Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site randvax.ARPA Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!sdcrdcf!randvax!edhall From: edhall@randvax.ARPA (Ed Hall) Newsgroups: net.women,net.politics Subject: Re: pro-smut diatribe Message-ID: <1712@randvax.ARPA> Date: Wed, 29-Feb-84 01:27:52 EST Article-I.D.: randvax.1712 Posted: Wed Feb 29 01:27:52 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 2-Mar-84 07:55:37 EST References: <676@dciem.UUCP> <580@orca.UUCP>, <145@yeti.UUCP> Organization: Rand Corp., Santa Monica Lines: 55 ---------------------------------- I really not trying to make an example out of Mike Leibensperger, as there are others who have argued the same point. A few years ago I would have done the same! Here is an excerpt from Mike: > Well, John, maybe the porn *you* read depicts women as being subservient > and abused. Try something more respectable, like Penthouse. And what, > I'd like to know, is wrong with appreciating the sexual attractiveness > of another human being (or, as they say at the Naperville Anti-Smut > Leage meetings (and you thought NASL was the North American Soccer > League!)), "depicting {wo,}men as sex objects"? I wish someone would > look at me as a sex object once in a while. My advice to you, John, > is to not feel so guilty about masturbating. I've looked at Penthouse; heck, I've *bought* Penthouse in the past. They have good interviews, and occasionally good articles and fiction. And lots of pictures of very nice-looking women in various uncomfortable- looking poses, with genitals or breasts exposed. And I once looked at these pictures quite a bit. Eventually they became familiar, and lost their erotic effect. And as the fog of desire lifted, I began to see the person in the pictures. (Sounds a bit corny, I know, but I think it describes pretty much how I felt.) The women's faces and postures began to look fearful or submissive. Their eyes were usually adverted, except when their posture showed exaggerated submission. Or the pictures seemed purely voyeurisic, with the woman unaware of the camera. And it began to dawn on me that the feminist accusations against men's magazines were *true*. These women were presented as objects to be used, and not as lovers/friends/people. There is a difference between sexual desire and wanting someone as an object for sexual use. (I might mention that voyeurism--watching a person in a vulnerable state without being vulnerable yourself--is a power-trip. In a way, it is *forcing* a person to submit to your desire to look, as they have no control over it. Thus, I might find *more* redeeming features in more hard-core materials than Penthouse if there were less a sense of intrusion and the portrayal wasn't weighted down with stereotypes or dominance.) If you still aren't convinced that Penthouse puts down women, just read some of the sex fantasies in their `Forum' section. Study the vocabulary a bit. Sexual intercourse is an act of force, even of pain, in a lot of these. And some of them are a lot more blatant; I remember one in which a man tells of turning his wife into a sex-slave--the acts described (which I won't go into here) were so criminal as to be worthy of a life sentence in many states. Yet there was no note of this fact; just a glowing report of how nice this man's life has become with his new `pet'. Needless to say, I no longer buy Penthouse (or any other magazine of its ilk). Censorship? I'm a civil libertarian; besides, I consider these magazines to be a symptom, not a cause. But I obviously won't heasitate to tell people what I think these magazines really are. -Ed Hall decvax!randvax!edhall