're all familiar
187. <v Speaker 1>with them. And and
188. <v Speaker 1>many women who are feminists saying that they are
189. <v Speaker 1>that we need to tiptoe around this issue specifically because of the First Amendment right, which and that kind of
190. <v Speaker 1>of invalidates the need to talk about pornography and to educate people around pornography.
191. <v Speaker 1>WavePAM, over the last few months, has been giving people tours
192. <v Speaker 1>of,
193. <v Speaker 4>red light districts in San Francisco. Bridget, why don't you talk about that? Okay. We've been doing tours for the past few months in the Tenderloin District, which is one of the pornography districts in San Francisco.
194. <v Speaker 4>And the reason that we're doing this is that I think a lot of people and especially a lot of women don't know what pornography really is. I think that as women, we don't like to look at pornography.
195. <v Speaker 4>It makes a lot of us uncomfortable.
196. <v Speaker 4>I know that I had the feeling before I ever looked at pornography that there was something in it directed at me. I didn't know what and I didn't like it and I didn't particularly wanna think about it. So we're leading tours,
197. <v Speaker 4>in which we do a short slideshow about pornography and about the themes that are expressed in pornography. And then we take women on some tours and women on men women and men on other tours through the emporiums, the peep shows, the bookstores,
198. <v Speaker 4>so on that you can find in the Tenderloin.
199. <v Speaker 4>And most people who go through those tours
200. <v Speaker 4>come out with the understanding that pornography is not about sex. Again, pornography is about violence. It's about abuse of women and children. It's about power. And I think that once women understand that, we're gonna be ready to fight back against that kind of thing. But that the important first step is to make that clear to women who learn otherwise until, you know, we can take them out and show them what it's really about. Kathy. I think we have to, in in the process of doing this, and and I I think we've all probably feel
201. <v Speaker 2>similarly committed to this,
202. <v Speaker 2>to extend this whole concept beyond,
203. <v Speaker 2>the idea of violent pornography and what it does to women.
204. <v Speaker 2>We live in at least when I when I'm talking about female sexual slavery, I think of pornography
205. <v Speaker 2>and its extension into movies like Swept Away, into TV commercials, into ads in magazines, magazines,
206. <v Speaker 2>as what I call a kind
207. <v Speaker 2>of ideology of cultural sadism. Pornography
208. <v Speaker 2>functions as an ideology,
209. <v Speaker 2>whether it's violently beating a woman or objectifying
210. <v Speaker 2>a 14 year old child in a seductive pose in an ad in a newspaper for underwear,
211. <v Speaker 2>with the notion that there's other things to do with a 14 year old child. The other side of what we're talking about also that I think we have to always be very clear about is
212. <v Speaker 2>that we are victims of pornography.
213. <v Speaker 2>We are victims of a sexually objectified
214. <v Speaker 2>and fetishized
215. <v Speaker 2>society.
216. <v Speaker 2>But there are more direct victims, and that those are those women who
217. <v Speaker 2>are enslaved in that kind of situation.
218. <v Speaker 2>Again, Lovelace's story being incredibly revealing
219. <v Speaker 2>in terms of,
220. <v Speaker 2>it's it's an extension
221. <v Speaker 2>and simply another form of sexual slavery and prostitution,
222. <v Speaker 2>and it's happening to women
223. <v Speaker 2>in pornography. I recently learned of,
224. <v Speaker 2>a situation in Mexico, I think Tijuana,
225. <v Speaker 2>where
226. <v Speaker 2>men can go and pay a certain amount of money for,
227. <v Speaker 2>sex with a corpse.
228. <v Speaker 2>Now how I mean, how that corpse is acquired, the the violence of snuff,
229. <v Speaker 2>the snuff films. I mean, all of these things are so incredibly interrelated to real women's real lives,
230. <v Speaker 2>and we cannot lose track of that. And that is one of the worst things that the first amendment argument and even being engaged in it does. It raises the issue to a level of abstraction
231. <v Speaker 2>where we lose track of those women and what the victims in the making of pornography.
232. <v Speaker 2>Hey, Margaret.
233. <v Speaker 3>Miss? Yeah. Did you have a comment? Well, no. I I wanted I was really gonna talk about the other side of it, but I I like the flow of it. It's fine. Okay. We'll go back to Valerie then. Well, I'm just taking off on your original question about the recent coverage of in the left and liberal press about pornography and responding to Kathy's,
234. <v Speaker 0>description. I think it's really interesting that the the left left has always
235. <v Speaker 0>associated with itself, with,
236. <v Speaker 0>trying to liberate people from oppression, hopefully, the kind of oppression that Kathy has just so well described.
237. <v Speaker 0>But the classic position of the left has been to celebrate pornography as as revolutionary,
238. <v Speaker 0>and pornography has been associated with
239. <v Speaker 0>revolt by radical men. If you look at the developments in in mass media of euro communism, for instance, Italy's new wave of liberated television runs amateur striptease, blue movies, and features like nude on parallel bars. And in both Spain and Portugal, the new regimes are reported and analyzed in macho left periodicals that are rife with sexist illustrations.
240. <v Speaker 0>Seems to me that there is a classic socialist analysis, which I would just like to briefly give. And, then I would like to ask why the left has not understood this analysis, which is that pornography
241. <v Speaker 0>is a sexist, racist, profiteering commodity. Pornography objectifies people, thereby exploiting the models, the purchasers, and the society at large. Although pornography predates capitalism,
242. <v Speaker 0>mass porn is one
243. <v Speaker 0>one of the greatest capitalist success stories. Marxists recognize that under late capitalism,
244. <v Speaker 0>pornography proliferates as a marketable object. The market expresses the need. The need is met temporarily, I mean, I'm only quoting,
245. <v Speaker 0>to stimulate and create larger needs. These needs create the values. Under capitalism, the only source of legitimate needs is the value in the marketplace. But you look at the left and liberal press, and what are they doing? They're celebrating pornography in their ads and in their articles as we've seen most recently.
246. <v Speaker 1>That's that is very true. I wanna also as long as we're talking about left regimes and and pornography,
247. <v Speaker 1>several years ago, I can't even remember exactly when at this point in time, I believe it was the early part of the seventies, maybe the late sixties,
248. <v Speaker 1>Denmark,
249. <v Speaker 1>changed all its laws again, in terms of pornography.
250. <v Speaker 1>The reasoning being that
251. <v Speaker 1>if they were to make pornography
252. <v Speaker 1>women. And, in fact, we have seen in a lot of studies that have done been done since that time that just the opposite has happened in Denmark in terms of violence against
253. <v Speaker 1>women. Kathy,
254. <v Speaker 1>I wanna make a comment so that just so people know that when you're talking about female sexual slavery, that you have written a book on the subject that is currently available,
255. <v Speaker 1>published by Prentice Hall,
256. <v Speaker 1>and that you have been speaking all all over the country for the last six, seven months in promotion of the book in several places in the Bay Area. And this is about four years, five years of research that this that this book encompasses.
257. <v Speaker 2>Just about five years ago I started it. Yeah.
258. <v Speaker 1>So that people this is still that people when you're talking about female sexual slavery, that people know that you are, at this point in time, the expert.
259. <v Speaker 2>Thank you, Sabrina.
260. <v Speaker 1>But I think that we need to talk about more about these I mean, when you bring up the example of Denmark, a lot of people just kind of you know, they wanna push it out of the way and and shove it and not recognize it and deal with it.
261. <v Speaker 1>I feel that one of the problems in terms of critiquing the left and its position of pornography is the fact that it has not taken any kind of real stance or analysis in terms of sexuality.
262. <v Speaker 2>It can't.
263. <v Speaker 3>Well, how do you say that?
264. <v Speaker 2>I mean, I you know,
265. <v Speaker 2>sex and power are very
266. <v Speaker 2>interconnected in patriarchy, and the left is another form of or one of the forms of our patriarchy.
267. <v Speaker 2>And as long as
268. <v Speaker 2>I mean, I think of the left,
269. <v Speaker 2>which some people
270. <v Speaker 2>these days calling the covert right,
271. <v Speaker 2>is a,
272. <v Speaker 2>you know, an extension, another arm
273. <v Speaker 2>of of the patriarchy
274. <v Speaker 2>and,
275. <v Speaker 2>one that isn't going to give up its access to power over women.
276. <v Speaker 2>Well, I mean, and we've seen we've seen this,
277. <v Speaker 2>happen in one, quote, unquote, socialist revolution after another.
278. <v Speaker 2>I mean, until women are really the major force in in revolution
279. <v Speaker 2>revolutionizing
280. <v Speaker 2>any society, I don't think we can
281. <v Speaker 2>expect,
282. <v Speaker 2>I I think we must, and as Valerie rightly pointed out, expect more from them.
283. <v Speaker 2>I'm not sure how realistic that is as as their power is still very connected. Yeah.
284. <v Speaker 1>Another issue that always seems that has been coming up of late
285. <v Speaker 1>in more in terms of educating people about pornography is racism and pornography.
286. <v Speaker 1>I would would like Margaret specifically to start out addressing that because you brought that up earlier in a statement that you made
287. <v Speaker 1>in terms of how people are dealt with.
288. <v Speaker 3>Well, I, you know, I'm not an expert in pornography. I'm, you know, my my feeling is though see, it's funny about racism because I I think that,
289. <v Speaker 3>if this was if we were talking about a school that was all white, I'd call it racist. But most pornography is white people to white people. And so in lots of ways, I think racism
290. <v Speaker 3>works to women of color's advantage.
291. <v Speaker 3>There is,
292. <v Speaker 3>there are women of color participating in pornography, but certainly not in a high grade pornography. I mean, I've,
293. <v Speaker 3>and that's from personal experience.
294. <v Speaker 3>But but again, who makes the money? Who profiteers off of it? I think it it, you know, it is white men and it's their business and their, you know, and their,
295. <v Speaker 3>and and their livelihood at the same time.
296. <v Speaker 3>Some of the
297. <v Speaker 3>pornographic
298. <v Speaker 3>films that I've seen
299. <v Speaker 3>as well as some of the
300. <v Speaker 3>oh, there's a word for for them. The cards. There's a word for my I can't think of it. So many things connected with pornography
301. <v Speaker 3>on a lesser scale depict,
302. <v Speaker 3>women of color and third world women in in dehumanizing
303. <v Speaker 3>situations and
304. <v Speaker 3>very rarely
305. <v Speaker 3>will you find
306. <v Speaker 3>interracial
307. <v Speaker 3>sex, you know, even on that level. I guess it's very threatening, but you will find books of of women of color, you know, exotic Asians or, you know, angry black women. I've seen those too. But in terms of the films, because films is money making. I mean, that's the big money. A lot of women of color are not ported are not placed in those positions.
308. <v Speaker 1>Yeah. That's true.
309. <v Speaker 4>Bridget had a comment that she wanted to make. Yeah. I agree with Margaret that most pornography is produced by white men and it's white men who profit off of it.
310. <v Speaker 4>But I do think that there is a lot of pornography that portrays third world women and that most of it
311. <v Speaker 4>does
312. <v Speaker 4>play on
313. <v Speaker 4>specific stereotypes about specific racial groups. And in particular, there's an enormous amount of pornography about Asian women that tends to portray these women as passive, as childlike. It often plays on, I think, on men's incest fantasies portraying grown women as if they were children. This is Asian women.
314. <v Speaker 4>And there's a lot of pornography about black women that
315. <v Speaker 4>plays on the whole,
316. <v Speaker 4>Moynihan kind of thing
317. <v Speaker 4>of black women as castrating,
318. <v Speaker 4>as domineering,
319. <v Speaker 4>and presents black women on the one hand as powerful in a sense, but with a kind of illegitimate power. And I think that
320. <v Speaker 4>that kind of pornography,
321. <v Speaker 4>people can argue that, say, a picture of a black woman with a whip and chains beating a man, well, what's wrong with that? The woman's in power.
322. <v Speaker 4>First of all, that's not the kind of power that appeals to me as a woman. I don't think it appeals to a lot of women. Second of all, I think that kind of pornography sets up women as deserving victims who need to be fought back against by men. So I think that pornography does
323. <v Speaker 4>continue a lot of really dangerous racial stereotypes
324. <v Speaker 4>and that,
325. <v Speaker 4>those are just as dangerous as the sexual stereotypes
326. <v Speaker 2>stereotypes that it portrays. Kathy? I think, you know, the one of the easiest ways to go at this is to look at pornography
327. <v Speaker 2>as that which
328. <v Speaker 2>reinforces the worst of the the myths and stereotypes in the society,
329. <v Speaker 2>and particularly in terms of providing the consumers, and when you think of who the consumers
330. <v Speaker 2>are, providing the consumers with what they want and what they would fantasize.
331. <v Speaker 2>When you think of it in that context, it's and it's the same thing with sexual slavery. I mean,
332. <v Speaker 2>it is that women of all races
333. <v Speaker 2>and,
334. <v Speaker 2>and nationalities
335. <v Speaker 2>are taken into sexual slavery. The determination is made by the market.
336. <v Speaker 2>What is it that men are demanding? And literally, what is it that men are demanding
337. <v Speaker 2>right now? What kind of,
338. <v Speaker 2>kinky thing do they wanna get off on at this moment?
339. <v Speaker 2>Sometimes, it's blonde haired, blue eyed children,
340. <v Speaker 2>and other times, it's black women or Asian women.
341. <v Speaker 2>And
342. <v Speaker 2>and when and
343. <v Speaker 2>that's, I think, really important to look at the consumers
344. <v Speaker 2>and the way the industry
345. <v Speaker 2>is constructed
346. <v Speaker 2>to not only
347. <v Speaker 2>feed the consumers what they want, but perpetuate
348. <v Speaker 2>the worst of the the attitudes and biases that the consumers bring to it, not just in terms of misogyny,
349. <v Speaker 2>but in terms of racism specifically?
350. <v Speaker 1>Yeah. I would there's a something that whenever I think about racism and pornography that specifically comes to my mind
351. <v Speaker 1>as one of the most blatant things that I I have ever seen,
352. <v Speaker 1>and that was in Hustler of October
353. <v Speaker 1>1978.
354. <v Speaker 1>It was just a couple months before the the feminist,
355. <v Speaker 1>perspectives on pornography conference.
356. <v Speaker 1>There in there, there was a pictorial that was on the the rape of,
357. <v Speaker 1>the rape of freedom, was it titled? It was about Kennedy. Yeah. The
358. <v Speaker 1>and, the rape of American justice, and it was about Kennedy. The the written part of it was about Kennedy.
359. <v Speaker 1>And yet, pictorially,
360. <v Speaker 1>it was a
361. <v Speaker 1>black man
362. <v Speaker 1>with a white woman who had been powdered over to be even whiter,
363. <v Speaker 1>and she was being raped by this black man. And it was just infuriating,
364. <v Speaker 1>you know, nothing less than infuriating.
365. <v Speaker 0>Valerie. Just to follow that up, I think that it's important to consider it on a symbolic level. And if we look at racist propaganda, we can learn a lot about what pornography means symbolically.
366. <v Speaker 0>Racist propaganda has always thrived on ridicule and brutality, and those are exactly the same things that pornography thrives on.
367. <v Speaker 1>That's a very excellent comment.
368. <v Speaker 1>I wanna
369. <v Speaker 1>wrap up this part of it and before we start taking the phone calls with talking about how we as women
370. <v Speaker 1>can celebrate our sexuality
371. <v Speaker 1>and begin
372. <v Speaker 1>through either through the the struggle against pornography
373. <v Speaker 1>or alongside of that,
374. <v Speaker 1>begin to develop our own erotica?
375. <v Speaker 3>Who wants to start? Well, I was sitting here thinking, you know, that the reason I've,
376. <v Speaker 3>I mean,
377. <v Speaker 3>the the
378. <v Speaker 3>the problem is it seems to me it's not going to be the women,
379. <v Speaker 3>the liberal women who argue first amendment rights who will be the people who would be resistant to come in here. It's people like myself and others who,
380. <v Speaker 3>went through Catholic grammar school afraid to touch ourselves or share or share any sexuality and confessed,
381. <v Speaker 3>going to sleep with naughty dreams. And then, of course, the sixties and the sexual revolution came along and there we were picking up playboys and not feeling guilty and looking at certain things and and then, of course, getting our feminist consciousness
382. <v Speaker 3>and then whom
383. <v Speaker 3>there we find out that everything exploits women, even those naughty little pictures that we were looking at. And I think that the conflict comes sometimes
384. <v Speaker 3>as being in support of a movement,
385. <v Speaker 3>a part of our movement like WavePam, that's against violence against women.
386. <v Speaker 3>At the same time, feeling that there's really
387. <v Speaker 5>too few outlets for those of us and there are many of us, unfortunately, some of
388. <v Speaker 3>and there are many of us,
389. <v Speaker 3>unfortunately some of us won't admit it, because we were raised as Catholic girls,
390. <v Speaker 3>but there's many of us who will not even admit being turned on by by images that are stimulating.
391. <v Speaker 3>And so many of us will run to an advertised pornographic
392. <v Speaker 3>film and try to sit through the violence so that we can get to the good part, the the the five minutes of the two hour film that doesn't totally dehumanize us. And there has to be some response to that kind of woman,
393. <v Speaker 3>because she feels that she's breaking out of all those constraints
394. <v Speaker 3>and seeing nudity and seeing all that. And she knows she doesn't wanna see women get beat up. I mean, she knows that. At the same time, she does respond to sensual images of women. And I think that we have to somehow take care of that and I don't think it needs to be before or after. It needs to be taken care of because women are still going to see pornography.
395. <v Speaker 3>Feminists are still going to see pornography.
396. <v Speaker 3>Kathy.
397. <v Speaker 2>Yeah. I think I mean, I really agree with what Margaret's saying, and and I think,
398. <v Speaker 2>that we've got to be doing it. We've got to be developing images for ourself at the same time that we're destroying the ones that are oppressing and annihilating
399. <v Speaker 2>us. I think that in doing that, one of the things that we really need to use as a guideline
400. <v Speaker 2>is,
401. <v Speaker 2>the fact that pornography
402. <v Speaker 2>the violence in pornography
403. <v Speaker 2>starts with objectification.
404. <v Speaker 2>Mhmm. The ability to reduce someone to an object,
405. <v Speaker 2>whether or not you beat them, the the ability to simply reduce a person to an object, to take their humanity away from them.
406. <v Speaker 2>If as we start
407. <v Speaker 2>creating senses of feminist erotica, senses of our own sensuality,
408. <v Speaker 2>with and for each other,
409. <v Speaker 2>we
410. <v Speaker 2>fall into that kind of trap of objectification,
411. <v Speaker 2>we're going to be in a lot of trouble. I think we're gonna be able to avoid that because we are very, very concerned
412. <v Speaker 2>about changing the values of this society and in so much
413. <v Speaker 2>in in terms of what Margaret was just saying about how we got it in the sixties, you know. I mean, they really gave it to us, and we're not going to live by those values. We're creating new values. And as long as we keep those values
414. <v Speaker 2>intertwined
415. <v Speaker 2>with
416. <v Speaker 2>the
417. <v Speaker 2>the efforts to create something new. I think we're gonna stay focused, but it's the objectification
418. <v Speaker 2>that makes it possible
419. <v Speaker 2>to either
420. <v Speaker 2>enslave or to go into pornography.
421. <v Speaker 3>And I just wanted to say that in fairness to those feminist, you know, pioneers of erotic, I mean, they're it's already happened. I mean, we have certain films that are out. We have T. Koren. We have, Anne Hershey's film, We Are Ourselves. I mean, it has begun. It's not like it hasn't. Right. We need more. We need a whole lot more. And we need to
422. <v Speaker 1>recognize that those women who are out there doing
423. <v Speaker 0>it are doing it for us. That's right. Yeah. Valerie. It seems that the big problem here is that people always say it's a subjective definition. What is erotic how how do you draw the line between that and pornography?
424. <v Speaker 0>And I think that any definition of oppression is an exposure of moral consciousness. And I too was a Catholic school girl. And,
425. <v Speaker 0>I,
426. <v Speaker 0>participate in this with the same sense of passion, very much wanting some kind of feminist erotica. Seems to me that any
427. <v Speaker 0>mutuality and coercion
428. <v Speaker 0>and freedom.
429. <v Speaker 0>And I think it also comes down to common sense. We know the difference between Judy Chicago and the Playboy bunny. That's all there is to it.
430. <v Speaker 1>Bridgette.
431. <v Speaker 4>I guess I'd like to go back to a point that I made, at the beginning of this show, which is that
432. <v Speaker 4>I think that a lot of women
433. <v Speaker 4>are
434. <v Speaker 4>have been and are
435. <v Speaker 4>damaged sexually by the images that we see all the time in the media. And that besides needing to create our own images, we need to change our own self images.
436. <v Speaker 4>And that one way to begin doing that is to reject what we see around us all the time. We may feel that it doesn't really affect us, that we can walk down the street and see
437. <v Speaker 4>misogynist billboards,
438. <v Speaker 4>hear misogynist songs on the radio, take this kind of thing in all the time without having it hurt us. But I think it does hurt us. And I think that acknowledging that and rejecting that is the first step in creating something new and something that is really woman affirming and really erotic.
439. <v Speaker 1>That was a little taste of Jessica Williams' newest album, Rivers of Memory, and the cut that you just heard is Search for Shakti.
440. <v Speaker 6>First, I'd like to ask for a comment.
441. <v Speaker 6>First of all, I'd like to mention that I've been a feminist since about 1930
442. <v Speaker 6>when a faculty adviser told me that no woman had any business majoring in chemistry.
443. <v Speaker 6>Amendments and freedom of speech issues were mainly a matter of government in relation to the individual.
444. <v Speaker 6>It seems to me that there's a rather direct relationship
445. <v Speaker 6>between FCC
446. <v Speaker 6>and censorship
447. <v Speaker 6>and quite directly,
448. <v Speaker 6>if there were greater censorship
449. <v Speaker 6>than it was, perhaps even your program might not be aired. One other,
450. <v Speaker 6>comment I'd like to make is that it seems to me that ultimately
451. <v Speaker 6>an economic system which provides some jobs,
452. <v Speaker 6>food, and housing
453. <v Speaker 6>rather than pornography,
454. <v Speaker 6>package, and armaments might be the
455. <v Speaker 6>the path for
456. <v Speaker 6>some solution to this problem.
457. <v Speaker 1>Right on. Thanks a lot for calling. Kathy, I believe that was directed to you. I think so.
458. <v Speaker 2>On my comments
459. <v Speaker 2>regarding
460. <v Speaker 2>the role of the state and how much we can trust it or or expect it to work in our behalf is very much geared towards thinking about what our goals are and what we're after.
461. <v Speaker 2>And I am not after
462. <v Speaker 2>trying to get the state
463. <v Speaker 2>to be a little better to me a little bit of the time and give me a little piece of the pie to fight with a few other people over to get a little bit.
464. <v Speaker 2>Yeah, that we got this hour on pornography,
465. <v Speaker 2>and the air is is good, and we're thankful for that. But, I don't want to go around being thankful that we can kind of slide in and get it.
466. <v Speaker 2>I think, ultimately,
467. <v Speaker 2>until we are in positions of power and control,
468. <v Speaker 2>we've gotta be very careful about talking about assisting those
469. <v Speaker 2>who are in powers
470. <v Speaker 2>and control,
471. <v Speaker 2>so that they won't oppress us a lot more than they're already or a little more than they're already oppressing us. It is just not the road to liberation
472. <v Speaker 2>as far as I'm concerned. And I think we've got to think of large goals
473. <v Speaker 2>instead of small pieces of the pie.
474. <v Speaker 0>Valerie. I'm not sure what you're saying. It seems to me that this issue dissolves into whether you're in favor of banning or not. I'm not in favor of banning because I think we're gonna be the ones who get,
475. <v Speaker 2>oppressed first by that banning. Are you saying you that we should ban pornography? The issue dissolves into whether it should be banned or not by those people who are preoccupied
476. <v Speaker 2>with the First Amendment issue. I am not preoccupied with it. I wanna get rid of all pornography and as soon as possible.
477. <v Speaker 2>And by any creative means
478. <v Speaker 2>that women can come up with for getting rid of it. Including banning.
479. <v Speaker 2>I'll I'll I'll go any direction to do it, but I am not going
480. <v Speaker 2>to sit around and play the First Amendment game. We heard this issue on rape
481. <v Speaker 2>several years ago. The rights of the rights amendment. I mean Exactly. The rights of the defendant were gonna be taken away if rape laws were changed.
482. <v Speaker 2>Marital rape would never be able to be prosecuted because it would be an invasion of privacy, and it could come into your home and your relationship and invade your privacy. The rights of the unborn around abortion. I mean, you know, the It just I don't even wanna play into that. I think it's a reactionary argument that I just really don't wanna get into. I think we've gotta use any means that we have access to. We're in a state of war with this state.
483. <v Speaker 1>You know? It isn't that we're just kind of nice girls asking for a little bit of of support on this. Yeah. I think there is a fine line between what both of you are saying and but and it comes down to the same thing, that there is a difference between
484. <v Speaker 1>using the First Amendment
485. <v Speaker 1>to protect us and abusing the First Amendment
486. <v Speaker 3>to hurt us. And Or hiding behind the First Amendment. Right. It's just hard for me to believe a country that can't even give us something as, minimal as equal rights amendment. We wanna protect me,
487. <v Speaker 3>by using the First Amendment around pornography. It's hard for me to believe that. Doesn't seem consistent to you. Why I think that the whole issue of censorship draws a blind down on the larger questions we should be asking. Mhmm. Right. I agree. This is an excellent program, and you're all very smart. Thank you. Thank you. So are you.
488. <v Speaker 7>I hope that you will play it later when people with children maybe will be listening
489. <v Speaker 7>because I think one of the problems in the country today is that women are hated more than they've ever been before.
490. <v Speaker 7>Mhmm. And that is one of the reasons that we do need the First Amendment, but my god, not to hide behind to get out and wield it like a club. You know? Yes.
491. <v Speaker 7>Yes.
492. <v Speaker 7>Good image. Is that as long as we are so careless about children,
493. <v Speaker 7>we are never gonna wipe out pornography.
494. <v Speaker 7>I'm a mother.
495. <v Speaker 7>And, you know, when I think of the ignorance in which I began my life,
496. <v Speaker 7>I was educated to be a boob. You know?
497. <v Speaker 7>Yeah. And I was a dingbat until I was 32.
498. <v Speaker 7>And I had all these children, and I didn't know what to do with them. And it isn't a matter of blaming anybody,
499. <v Speaker 7>but the fact remains that we continue to produce the very conditions
500. <v Speaker 7>that we,
501. <v Speaker 7>moan about. Mhmm. Yeah. I think until we take it on on into our own hands as women
502. <v Speaker 7>to protect little boys,
503. <v Speaker 7>whether in home or at school, and to defend little girls,
504. <v Speaker 7>you know, that it won't do any good what we do.
505. <v Speaker 1>That's a very good It
506. <v Speaker 6>seems
507. <v Speaker 6>It seems that it's somewhat similar, although the content may be somewhat different,
508. <v Speaker 6>as the clamor for pornography.
509. <v Speaker 6>And,
510. <v Speaker 6>another comment is
511. <v Speaker 6>that
512. <v Speaker 6>this whole question of pornography, like just about anything else in
513. <v Speaker 6>system in which making money is the ultimate value
514. <v Speaker 6>so that anything that makes money, whether it's
515. <v Speaker 6>pornography or erotica or anything else,
516. <v Speaker 6>ultimately
517. <v Speaker 6>wins.
518. <v Speaker 3>Well, I'm I'm for free erotica.
519. <v Speaker 3>I you know, we don't have to charge for it except I believe that that filmmakers and and actors and people that participated should be paid what they're worth. I clamor for erotica because I realized that there is a need
520. <v Speaker 3>for visual stimulation.
521. <v Speaker 3>I separate that need from acts
522. <v Speaker 3>that debase and degrade and kill even as we found out women whether it be in books or magazines
523. <v Speaker 3>or on the screen. And I think that there is a need that is that that is good. I think as adults well, as children, heck. I mean, I was a child and I had that need, but all I saw around me was sleazy novels with women tied up, you know, bound in, uncompromising
524. <v Speaker 3>positions.
525. <v Speaker 3>And so I think that there is that need. I'm not saying that everybody has that need, but there is a need and it's,
526. <v Speaker 3>to be able to read beautiful passages that are stimulating, that don't,
527. <v Speaker 3>have anybody in a power relationship over the other. And I would agree with one of the women who spoke here earlier that I think who I am is clearly,
528. <v Speaker 3>my who my sexual self is. A lot of how I think of myself sexually has to do with those images that I've been bombarded with all my life and I I would like to know that there's an alternative to that. You know, I know that there's an alternative. It's in the heads of heads of women. And I guarantee that if it comes from a feminist head, it won't be caught up in in in making billions of dollars,
529. <v Speaker 1>and and and, you know, and off the backs of, women. But I think it would be a very celebratory and beautiful act. I think that the the bottom line in terms of the need for erotica is a celebration of our sexuality instead of an objectification
530. <v Speaker 1>of our sexuality. Mhmm.
531. <v Speaker 5>Regarding pornography, though, let's assume we all agree that pornography is harmful to society.
532. <v Speaker 5>How harmful does something have to be in order to have it banned or severely restricted? For example,
533. <v Speaker 5>you know, some things like like I say, let's say canned tuna fish killed about nine or 10 people a year in this country. It's probably not bad enough to make it worse. Bad enough to make it worse. Bad enough to kill about twenty thousand people
534. <v Speaker 5>every year in this country.
535. <v Speaker 5>Now you think, something like that is is bad enough to make god's worst case standing if if by many winds We're talking about I
536. <v Speaker 2>really expect a man to make a statement like that and that kind of insensitivity
537. <v Speaker 4>to this issue. I wanna answer that. I think we're talking about over half of the population here. We're talking about women, and we're talking about children. And clearly, that's enough of the population that's being hurt to get rid of this thing. As if we should even have to, you know, kind of validate that. Uh-huh.
538. <v Speaker 8>See, about the
539. <v Speaker 8>socialist countries and and all that,
540. <v Speaker 8>Cuba, one of the main, objects of the Cuban government, the Castro government, was to stop Havana from being the vice capital of the entire Western Hemisphere with 70,000
541. <v Speaker 8>prostitutes.
542. <v Speaker 8>And, I was in,
543. <v Speaker 8>in Cuba a few months ago. I was in Budapest last year. You look on any medicine any magazine rack in the city of Budapest, and you won't see the kind of
544. <v Speaker 8>of,
545. <v Speaker 8>sexual stuff on the covers that you'll see here at all.
546. <v Speaker 8>Now,
547. <v Speaker 8>what I've noticed is that, that people,
548. <v Speaker 8>opposed to the pornographers
549. <v Speaker 8>I mean, they let the porn
550. <v Speaker 8>Flint comes on television as as a defender of the First Amendment
551. <v Speaker 8>and the right to know, and it kind of implies
552. <v Speaker 8>that anybody that's,
553. <v Speaker 8>not really interested in sex and all the rest of it is kind of a hypocrite, but Larry Frent and these kind of people are the really great hypocrites because they're posing as defenders of of the right to know, and yet all they're interested in is really a fast buck. This guy that's born again And masculine privilege, and I think you can't ignore that. Pornography
554. <v Speaker 2>is not just a money making industry.
555. <v Speaker 2>It is an industry that reinforces
556. <v Speaker 2>sexual power for men in this society, and I think we've got to look at that side of it too.
557. <v Speaker 2>Well,
558. <v Speaker 8>look at I think the, the commercial people have rushed in to exploit a new area which was opened up,
559. <v Speaker 8>it was hithered to off ground,
560. <v Speaker 8>and they've just rushed in
561. <v Speaker 8>to to really exploit it. Maybe it is it is something beyond, what you say, but I don't think you can ignore
562. <v Speaker 8>this aspect of the whole thing and and and the money involved, not just Older than they happen to be, but the whole darn,
563. <v Speaker 8>allied sex business all through the whole entire range of advertising. Alright. Thank you for your comment. You don't see a lot of women making much money from pornography.
564. <v Speaker 1>I think that is that is a very, very good point.
565. <v Speaker 1>I feel like that this has been probably one of the few
566. <v Speaker 1>constructive conversations that anybody or dialogues that has existed
567. <v Speaker 0>in terms of presenting a broad perspective and points of view, and I'm real thankful that all of you have been here. Valerie, you had one more thing. Yeah. I just like to respond to that business of why we should be so concerned about erotica. It seems to me that from a political point of view, it's very important to distinguish that feminist protest against pornography from the white right wing protest against pornography. Mhmm. And as feminists, we are interested
568. <v Speaker 0>in experiencing our full selves, in celebrating our full selves, and that includes erotica.
569. <v Speaker 1>Mhmm. Thank you. I would also, as a follow-up to this, conversation
570. <v Speaker 1>dialogue,
571. <v Speaker 1>suggest strongly that you read Kathy Berry's book, Female Sexual Slavery.
572. <v Speaker 1>Also, there is a,
573. <v Speaker 1>Take Back the Night book,
574. <v Speaker 1>which Bridgette.
575. <v Speaker 4>One thing that Wavepam has done in the past couple years is to put together a collection of feminist papers on pornography.
576. <v Speaker 1>And that book is called Take Back the Night, Feminist Perspectives on Pornography. Thank you, Margaret and Kathy, Valerie, and Bridget. My name is Sabrina Sojourner. You've been listening to a panel discussion of feminist perspectives on pornography,
577. <v Speaker 0>produced by Carla Tonella.