Your sight annoys me so much. You cross out things as if you editing. Fix your blog before publising for the rest of us to read it. Or, are you being too obtuse?
I realize that by blogging for Suicide Girls I've pretty much given up any chance I might've had to be hired by the 2016 Pelosi for President campaign.
I had to laugh.
It took me aback to see you writing for Suicide Girls; I admittedly haven't explored much into it myself, but assumed (perhaps wrongly) that it was just creating an "alternative" oppressive beauty ideal for women to follow. Am I wrong? It appears so. Please, correct me, I want to hear your thoughts 
Anon, what???
Amanda, I dunno. My observations of the kinda punky/goth subcultures (which I've never belonged to myself) are that the women in them are usually pretty straight up about rejecting beauty culture; that's one of the attractions. Sure, straight guys can objectify women in any kinda way, but I don't think that the net effect of SG is simply an alternative beauty ideal. Whether the net effect of a hipster porn site is positive, or whether, just like mainstream porn, it's ultimately exploitation pure and simple, is obviously an open question. But I don't think that porn can be pointed to as promoting beauty ideals, though it might well be to blame for promoting fucked-up ideas about sex.
As if I didn't have a HUGE internet crush on you already! NOW you work for Suicide Girls?? Now I am going to have puerile fantasies about Snow and Siren partying down at Chez Bitch (when PK's at Abuelita's of course).
We went to see their Burlesque Show in Milwaukee and I was BLOWN AWAY. Yeah, there is much to objectify. But Missy Suicide seems so smart and tongue-in-cheek about it all. Going to read your culture column now.
Announcement time! I've just started a new gig as a Culture Editor at the Suicide Girls News Blog.
For about 3/10ths of a second, I thought this was a straight up satire of Amandagate and you were going to get fired for being too controversial for Suicide Girls.
Congratulations, both to Bitch and author-concurrently-known-as-Bitch.
But I don't think that porn can be pointed to as promoting beauty ideals, though it might well be to blame for promoting fucked-up ideas about sex.
Do you mean promoting beauty ideals which women apply to themselves, or which men apply to women? I think porn sets a standard in young men's minds about acceptable female beauty, but it doesn't set that same standard in young women's minds. I think that standard as applied by men is unhealthy, in that it doesn't match what non-porn-actress women really look like.
There's probably research out there to test that hypothesis, perhaps later I will tickle mr. google.
Congratulations, by the way, on the new gig.
You cross out things as if you editing.
Anon, strikeout as used here appears to serve one of two functions:
* To mark text as incorrect, or no longer correct, or no longer relevant, but without the implicit denial that it was written at one time -- this is the case in the Veronica Mars/Plan B post.
* As a joke, where possibly-controversial material is struck out and replaced with something safer; the subtext is that the struck text is what the author really thought, but the unstruck text is what the author decided was more diplomatic.
perhaps later I will tickle mr. google
TMI.
I think porn sets a standard in young men's minds about acceptable female beauty, but it doesn't set that same standard in young women's minds.
I think that porn sets a hotness standard for both boys and girls, but that's not the same as a beauty standard. I'm willing to give SG credit for cultivating punky/goth/not skinny in the "hot" category, along with "speaks mind" and "a real person" ideas. It seems to me that the issue there is more the broader one of whether we should promote hotness of any kind, or at least make hotness a necessary component of "attractive because independent and outspoken." I'm ambivalent about that question, myself.
Its interesting that I read your post just after reading Blue Gal.
What's up with ya'll? Don't you ever just say no to new commitments? I have enough trouble keeping my own blog going. To take on other responsibilities scares me. But then, I'm inherently lazy.
Oh yeah, I'm a procrastinator too. Had to wait a while to mention that.
Spiider, the SG gig pays money. I'm not saying no to jobs these days, nope.
Grats on the paying job!
However, I don't like SG. Expanding the number of women who creepy old men enjoy paying money to stare at and write comments about how fuckable they are isn't one of my goals.
It is nice though that it isn't just photos, but the women on the site have personalities that aren't just "teehee I sure do like sex" and people are encouraged to get to know each other.
From what I remember reading years ago, the "personalities" of a lot of the women on SG were manufactured by the (male) site owners or managers, and there was a high amount of sleaze about the site's using or selling photos of women without their knowledge or permission.
I don't know if any of that's still the case, though.
"Anybody who follows reproductive rights news (and if you ever have sex, or plan to, you should) knows that Plan B..."
Bitch, Bitch, Bitch. I am sternly looking down my libarian's glasses at you.
Adam & Steve may fuck as frequently and vigorously as they like, and their morning after will never include Plan B. Same goes for me and The Wif. *
You use "having sex" in that article to mean man-woman vaginal intercourse. Dear, that's how Santorum defines it. I know you'd shudder to agree with former Senator Man-on-Dog about anything, so please, do try to be a bit more careful.
* And yes, your previous point about unintentional pregancy from rape is stipulated.
Good point, I was being totally heteronormative there. My bad.
I felt weird leaving that comment above without supporting links, so this is me doing so. I guess there was a fairly active LiveJournal community of disgruntled ex-SG models, and this entry seems to sum up their concerns about the site.
At least, their concerns three years ago. Again, I don't know if it's improved.
I'll stop now.
Speaking of which, guess who's joining the Plan B club tomorrow morning, at 9 AM, when the Rite Aid opens. Fingers crossed.
She missed two pills in a row for the first time in, oh, 13 years as far as we can remember. And frigging ortho-tricyclen does seem to be very effective as a double-up and it counts countermeasure.
(BTW, belatedly, very much enjoyed seeing you at MLA, Bitch. In case I didn't mention my pseudo, I was next to you at Kauffman's dinner - ciggy outside etc... You remember, right?)
Congrats on the new gig...
sorry - I meant - ortho trycyclen does not seem to be an effective countermeasure.
A little shaken up tonight.
CR, if you can get to a 24-hour pharmacy, you should, but otherwise, just go first thing tomorrow morning. The odds are with you.
And of course I remember.
occhiblu: From what I remember reading years ago, the "personalities" of a lot of the women on SG were manufactured by the (male) site owners or managers, and there was a high amount of sleaze about the site's using or selling photos of women without their knowledge or permission.
I remember reading the same thing. It would be good to find out that it either wasn't true, or that things have changed there.
Hmm ... there was recently a big profile on Suicide Girls that I liked in our local free paper:
http://www.independent.com/
archi...etty_women.html
I liked it because she really laid out her ambivalence about the whole project, ultimately coming down on the side (as I have always felt) that the "hipster/punk/goth ideal" is just as narrow and restrictive and hard to live up to as "mainstream beauty" and that the site and community have serious problems. I was excited that SG were going to come to town and I would be able to see and decide for myself, but they canceled the gig at the last moment to go on tour opening for ... wait for it ... Guns n' Roses.
I'm not totally condemning the site, just as I'm not totally against mainstream porn, but I do think that they both fit in with a wider common problem of confusing "feminism means I as a woman have the right to do things" with "everything I do, because I am a woman, is feminist."
Apologies for the OT, but since there seems to be no thread for asking if you intend to blog about X, Y or Z, ANY question about that's gotta be OT wherever it goes... it's a conundrum
Was really hoping you'd have something to say about the passing of Ms Anna Nicole Smith. I liked Cintra Wilson's piece at Salon, and NPR was almost decent about it, but I imagine you'd have some very different things to say, the which I'd love to read. Surely I'm not the only one?
I subscribed to suicidegirls for years, but cancelled a few months ago after the evidence of their abuses just got to be too much to ignore. See http://community.livejournal.com/sgirls/ for lots of background. Especially note their extremely exploitative modelling contract, and their reselling of model photos to hardcore sites (with captions like "she's hungry for your cum") without model consent, seemingly as a punishment.
Why waste 9 years? PELOSI 2007!!!!!
Re the Steinem comparison - does this mean you are secretly going undercover to do an expose on the exploitative nature of Suicide Girls? If so, I'd say you're probably a little late on that project - I think some of the former SGs have already blown the whistle on that, as noted above. Wow. Can't believe you're going to work for a porn site. Also, can't believe you're trying to do a fast mambo around straightforwardly saying that you're writing for a porn site by asserting: that you're writing for a "hipster softcore pinup site"; that it's a rebelliously "inappropriate discourse"; and that this is somehow a feminist project. If you need to make money through participating in the constant projection of naked teenaged female bodies, or if you don't care about the power aspects and just think the whole thing's hot, then great. Just don't try to justify it with the fancy words.
Y'all, I'm *writing* for them. I'm not on the business end. Does being published in Playboy make one a pornographer?
In any case, the questions about association are precisely the kind of things I think it's interesting to address. I do think that the "if you just think the whole thing's hot" sounds a lot like an attempt to slut-shame.
Might I suggest that anyone interested in the political economy/history of Porn check out Susan Faludi's book stiffed, specifically the chapter "Waiting for Wood," which was also a feature article in the New Yorker from several years back. Not only is it entertaining--very much so--but it is insightful.
The issue of DrB being "paid" to contribute to suicide girls is very interesting indeed. And, it seems to me, represents the same sort of moral dilemma (albeit less obviously) for women as it comes to the beauty industry and porn: in a society that commodifies everything are you willing to commodify yourself? This is both a gender issue, but also a broader issue that has to do with values and ethics.
I agree with Dr.B that publishing in Playboy does not make one a pornographer. But, if one's essays add value to a pornographic magazine or internet site, it seems reasonable to ask the question of complicity. (And, lest any of us cast stones, aren't we all complicit in small and large ways?)
And, finally, for some Porn that is both edgy and non-exploitative, might I suggest NERVE.COM.
The question would be one of whether the content (general complaint) or the business model (complaint by ex-SGs) would make for greater incompatibility.
I think the Eagles just signed an exclusive deal with Wal-Mart to release their next album of boring mush. If Don Henley worked for 20 years as a champion of labor rights (I'm not sure he has), then the deal would smell. The fact that their lyrics might still be anti-neoconservative or pro-environment wouldn't really matter.
Of course, I wouldn't want to apply any sort of rigorous test to me or my fellow travelers, given some of the weird ads I've seen pop up from time to time.
ITA, Emily. I also think that pulling the whole "slut shaming" card out without addressing the valid points that Dr. M and Emily made about complicity are further fast mamboing around what SG actually is and what it means to work for them and try to call it a feminist act.
I have no problem with bloggers getting paid. Actually, I think it's great. But I can't equate getting paid by Utne Reader with getting paid by a company that exploits barely 18 year old women. Would you take money from Bob Guccione, Jr. to write?
In any event, it doesn't matter. This blog is obviously not my cup of tea anymore. Maybe Twisty has room for one more? At least she can keep her story straight.
i don't know, i have come to understand suicide girls as being this "oh we reject traditional beauty ideals in porn, in favor of some other ones that are also not applicable to the average person and still overly corporate-controlled" sort of thing, and that irritates me to no end, BUT i think any opportunity to talk about plan b and what it is/isn't is completely worth taking--especially when you can reach a larger audience of men and women.
Ironically predictable that people who want to red Dr. B's "honourable" work here at Bphd don't collectively contribute enough for her to feed herself with the proceeds, and so she moves over to SG, an arguably less "honourable" site -- at lest in some people's view.
Well, folks... life is fucking complicated, but the general observation I'll make here is that I *only* just got to the point in my professorial salary where I am making the kind of money I used to make as a peeler in 1990.
But without that money that valued what I could do undressed, I not have been able to pursue the oh-so-socially-valued intellectual work, including social justice work.
So... how 'bout people start paying to be here, instead of being shocked that B. goes in search of funding elsewhere that doesn't meet with your austere approval.
1) Nancy Pelosi will be 77 years old in 2016.
2) People who can't understand strikeout should get off the Internet before they hurt themselves with an errant lol!11!.
3) Suicide Girls is annoying as hell, but they aren't dictating B's content, and her content is worthwhile and needs more publicity. I'd say it's a wash, but you're definitely out for campaign blogger.
Yay B!
I teach college and consider myself more an anarchist (and a feminist, too). I'm a member of the often lame sg.com (meggle- since 2002) and have seen it get more so over the years. It's good to see better writers there. It's nice that some of the $$ will go to someone not writing poor Slayer-like lyrics as poetry or trying to cop the rude pundit (poorly) on their ad populum based blogs. Looking forward to you as an intelligent addition. They need the help. Sg has troubles, on many levels, but you seem to get the better half (or quater or whatever it's down to now) of their gig. Good for you. Enjoy while it lasts before you run like hell (which could be next week or by 2016 just in time for a 77 yr. old Pelosi run).
Oh, my wife, a fertility healthworker and mom, said to tell you about your 2/6 entry-- that while Plan B may prevent ovulation, if you haven't already ovulated, that it actually prevents implantation. Just a note.
m
"Oh, my wife, a fertility healthworker and mom, said to tell you about your 2/6 entry-- that while Plan B may prevent ovulation, if you haven't already ovulated, that it actually prevents implantation. Just a note."
Mythinfo, your wife is wrong, perhaps that explains your user name "Myth info". Plan B does not prevent implantation.
Or perhaps I am reading your comment wrong and you are indeed confirming that it does not prevent implantation. In which case, carry on.
I've got to say, the Gloria Steinem comparison bugged me too. She worked there specifically so that she could write about the exploitation happening in the organization, not because she thought the Playboy club was a good place to work-- and that article even happened before she (and most other American women) thought of themselves as feminist, since it pre-dates the second-wave movement's real beginnings.
I'm also not sure that SG can still be considered playing around with any cultural conceptions of desire, especially considering the concerns raised by women who work/worked there. They're a lot more like American Apparel than they are like a somewhere like www.nofauxxx.com, which I think is actually trying to be radical and political.
I'm not trying to say you shouldn't work there, because it's not really any of my business. I'm really just throwing my two cents into the discussion here about desire, work, and feminism.
Name calling aside, MB, could you site more info about it so we can check, too. Learning is a nice thing to do, in which case we could all carry on a bit better...so, what if you have already ovulated? How does Plan B prevent that which may have already happened? Further, my handle, mythinfo, is my own and since I'm not a female reproductive health worker, the name does not imply, a myth info, as you claimed. If my wife used it, it would be more potentially accurate by your views. As for me, it means something else entirely, particularly relating to collective memory and historical construction of cultural and political identity. Oh, well...
According to EC manufacturer, cited in the Washington Post,
"That's the idea behind Plan B. 'It prevents pregnancy mainly by stopping the release of an egg,' says the manufacturer, Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc. However, Barr adds, the drug "may also prevent the fertilization of an egg" or prevent a fertilized egg "from attaching to the uterus."
So we are both right/wrong, MB...it depends on where your body is along the path...
Carrying on...thanks for the prompting.
You need to post some hot photos of youself.
Suicide girl.
SG= yucky crappy exploiter porn. unfortunately, all of our print and online media is getting increasingly funded by increasingly misogynist porn. B not taking a job wont stop that, though I must say, my gut reaction is still "ewww."
I dunno, I'm reeeeeaaaaaally lukewarm about getting involved with creepy-creepy alternaporn types to earn your daily bread. Journalism is bad enough--in terms of work environment, moral hazard, etc--without adding the other stuff on top of it.
Suicide Girls really pisses me off, too, because it's about going into a subculture where you really don't have to be hot, and where there really isn't too much pretty-priviledge, and finding "pretty" girls and commodifying them.
The thing is, if you're basically a pretty person, you get a lot of little perks in life. Many of us who are not pretty go to punk and activist communities because there, we are valued for our characters and for our personal style--even sometimes valued for our experiences as ugly people in a beauty culture.
Plus, honestly, the "personality" side of SG creeps me out. Sexist alterna-guys have this stupid fantasy about the perfect girl: She's "alternative" and poetically sad inside about, well, the sadness of sad things; she's all feisty and spunky and shit but always somehow does what alternaguy wants; and she's all tough and fighty yet tiny and cute. And the fakey-fake "personalities" just seem to feed into that.
I mean, you've gotta make rent and all, and arty writer/academic types have always been fascinated by brothels and sex work. (I think of all those respectable Germans that one reads in theory classes in this context). But still, I can't say as how it sounds like a good idea.
And--to double-post--I would add that a lot of this "sex positive" stuff is really "sex-positive if you're pretty enough to be photographed"...I'm not really enthused about a world where there's a kind of "feminism" for young, slim, pretty women but the rest of us just have to lump it. And a lot of the recent "transgressive" discourse around sex seems a lot like that.
I don't like SG, either, I always found it sort of icky for many of the reasons above. But I read (occasionally) Boing Boing anyhow. Sure, I'm not going to click over and read B's posts there, and I definitely think that a discussion of this issue would be interesting, but I'm not going to stop reading here, and I like the fact that this was done openly and with comments allowed (unlike, say, Alas). Standing on principle is great and all, but people need jobs, too.
What Frowner said. And yes, SG has done some really icky, exploitative shit to their models, including making it very difficult for them to make a living if they ever choose to leave SG and, yeah, selling their pictures to hardcore sites (which is a pretty nasty thing to do after presenting yourself as an alternative to that shit, and a really misogynist kind of "punishment" for pissing off the company, and -- in an industry where there are different "classes" of porn models -- a real future financial problem for the women it's happened to).
You have, of course, a right to make a living, but I think it's not wrong for people to disagree with your rationale. I think unfortunately SG is going to get a lot of feminist cred for having you onboard, and given how their labor issues, that's unfortunate.
what frowner and nyarly said seemed right.
I doubt that my presence is going to give them a lot of feminist cred, judging by the comments here.
Although I'm a little bothered (probably partly personally, I admit) by the idea that the issue of association here is more important than the issue of content. As someone upthread said, if the content I'm writing is good (and feminist), then, if anything, one would think that writing for an audience that isn't "properly" feminist (or feminist at all, depending on your pov) would be a good thing.
In any case, I'm glad to be getting paid.
Oh no.
Whats Althouse going to think?
I'd condemn Dr. B., but
a) my clothes are made in sweatshops, probably
b) my car usage is heating up the atmosphere
c) Universities are becoming corporations which give privileges to a small group of tenured faculty while screwing the adjuncts and students
d) I have looked at porn before, although I didn't know about this niche till today.
Bitchphd wrote: "In any case, I'm glad to be getting paid."
Yes, I'm sad to hear that you've sold out. You're not alone, though. Once, as a college student complaining about working in a pizza kitchen, my friend commented that "We all whore ourselves out to something."
Apparently it's true. I just didn't think you'd sell out to this crap.
As a long-time, if generally silent, reader, I don't have a problem with you choosing to write for them. Association is a messy question, and I don't feel the need to judge your choices. I posted the negative info because you had said "...a noted bitchy feminist writing feminist content on a softcore site that itself is playing around with the issue of where, exactly, sexual desire and porn interact with and part ways from feminism, is an interesting and worthwhile project" and I thought you should have relevant data about whether they are really playing around with that issue or only using it as a marketing spin.
Devil's advocate: Let's accept the premise that SG exploits the young women who "model" for the site.
Who would like to argue that the writing of Bitch Ph.D.—feminist in tone—is something the Suicide Girls and their audience should not be exposed to?
Is feminism solely for the women with solid feminist credentials who have been lucky enough to never find themselves in this kind of position, possibly being exploited by/for men?
One could argue that SG needs to hire as many non-naked feminist writers as they can find.
Tsunami, I really have no knowledge of the internal workings of the site management: the woman who hired me does the blog end of things.
Orange said:
"Is feminism solely for the women with solid feminist credentials who have been lucky enough to never find themselves in this kind of position, possibly being exploited by/for men?"
I don't think anyone here has said this, or said anything like it.
I'm guessing that a lot of the folks on here giving Dr. B a hard time are academics, students, etc. It's very, very easy to slam those having a go over in the private sector of the intellectual world for "complicity." But the truth of the matter is that we academics 1) are incredibly, and hypocritically, unwilling to think about the darker sides of the institutional structures that pay our own bills and 2) are generally incredibly naive about the complicated situations that face those who'd like to write for an audience.
Complicated situation numero uno: while I'm sure people could come up with "cleaner" places for Dr. B to write, they are in fact few and far between, are crowded and cheap with the pay, and (most importantly from a pragmatic point of view) generally speaking preach to their own choir.
Further, the writer who'd like to write about women's issues in particular faces even starker choices. Anything approaching mainstream - say, for instance, Salon - is generally way more interested in divisive women v. women stuff.
There is no shame in writing for a place that isn't perfectly in accord with your own ideological stance, as long as you keep your head about you. I have no doubt that Dr. B will do so. Doing what she is doing, in fact, is the way that one reaches audiences who wouldn't ordinarily encounter certain types of material. I'm sure Dr. B would be glad to write for the Utne Reader (which someone mentioned above) were they to give her a call, but in truth the readers of that most soft-core of mags really are the least in need of the sort of material she will be able to provide.
In short, don't let them get you down, B.
I certainly wasn't trying to imply that Dr. B. was bad, or wrong, or evil, or any other such thing for writing for them. But I do think that making statements about what SG is trying to do requires as much knowledge as possible about what they're actually doing.
We do all sell out in some ways, and we are all complicit in some ways. But it would be silly to pretend that ignorance makes that go away; I'm willing to support people's choices, but I'm not going to support people's ignorance.
Given Dr. B's usual level-headedness about this sort of thing, I think it's fair to provide info; if she (or others) think that was rude, I do apologize. For the record, I don't think it's fair to issue huge "Now you're dead to me" holier-than-thou type messages, and I didn't mean to come across that way, and I really didn't mean to spur others to such comments.
CR says:
"I'm guessing that a lot of the folks on here giving Dr. B a hard time are academics, students, etc. It's very, very easy to slam those having a go over in the private sector of the intellectual world for 'complicity.'"
Again, I don't think that's what anyone here is doing. Everyone here is, I'd wager, intelligent enough that the need to say we've all compromised ourselves ideologically in certain ways to survive is nil. That's an assumed starting point.
That said, you can choose which ways to be complicit, and you can, unless you're truly desperate for funds, draw some lines. You can decide you feel okay eating milk and eggs but not meat. You can decide to put mascara on because it looks better and maybe more professional, but not to flirt with your boss because you think it'd probably get you a raise. (I'm not trying to equate Dr B's decisions with these or any other particular analogies. They're just examples.)
Do you really think if Dr B criticizes SG's labor practices, she'll keep her job? What if she decides to analyze how SG's decision to use "alternative" models only in the sense that they're conventionally beautiful (i.e., thin, largely white, etc.) with tattoos and piercings, instead of pushing the idea of "beauty" and "sexy" in more challenging ways?
The deals you make with the powers that be ally you with various stances (giving the stance another "yes" vote and lending it your credence), and they muzzle you in certain ways (at least as writers).
I don't like the "bore from within" idea. Historically, it hasn't worked out real well--you think you're going in to change the system, and the system changes you. The system is a lot bigger and more powerful, for one thing, and you tend to develop a loyalty to a place out of psychic and job-security neccessity. That's why I think you've gotta watch your exposure to these places. Capitalism is powerful and seductive, and the more inside you get, the harder it is to see that. And yes, that counts for classy jobs at universities as well--that's why you'll find "progressive" faculty who are jerks to the janitors and secretaries.
I just don't buy the "everyone sells out, so it doesn't matter how much and to whom" argument. Choosing where you work is a luxury, yeah, and you should choose as well as you can when you have the chance. In fact, I would argue that people should read this backwards: "I am troubled by Dr. B's choice; should I be troubled by my own? If I am troubled by my own, can I make any changes?"
(For one thing, "we're all complicit" doesn't distinguish very well between the union janitor at Large Midwestern University and the CEO of Large Research Corporation: both of them are complicit with/dependant on capital, after all; neither of them lives on a permaculture holding in the woods.)
To my mind, the main thing to take from "we all sell out" is that while someone can make a bad decision about work/school/etc, that doesn't mean that they are Forever Wrong In Every Way, Forever. I think it's ill-advised to work for Suicide Girls (Plus what a lame, cheesy name! For pete's sake!) but that doesn't mean that I think Dr. B no longer makes interesting, relevant observations.
I've had friends make choices I really didn't support, and they didn't stop being my friends, too. Although when the choice was a big one, I did mention that I thought it was a bad idea.
So I'm a former nakey-on-the-internet type (and longtime Bitch-reader) who is now ambivalent about my experience and ambivalent about this direction for B, BUT... So I posed for a much smaller site than SG, and several years ago. SG was oft-slammed by us for being man-run and creepy and eeeeeevil. Some of this was motivated by good old capitalist competition, though that doesn't make it not true.
HOWEVER, no one ever suggested the models themselves were part of this problem - they were earnest, they were playful in their intent and interesting and straightforward and often thoughtful feminists, and though they have been taken advantage of in many ways (the selling pictures to hardcore sites stands out to me), that doesn't totally invalidate their experience, or the community they were trying to form/be a part of, yeah? At the v. worst, it speaks poorly of their research skills. Look, like I said, this was a few years ago, and maybe now SG is a bunch of jaded pron stars complicit in their own exploitation or totally innocent chicklets who just want people to think they're pretty, but I doubt it. It's not just the eeeevil there, and you all have to consider that B is not only writing for the eeeeevil, or the weird old wanker men, she's writing for that community of women and girls who are thinking about and struggling with and receptive to feminist ideas - even if it doesn't look like that to you - and who are eager for information.
And I am not sure why the reflex here seems to be, responsibility-wise, group B with the puppetmasters and not with the models (don't know if that is wrong or right, but interesting to think about). If it's because you think well, she's B, she should know better, that's selling the models short in a crummy way.
I was thinking about this all the way to work, too, and I wanted to add:
The way the world works right now is this: women are supposed to be Sexxxeeee all the time. It's perfectly okay in much of the world (including the US) to hire or not hire a secretary, a clerk, etc based on whether she's Sexxxxeeeee. Professional women escape this to some degree, but it's a chilling reality for pink-collar types, since our employability declines (again, defacto though not de jure) as we get older.
Plus, we get to be self-critical all the time, no matter how we look. And if we're old, sick, overweight, plain, or plainly dressed the world feels free to comment, give us lower-quality customer service, be meaner, etc.
More, all women end up not-Sexxxeeee (with the possible exception of Jane Birkin) simply because we get old.
Advertising, most fashion, porn, and SG/cheesecake are sort of a "buy now, pay later" for women--you can be valued now because you're novel, young, skinny, and pretty, but later if you're old, sick, fat, too familiar, or simply tired of having to do so much female homework, you'll pay and pay.
Labor discipline and gender discipline have a lot of overlap.
And honestly, the fact that women are commodities--essentially disposable/replaceable/interchangeable--is inextricably tied with the "disposability" of poor women and many women of color.
The thing is, to me it's not particularly about some girls and their personal ethics--it's about whether you want to give your writing abilities (or your naked picture, or whatever) to a system that gives women a little money upfront in exchange for a lifetime of psychic and economic insecurity.
There's nothing wrong with the Platonic Ideal of naked people pictures--we're all naked under our clothes, etc--but the naked pictures we actually have exist in a crappy, sexist system that does almost all women harm in the long term, and some women harm all the time from go.
I mean, if Dr. B said she'd be writing a regular column for Cosmopolitan, I'd feel that was ill-advised, too, for pretty much the same reasons.
(Now, when I quest for feminism, I have to actually look things up on the intertubes...nobody says, "Hey, let's bring feminism to the unglamourous, unnaked secretaries at Large Research University"...so I'm not entirely moved by the "enlighten the workers" angle.)
SG is massively hypocritical and will do anything for a buck. It sounds like you'll fit in fine.
Oh, come now--language like that will just get everyone defending SG!
I was just liking that we'd been discussing this without feeling like we needed to denounce Dr. B And All Her Works And Days!
It's possible to disagree with someone's action in a specific instance without thinking that they are the Worst Person Ever, and it's possible to disapprove of something like SG without thinking that it's the World Thing Ever.
er, "Worst Thing Ever"
Plus [I think this is the most serial posts I've ever written, ever] we could all be wrong! This could work out very well and various nay-sayers could be completely wrong--I've been wrong before, myself, crazy as that sounds.
That's not a reason to choose to do something in itself, but since Dr. B is doing it we'll sure have an interesting chance to see how it turns out.
I am all the way down with Canuckdoc who, I must say, interests me, strangely. Even a PhD has to eat, especially one with a kid.
Folks who object to the piano player at the whorehouse could throw a few dollars in the hat when she performs at her own club. I think its perched on the bar, over on the right hand side of your screen.
If this is a multiple post, it's because I am in a fight with Haloscan.
Yeah. I think this is the sort of thing where there's so much going on that people - like me! - sense the need/opportunity to wrest some time for their pet discourse. And parallel to all these discourse (I feel like that's the plural...) are all these currencies (which is why I find selling-out talk insufficiently ambiguous to say the least). There is the money, the pretty, the attention, the hits, the sexiness capital B's built up here. I guess I am mostly just too curious to see what transaction actually ends up taking place and where it ends up happening to be too critical. All opprobrium is reserved for the decision to post on the Valve. Immoral, vile and unforgivable. Sellout.
I was a little surprised to see the Valve thing, actually...the stuff they publish seems so different from Dr. B's writing. So I'm really interested to see how it plays out.
I read over there, but it's really very much for people in related disciplines, so I don't feel that I have a lot to say.
Plus, as has been observed, there's all that macho/knives-out/winwinwin academic stuff going on a lot of the time, and that freaks me the hell out. I have enough in my real life that generates panic attacks without getting any from blogs.
Thanks for posting how the Plan B works on the Suicide Girls blog. I think too many people are uneducated about it... before they argue, they need the facts.
Taddy... I interest you... *strangely*?
Couple things I want to address:
(1) making statements about what SG is trying to do requires as much knowledge as possible about what they're actually doing.
Agreed. I think Ronnie did a better job of saying what I wanted to say than I did: there's a distinction between the "community," for want of a better word, and the management. I'm aware of the controversies about the management, but it's not something I've looked into (you can go through the archives: when the story was breaking and other blogs were addressing it, I didn't). That said, I'm quite willing to believe that a lot of the models feel like they got ripped off--although (having followed some of the links ppl provided above) I also think it's a little naive to have been part of the community (as opposed to a model) and be disappointed that the place isn't representing the ideal of feminism you want it to.
Second thing: Do you really think if Dr B criticizes SG's labor practices, she'll keep her job? What if she decides to analyze how SG's decision to use "alternative" models only in the sense that they're conventionally beautiful (i.e., thin, largely white, etc.) with tattoos and piercings, instead of pushing the idea of "beauty" and "sexy" in more challenging ways?
This was in fact an issue I addressed with them quite openly before I agreed to write for them. What I was told is that I can't criticize the company on the company's own blog--which seems reasonable to me. But that what I write on *my* own blog, is my own business. Now, that could end up being bullshit, in which case, if I address this stuff, I might get shitcanned. On the one hand (as I said above), the specific politics of SG aren't something I've addressed before, so no biggie. On the other hand, duh: now that I'm writing for them, I've got more of an interest in whatever issues they bring up.
That said, I imagine I'll do what I've always done on this blog: address the stuff that's on my mind, using specific stories to illustrate larger points. Whether the larger point is "can a feminist writer legitimately write for a non-feminist venue" or "is alterna-erotica really all that progressive" or "do writers compromise their content when they start getting paid," I think I'll end up talking about it because, as I said to the SG editor with whom I was negotiating, I'm the "let's talk about the elephant in the room" kind of person. For better or worse.
(For the record, my current answers to the questions immediately above are yes, no, and probably.)
Props to you lot, though, for making a fuss--I'm likely to stay more honest b/c of you than I would otherwise. Getting reader feedback is, for me at least, an important measure of what the real value of my writing is.
This is an interesting development, B.
I used to know a girl who worked for SG. She didn't seem to mind, at least for the time I was talking to her. She may have been early in her career, or she may simply have been fortunate not to have been exploited, but it seems that at least one model, for some unspecified period of time, was not exploited by the site. That doesn't say anything about the prevalence (or scarcity) of abuses, or the effect of their overall actions on the market and society, but it does make me wary of wholesale condemnation of SG as an Eeeevil Exploitative Corporate Machine.
Being the huge dork I am, I know that Wil Wheaton writes there too, and he seems quite happy with it. While I certainly don't know him personally, from reading him I gather that he is quite thorough in his research on all of the things he does, and that (while certainly not the most nuanced writer wrt gender/feminism etc.), he probably would not work for a company that was too vile.
Heh. Of course, on the other hand, there are the (quite visible) complaints of workers and former workers about abuses that are distressing, at best. I think the 'selling photos to hardcore sites as punishment' issue is one that would make me think twice, if it were shown to be a widespread institutional practice (as opposed to the actions of a single person which were or are being dealt with appropriately in-house).
I think it's pretty awesome that you've decided to work there, B. I'm really glad that you'll be getting paid. And I trust that you'll take all of this information into account when making decisions about your continued work there, whatever shape those decisions may take.
That said, I'm really interested in the conversation as you've set it up, and as it seems to be playing out in the comments. The whole ani-porn v. sex-pos argument certianly comes into play, alongside the "complicity with" vs. "subjugation to" debate (is a certain conforming action/set of actions an act of complicity, furthering unhealthy and misogynist social structures, thus making the conformer an Agent of the Enemy, or is it a mark of subjugation, showing just how tainted everything is already, and thus showing that the conformer was really Doing The Best She Could With The Choices She Had?), not to mention the tired old "Conventional Beauty, Makeup, and Gender Roles: Feminist or Not?" issue. I think those are all false dichotomies, and need be explored more... and that your choice to write for SG is a great jumping-off point to start that discussion. I'd dearly love to see what you think about it.
And for those who don't want to look at porn (but do want to read what B writes at SG), or who just don't want to do so where others might see, the SG Newswire is almost always (relatively) SFW.
Although it changes fairly often (Wil Wheaton gives warnings whenever he announces his writing on his main site), one can generally read the interesting bits without being assaulted by Teh Boobiez.
a distinction between the "community," for want of a better word, and the management.
I like that distinction, and I see what people are trying to get at with it. It's hard sometimes, at least for me, to remember that there are benefits other than money. My first reaction was, "Why would she want to make the management richer, when they don't seem to deserve it?", but you're right, that's balanced by also making the community richer (in non-monetary ways), and they do deserve it. It's an interesting line, and one I'd love to hear you explore more as (or if) it comes up with this work.
Sigh. Stupid capitalism. Polluting everything with monetary concerns!
Hey, magniloquence, I think it's really disingenous to say "Oh, all those tired, old questions of feminism, when will those [implicitly stupid, unhip] feminists learn not to ask them?" That's usually a winning rhetorical strategy, yeah, but it's not a progressive one.
And you know what? I don't care for existing "sex positive" rhetoric, but that doesn't make me "anti-porn". I don't like the SG site, but that doesn't mean I sit around with my legs crossed frowning at the thought that someone, somewhere is getting some. SG--and really existing pornography--are not the beginning and the end of sexuality. My objection, in fact, to a lot of uncritically-enthusiastic "The porn we have now is liberating!" rhetoric is precisely that it collapses the variety of human sexual experiences into really-existing porn, and then says that porn-as-it's-produced now is the "natural" expression of "natural" sexuality.
Even a PhD has to eat--yeah, Taddy has a point.
I've never heard of SG before, but I'm curious now and I'll be checking out the site--from home! Dr. B can write for a porn site and be a feminist--not to be repetitive, but where do all of our clothes come from? Didn't you drive to work today? Etc.
Frowner -
I didn't mean to suggest that we ought not ask questions along those lines. I like asking questions along those lines. What I object to is, as I continued in the next sentence, the fact that those debates are almost always framed as false dichotomies. Wearing a short skirt is either Awful Submission to the Patriarchy or A Wonderful and Transgressive Reclamation of One's Sexuality. Anti-Porn activism is pitted against Sex-Positive feminism.
That dualism is what is old and tired.
More than that, it's counterproductive. As you point out, one can hold opinions from both camps without conflict. We can (and should) have discussions about where the lines are drawn and how things play out in day-to-day life, but drawing huge lines in the sand doesn't help.
This discussion has been somewhat unusual in that most people have been clear that they were decrying the specific actions of the specific website that B is currently working for. I love that, and I love that we can go from there to a larger picture. In many of the other conversations where subjects along this line came up (including some of the big blowups between the radfems and, well, everyone else), that hasn't been the case. This difference was what I was trying to point out.
On a more personal note, I sincerely take issue with your framing of your retort. While it is absolutely not required that one do any extra research to respond to what another poster says within the context of an argument, a look at my own blog would have shown that I identify quite strongly as a feminist, and am very much interested in the fine distinctions between camps in discussions along these lines. That you would immediately assume that I was not a feminist, and was attempting to shut down discussion (especially in the context of a comment that said clearly: "I'm really interested in the conversation as you've set it up, and as it seems to be playing out in the comments." and "[Dr. B's] choice to write for SG is a great jumping-off point to start that discussion. I'd dearly love to see what you think about it.") is something I found quite hurtful.
You are, of course, under no obligation to take into account my feelings at any time. I would, however, ask that you actually read the comment at hand before assuming that it says something that it did not.
Dear Dr.-
I think that what bothers me most about this recent news of yours is the fact that you will be blogging alongside Wil Wheaton. Did you know that before you signed the contract?
But, in all seriousness... I'm actually looking forward to how you end up engaging with the SG site, too (and perhaps, by virtue of that association, w/a lot of the "altporn" community). That particular "niche", while it does resemble "traditional" porn in many ways, has also represented marked departures from same. (Also, thanks to other posters for some great links.) Those differences and similarities are in and of themselves interesting from a cultural perspective, as is the resulting demographic difference in their customers. As for SG's treatment of their models, this is the first I am hearing of it. Hmm, lots to talk about...
FWIW, though, I think that it's a good thing to see feminist women engaging with porn, in more than an "it's bad" framework.
And, as for paying gigs: fuckin' a.
I'm slightly disappointed, FWIW.
Magniloquence, you're right. I put the worst possible construction on your comment and I shouldn't have. (I mean, I could detail that construction, but suffice it to say that it was internally consistent but was based on a misinterpretation of tone.) I should have been more thoughtful, and I apologize.
The thing is, I've seen comments worded almost exactly like yours that are intended as a slam at the "unenlightened" people who've been posting in a discussion, and I often jam my foot into my mouth by assuming the worst about what people say, so I read your comment wrong.
I would much, much rather take feelings into account, too.
I should have been smarter and more civil.
Frowner-
I can certainly understand the temptation to jump to that conclusion. I've definitely had people say those things to me, and it always makes me want to scream.
And on review, I can see how my statement could have been read that way. Tone is so difficult to convey online (especially when one is tired and headachey).
Still! I am glad that we had this exchange. That's definitely something that could stand to happen more often online in general. Not to mention the fact that it's always fun to find people who are willing to discuss issues in detail, and explain why they believe as they do.
And to go back to your earlier comment, I totally agree with you when you say this:
My objection, in fact, to a lot of uncritically-enthusiastic "The porn we have now is liberating!" rhetoric is precisely that it collapses the variety of human sexual experiences into really-existing porn, and then says that porn-as-it's-produced now is the "natural" expression of "natural" sexuality.
That gets on my nerves too, and is, after the possibly really awful employee abuses* probably my biggest worry about Dr. B's decision to write for them. Not so much that she won't know the difference (she's brilliant; that's not even a question), or even that her writing won't have an overall positive effect, but that it will be spun in that way - "well-known feminist gives mark of approval to same-old-same-old! Therefore, same-old-same-old must be liberating! Let's all be traditional (or traditionally "alternative") porn stars and not change anything important!"
* I would like more concrete evidence of this before I make a judgment there; the links provided were really good and interesting, but had more to do with disjunctions between the expectations of viewers/workers based on advertising and the reality of what was happening than evidence of actual serious abuses of workers. Even the one model, Nala, who is largely said to have had her goodbye faked, chimed in to say that it was not actually faked, but edited down to remove personal information and direct comments. Bad, certainly, and she doesn't contradict the other things said about what they're doing with her image, but also not the things that they're saying that SG did.
Personally, the conversation I'd like to see grow out of those articles in particular is one about why those women had those expectations and why they were disappointed; what niche isn't being filled that might need to be, and why haven't other sites (which are often reported to be more ethical, and 'better' aesthetically, not to mention more 'authentic' or 'edgy') been sucessful in filling it?
Can I just say that the convo y'all are having makes me so proud of writing the site where you guys gather? So cool.
Anonymous -
Someone in some story I read somewhere says that; "...you interest me, strangely.".
I was saying it about Canuckdoc's comment but yours interest me also. Strangely.
Taddy -- 'twas I asking way up thread, and my *other* computer has me down as "anonymous".
Now you are fascinating me.
Taddy:
"The Academic's Morning"
{Scene}
INT:
[A home office. Computer near a window with an Eastern exposure].
Grey morning light, tinged
with deep-winter cold,
filters through ivory
shades.
A disheveled academic, minus
the first coffee of the day,
sits down to her computer
while she waits for the
kettle to boil. She sits
down to a ritual reading of
the blogs she follows.
Canuckdoc: reads: "Now you fascinate me". .
{exit}
I'm soooo disappointed. Have you even SEEN the "girls" page? Oh, my.
If a major motivation is getting paid, why not be a professor? The PhD has little to no relevance for a SAHM/alterna-porn blogger.
Sellout.
My 2 Cents,
If your excellent writing can reach people it normally wouldn't...AWESOME.
If you excellent writing can help improve the life of someone who normally wouldn't be exposed the that line of thought...DOUBLE AWESOME
If you can make a few bucks broadening people's horizons for the better...(I think you see where I'm going with this)
Longtime reader, infrequent commenter here.
Ooh, that's a bad analogy between yourself and Steinem. Gloria went undercover as one of the women being objectified.
What you're doing is more analagous to being one of those who wrote articles for Playboy, or perhaps as part of Heffner's publicity machine. The money you'll be paid comes from the commodification and selling of objectified girls to porn users.
When you say you'll be playing with your writer/persona distinction, it sounds to me like you're rationalizing being paid to promote and support something that--in your feminist heart of hearts--you know is wrong. :-(
Canuckdoc: "Ironically predictable that people who want to red Dr. B's "honourable" work here at Bphd don't collectively contribute enough for her to feed herself with the proceeds,"
I don't see anything ironic in the fact that it pays better (in a patriarchal society) to work for a porn site than to critique them.
It's obvious that there a whole institutions in place for paying people to contribute to porn and its offshoots. Individual volunteerism and donation that goes against those institutions are quite likely to generate less money.
That's what institutions are. That's why they last, and they are not directly comparable to individual efforts. It seems disengenous to pretend that individual readers to this site would have equal resources to a for-profit institution that runs by depending on some of the most time-honored exploitative systems in our society.
"When you say you'll be playing with your writer/persona distinction, it sounds to me like you're rationalizing being paid to promote and support something that--in your feminist heart of hearts--you know is wrong. :-("
Prezactly. SG is nothing new, nothing different. It's the same old same old - selling female flesh to male consumers. Female flesh that fits nicely into standardized male-invented, male-approved specs, natch.
But your blog will no doubt in inundated by pornstick dudes who are suddenly *so* interested in what you have to say. As long as it isn't about that boring old feminism, of course.
Help them peddal objectification, make some money off it, and rationalize it anyway you like.
To say "sellout" is to be kind.
Does being published in Playboy make one a pornographer?
No, but gives tacit approval to pornography. Kind a like going to a strip club b/c they have a free buffet.
Full disclosure: I work in defense.
Heh, Frumious. Poor analogy. Going to a strip club to eat = being a customer; being paid to provide content = being a worker.
I get that a lot of people are upset, but I think that the desire for moral purity is misplaced. My posts are publicly available--there's no incentive to subscribe to read what I write; I'm writing about reproductive rights and other feminist issues, same stuff I write about here; I'm making money as a writer, which is what I want to be doing.
I think the "sellout" complaints about sum it up: the objection seems largely to be that a feminist shouldn't be paid by a pinup site. I humbly suggest that this point of view is naive, marginalizing, and punitive.
Why punitive?
I see a distinction between talking about the issues as such, and criticizing me, personally. The latter seems punitive: what does it accomplish?
Dr. B., I sure wish you could attend the Pornography and Pop Culture conference at Wheelock College next month.
"the objection seems largely to be that a feminist shouldn't be paid by a pinup site."
Yes, exactly. A feminist who has been working to promote the equality of men and women shouldn't allow her good name to be co-opted by woman-exploting marketers looking to make a quick buck. (You've come a long way, baby. Girl power!)
I just don't understand how a feminist can go to work for pornographers. It's like a civil rights worker agreeing to write for National Alliance.
"I humbly suggest that this point of view is naive, marginalizing, and punitive."
On the contrary, the more prominent feminists abandon the rest of us by embracing porn culture in one of its many forms, the more marginalized the rest of us become.
I can just hear it now: "What do you mean, you have a problem with 'feminist' porn? Are you frigid or something? Bitch Ph.D. is rockin' the Suicide Girls blog. Lighten up!"
Oh, okay. Thanks. I imagine it aims to accomplish whatever public censure of (perceived) bad behavior is commonly supposed to accomplish?
I just hate the name of the site. Why would you be a part of anything that romanticizes suicide as something toyed with by the young, cute, and supremely fuckable?
Yeah, I don't like the name either.
I can just hear it now: "What do you mean, you have a problem with 'feminist' porn? Are you frigid or something? Bitch Ph.D. is rockin' the Suicide Girls blog. Lighten up!"
And that would be a stupid thing to say. The reality is that feminists have different methods and beliefs. I care less about the venue than the message; other folks disagree. It's a valid disagreement, but my own personal decision is, in the end, that.
Yeah, but I hope you understand why some of us feel as marginalized by your decision as you do by our reaction to it. Your a personal decision has profound political implications.
When I used to work in the strip trade, my co-workers would often wonder how on earth I could call myself a feminist.
"Those women don't understand anything about our lives," they'd say. "Feminists just want to put us out of work. Then they can get paid as our social workers when we are forced onto welfare, or can't feed our kids because we had to go get shitty-paying 'good girl' jobs."
I'd be put in the hot-spot, defending strippers to feminists, using a class-based analysis, and theory of performance as subversion and a form of political agency. Then I'd have to defend feminists against charges that they were really just the new iteration of temperance ladies who wanted to turn all women into appropriate mothers for the children of the dominant classes.
Yes, folks, the "sex wars" were in full swing back then, but even then I was welcomed as a graduate student who didn't have to hide the fact that she was paying for the fancy pants education by taking off her pants because she wasn't a spoiled university brat like most of the "good girls" around her. I was called a "rotten cunt" by my own puritanical "feminist" friend, and that was the end of that. But my advisors, my professors... they never made me apologise for my work. Good Marxist analyses they had. And they knew enough not to blame women for the violence of men. And they knew enough not to conflate misogyny with objectification. Indeed, when the grad students got all in a flap over some issue around objectification, *Very Famous Lesbian Feminist* stopped her guest lecture to challenge us:
"Don't knock objectification so much my dears; without it we would never get anywhere."
Her point? If we can't objectify others, then we cannot desire them either. And desire is a key to recognition.
I had forgotten, somehow, that the sex wars were still pitting women against each other out here in the world beyond the academy. Pity, because it means we can't cooperate to challenge the real problems.
I'll admit to a degree of knee-jerk squeamishness -- I've heard the stories about SG exploitation -- but I think Dr. B makes a really good point.
This is a venue for spreading feminist ideas and information about reproductive freedom. It's a bigger venue than just her own blog, and has the potential to reach a lot of people who are already at least superficially like to think of themselves as progressive. She's got the potential to change a lot of minds, and to inform, and to address quandries that relate directly to the nature of the site. That's more than she can do from here.
That she's being paid by SG is maybe problematic on some levels, but it's also subversive. A site that people don't think of as feminist is suddenly paying a feminist to write feminist things. And while that carries the potential for our intrepid Ph.D. to be exploited herself ("Look! We've got a pet feminist!"), you can't deny that it also creates favorable conditions for the people who need to have their eyes opened up a little bit to get that jolt.
So yeah, I'm a little bit ambivalent, but I'm not so snow-white that I can throw stones, or fail to see the usefulness of her new endeavor.
"We've got a pet feminist." ...???
Because, you know, it's just obvious that none of the women who work as models at SG would be feminist.
Maybe if they went and took their clothes off for shitty pay at an art college it would be feminist work.
Fakkin' 'ell.
I hope you understand why some of us feel as marginalized by your decision as you do by our reaction to it. Your a personal decision has profound political implications.
Hey, if one of the implications is that feminist writing becomes an acceptable part of sex work culture, then I'm all for that.
I get why people are bugged by it. But I think that, as folks have pointed out, the divisions people are imposing between the models ("victims"), writers ("sellouts"), feminists (who refuse to work for organizations that feminists object) and supporters of patriarchy (all of us, in one way or another) are overly simplified.
Arg, that was me being all anonymous again re: the impossibility that one might make a living in sex work *and* be a feminist too.
To this day no one has given me grief about the work I did as an art model at a college, freezing my ass off on a box so that I could become an object for a generalised "gaze".
But eat shit over actually making money adequate to pay my bills and not cut into my studies? For a job in which although it is true that I was often naked I actually had a REAL voice that I got to use to challenge clients about what they thought of the subject positions of strippers -- and have them pay to hear me say it. Yes, that I took a lot of shit for.
I figure that a large portion of mainstream feminists are still just as worried that other women might steal away their men and the gravy-train as the temperance ladies who built homes for "wayward girls" in order to protect the domestic sphere ever were.
Whether the net effect of a hipster porn site is positive, or whether, just like mainstream porn, it's ultimately exploitation pure and simple, is obviously an open question.
Are you going to be a barker for the sideshow, "Come see this meat" or do you expect to be a critical feminist voice? Or something else?
Not usually much of a commentator, but since you are taking so much flak for the SG gig I thought I would register my support. Preaching to the choir is reassuring for the preacher but does little for the choir. I largely agree with what Canuckdoc (a handle which could be mine btw :p) has to say on the matter so I won't bother being repetitive, just read her eloquent posts.
"Y'all, I'm *writing* for them. I'm not on the business end. Does being published in Playboy make one a pornographer?
A pornographer makes money from pornography. Taking a paying job from a pornographer that will augment their business means you will be making money from pornography. You will be on the business end. Short answer, (with no apologies to Tom Wolfe, Truman Capote, et al), YES!
But like all the great writers before you that have fallen collaborated with people who make my heart ache, I will continue to read your work, just not in that forum.
I have been reading Dr B for a while now and often I shy away from commenting. There are two reasons for this.
1. I just don't tend to comment on things I read online.
2. I have been a bit intimidated by the knowledge level of many of the commenters here. I don't know if I have the book smarts to keep up.
However, I had to comment on this one. This post struck home to me since I am a feminist and I work at a feminist sex toy shop. I deal with peoples' nervous questions, earnest desires, and sexual conundrums every day. I also work around pornography every day. And on the really good days, I get to take some home to screen.
I love porn. I think it is a great way to expand your erotic imagination, and to learn how to do things sexually you have not done before. Have you ever seen a really good sex scene and noticed how the performers breathe? It might help you the next time you try to have multiple orgasms. You want something revolutionary? Take a look at Cyntheria's work some time. That lady can ejaculate up a wall. How's that for equality?
I have a vague feeling of dread as I ask this question. I think I am about to bring a storm down onto my head, but can someone please explain to me why it is an OK assumption that all women who are sex workers are being exploited? Who are we to make judgements about peoples' choices about what they do with their bodies or sexualities? As feminists, why can't we let them speak their own truths instead of assuming we could speak more eloquently for them?
If you want to read some perspectives from women who have been/are sex workers, check out "Whores and Other Feminists". I especially like Nina Hartley's essay. Or take a look at Spread Magazine at www.spreadmagazine.org. This is a magazine by and for sex workers and their allies. Check it out. It is interesting stuff.
Hey Dr B, welcome to the world of pornography (assuming you haven't already been living here)! Whether you are "just writing" or posing for the camera yourself, I am sure it will be an interesting experience. As these comments have shown already, it can be a source of endless discussion. But the things that challenge us most provide the most growth, right? Good for you for being up to a challenge.
Apnea was always one of the most amazing and talented models SG had, and her boyfriend Lithium Picnic was their best photographer by an order of magnitude. SG kicked them both off the site, first Apnea for mentioning a competing site (GodsGirls) in her blog, and then Lithium Picnic for continuing to shoot Apnea. SG is now suing Lithium Picnic for shooting for Apnea's personal site, and for allegedly owning and running it. See Apnea's post at http://community.livejournal.com...nic/
115101.html which includes scans of Lithium Picnic's contract with SG and of the court filing.
can someone please explain to me why it is an OK assumption that all women who are sex workers are being exploited?
Here's a rough attempt at explaining why, but it's only a partial answer. I hope others will elaborate.
Regardless of any individual woman's intentionality or feelings about her work, in a patriarchal society, women as a whole are still considered the "sex class." It may feel subversive to git naked and do the nasty goth-style, but in the end, it's still a capitulation to our pornsick culture's male fantasy that all women want to get it on all the time.
Regardless of the individuals' intentions and any source of pleasure they derive from participating in porn culture, it's not harmless: this porn mindset effects our lives in every setting on a daily basis, all the way through our legislative system.
Dines and Jensen have spelled things out pretty well in a number of academic journals, but here's a good mainstream recap: http://www.zmag.org/content/show...cfm?
ItemID=9272
If you comb through the resources at the antiporn movement site (http://feministantipornographymovement.org/), you'll get a better view of the picture. It's really not about being anti-sex. Sex toys, sexual pleasure=excellent, by all means. Pornography looks like it's about sex, because that's what we see on screen, but it's really not. It's about power and subordination.
There's a free national conference on this issue coming up in Boston in March. http://www.wheelock.edu/ppc/
Oh fer fucks-sake. If how an individual feels about the work s/he performs then we might as well just toss the concept of any form of agency out the window.
I am personally far more miserable on a day-to-day basis in my academic work than anyone seems to think might be possible. Academic women bloggers spend millions of bytes of bandwidth talking about who much it sucks to get on our knees for the academy.
Yet, funny, hunhy? No feminist or anti-feminist has ever called me a fukkin' slut for being a professor. My agency is not called into question as my course descriptions become the property of the institution. No one declares that my feelings about the good aspect of the work (research, supervision of bright students, conferncing, and having an academic community) is negated by blowing (metaphorically) the patriarchy that is the basis of the university structure. And no one suggests I should stop being a prof because I have only 1/4 the chance of a man of being promoted to the "full" professor rank.
The logic of "aspects of the job feed the patriarychy, therefor your agency within it is meaningless" is simply ridiculous.
If I had stayed in the strip trade, I would not have hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt now, accumulated to pay for the education that is supposed to be my obvious ticket to autonomy. If I had stayed in the trade, I'd likely be in better shape, and I owe the shape I am in to a combination of genetic blessing and keeping the muscle I built working 6 nights a week. If I were still in the trade I could likely afford the braces my kid needs but which my current insurance at my oh-so-respectable job doesn't cover.
I strongly recommend that people read Jill Nagle's book *Whores and Other Feminists". Maybe the classic Canadian text "Good Girls/ Bad Girls" from about 1987. Maybe You all should read Christine Bruckert's analysis of the Montreal strip business as *work* in her book "Putting it On, Taking it Off." Chris was also a peeler before she became a professor.
Have a look at what COYOTE has to say. Become aware that the sex trade is where lots of queer women make a living because the straight world won't accept them in "respectable positions" for "good women".
Is there harm that comes to women in the sex trade? Of course. But I for one have never been driven to the point of emotional collapse while working in the strip business, and I have been torn limb-from-limb in the academy.
We must acknowledge that harm in the workplace isn't unique to the sex trade, and may be worse in other locations. So to say that this is not about being "anti-sex" is to equivocate and obfuscate. There is, in fact, such an incredible knee-jerk reaction against women working in the sex trade that I cannot help but think that it's just a hostility toward women who refuse the normative constraints of farming out their pussies and uteri to one man, through marriage.
To disguise it as concern for our well-being is just condescending ass-covering.
Both workers and customers give tacit approval to the system.
Hey, like I said, I kill people for a living. Just because I don't pick the target or press the button doesn't make me less complicit, and I know this.
Rebecca, the thing is, as you're arguing, everyone's all caught up in the system anyway--so saying "you're working for the man" isn't an adequate answer.
Now, that said: sex work *is* qualitatively different than other kinds of work, and I'm quite sure that a lot of young women who pose for internet pictures will end up regretting it later in life in part because they weren't adequately informed about what doing so would entail, including not having control over what happened to the images. And there are good strong arguments about the ways that porn helps (re-)create pernicious ideas about women's sexuality.
But that doesn't mean that *no* women who are sex workers know what they're doing, or that *no* sex work is consistent with feminism. Inasmuch as feminism is *itself* bound up with the larger society (if not for sexism, we wouldn't need it), I think it's an overstatement to say that sex work of any kind is always and entirely incompatible with feminist work.
Though I would also say that in this particular case, we are "letting them speak their own truths instead of assuming we could speak more eloquently for them," in that we're looking at complaints from former models. I'm certainly not convinced that's the entire picture, as many in this thread have pointed out, but this particular discussion seems to be focused almost entirely on listening to the models themselves and trying to balance that with other things.
As occhiblu says: "this particular discussion seems to be focused almost entirely on listening to the models themselves." that's right, and I think it's the source of our current conflict. The people who are pro-porn are considering things from the individual level--liberal Enlightenment-style feminism. Those of us who are anti-porn (well, at least me) are considering the issue at a more contextualized societal level.
To the contrary of what some posters have written, it's not "condescending" to argue that listening exclusively to the voices of individuals is problematic. Doing so decontextualizes the broader social implications of pornography in the first place. If we listen to individual voices and consider porn work's effects on society, a really troubling picture of porn's role in the systematic oppression of all women emerges.
So, I think we're back to the age-old conflict between liberal feminism and radical feminism. Y'all seem to think you can effect change individually from within the context of porn industry, which is the dominating system of women's oppression. I don't.
Canukdoc, although it may blow for you to be a professor, at least your work doesn't keep an entire class of people (i.e., women) in a subservient position. As an academic, you can help young women and men effect radical change in our world. Pornography is never going to radically change our world, though. In the end, people are still wanking off to demeaning depictions of women. I am sure that women feel empowered by participating in "new" forms of porn like that presented by SG, but remember: the patriarchy gets the last laugh, and it's at the women's expense.
But, whatevs. I agree to disagree with y'all. I know you'll keep accusing ppl like me as being somehow anti-women, knee-jerking, anti-sex, reactionary, etc. I'm going to keep arguing that porn culture is killing our chances at egalitarian living at every level in our society.
I heart Dr. B's blog and recognize that we all have to do our best within the context we find ourselves in, and I won't stop reading here.
Congrats on the new gig, Miz B!! I can't wait to see what you will do with it. w00t!
As the mother of two girls I just have to wonder if this decision would have unfolded in the same way if PK were XX
My biggest problem with SG: the photos are rarely titillating.
Rebecca-
You said: "So, I think we're back to the age-old conflict between liberal feminism and radical feminism. Y'all seem to think you can effect change individually from within the context of porn industry, which is the dominating system of women's oppression. I don't."
While I agree that this is certainly largely an argument between liberal and radical feminisms, I disagree with your framing. I don't believe change can (best) be effected individually at all. I'm a sociologist by training, and my focus is quite squarely on structure.
Where I disagree with you is that I don't think that the porn industry is the dominating system of women's oppression. I believe in intersectionality - that we are caught in a web of interlocking 'isms, which reinforce each other and serve to disenfranchise all people, albeit in different ways and to differing degrees. As a feminist, I am predominately concerned with the ways that these interlocking issues serve to disenfranchise women as a class; as a religous queer mixed-race female-bodied and identified feminist, and a person, I am also interested in the way that these interlocking issues affect me, specifically, and the groups that I am affiliated with.
I am not convinced that porn, or even the issue of women being seen as the "sex class" is the only or even the predominate source of my disenfranchisment as a woman, let alone as a person. I don't think you're reactionary simply for thinking so, but I do disagree with you.
As the mother of two girls I just have to wonder if this decision would have unfolded in the same way if PK were XX
If anything, I'd think I'd be more comfortable with it. Straight girls, anyway, aren't really the audience for porn (although obviously many of us consume it anyway). Dealing with explaining to PK what the problems are with porn without shaming him for (presumably) being interested in it, when the time comes, seems like it'll be a tricky gig.
Bitch--
when asked by a young relative what I thought of porn, I said "what do you think I think?"
He said "I think you think its degrading to women."
I said "yes, I think most of it is. but what I most want to convey to you is that learning how to have sex by watching porn is like learning how to sail by watching pirates of the carribean. {hands over large book about sex)."
“Pornography is never going to radically chance our world, though”, is what Rebecca said (and thank you by the way for the good links to anti-porn arguments. I had read some things along these lines before, but it is always good to brush up).
But what if porn could radically change our world? Images are powerful things and we shouldn’t deny ourselves access to sexual images because in the past and in some present circumstances they aren’t presented as we wish. I don’t really believe in making a distinction between porn, erotica, and erotic art. Where would you draw the line between them? I think these two words are used as a tactic to label one form of sexual imagery acceptable and another form degrading.
I see porn changing individuals’ worlds daily. I have heard in this comment that porn is not made for women, but increasingly it is. Check out female directors like Candida Royale, Tristan Taormino, and Joanna Angel. They may not be making the images you personally want to see, but that does not change the fact that they are women making porn. And thye are not just making it to be consumed by men. They are making it for people like me and all the other 20-50 year old women I sell porn to every day. Not to mention the lesbians who are making and consuming porn. This is a huge market! And how about trans porn? Are the bodies portrayed in these films suddenly not “pieces of meat” (as more traditional, presumably straight looking women have been called in these comments) because they defy our traditional gender norms? The more we talk about porn actresses as having been reduced to “pieces of meat” rather than have given a performance, the more we reinforce that idea whether it is accurate to an individual situation or not. If we want women to be able to have sex on camera without being objectified, I suggest we start changing our language to convey respect for the job they do.
I see porn changing the lives of couples daily as they learn to communicate honestly about their desires or fantasies with each other. I see porn change the lives of men daily. All the comments here have referred to the male gaze and objectification for men. So how do men get to express their desires in a healthy way? I can’t tell you how often I see men’s faces wash over with relief and happiness when I tell them I can show them a video that deals with their fantasies made by a woman director. Or a woman without silicone body parts. So many men are desperate to consume sexual imagery but afraid that this makes them a bad person. They respect and love the women in their lives, and they don’t want to contribute to anything that would truly hurt someone. But they love watching sexy ladies!
What I am saying is that I have seen porn defy the stereotypes that people still hold about it.
When I asked that we let sex workers speak for themselves, I was referring to the debate about pornography in general. It is true that much attention has been given to the ex-suicide girl’s comments, and I appreciate that, as I am sure they would also. But I would encourage people to watch porn before they decide to fight against it. See some good alternative stuff and see what you think. I would gladly give you recommendations. But don’t deny the power of sexual imagery. I think we need it, as a culture.
But "watching porn" is not even close to the same thing as listening to what the models or actors actually say or believe about its production.
I see what you're saying about why porn can be good, but you're focusing on its effects on consumers, not on actors. Which is fine, of course, that's a valid point, but it's a different one than you seemed to be making in the beginning.
Meant to also say: *And* it's a different point than I think most of us have been making. Which seems, I think, to be where a lot of the "anti porn is anti sex!" stereotype seems to come from -- pro-porn folks thinking we should consider only the effect on the consumer, rather than the effects on the models/actors. I see people talking past each other on that point a lot. (Not to say that one point is valid and the other wrong; just that we should make sure we're talking about the same thing before we start arguing about it!)
I'd like to add that we can't pick and choose which ex-sex-trade or current sex-trade workers we listen to. Where I differ from the anti-porn people is that I have actively worked as an academic to improve the working conditions of sex-trade workers, and to improve the way that sex-workeres are perceived -- especially by those who have some kind of investment in being so much superior to sex-workers that they feel entitled simply to deny their realities. I haven't worked to shut their work the fuck down so that they'd have to go work at the quickie-mart and still try to figure out how to feed the kids. I have listened to what sex workers say is wrong with their work, and put in volunteer time at a sex-worker's outreach centre. And I have also listened to all the things that women in the biz (and men too, in gay porn) say are really amazing about their work. I don't make artificial distinctions between new-age "body workers" and "nasty women" that others feel comfortable blaming for the evils of patriarchy.
I can see what is bad, potentially harmful about sex work *as work*, and I don't choose to discount the words of those who find something good for themselves (and arguably for others) in the business.
Before I became a peel I had an incredibly fucked up and narrow notion of what women were supposed to look like, and what female genitals were supposed to look like. I was never comfortable with my own body, or freed to look at the beauty of other women's bodies until I worked with 20-30 other naked women every night.
Ah-hem.. "peeler" not "peel". I can live with my typos most of the time, but heaven forbid someone should think I was ever discarded fruit instead of a bona fide slut.
Basically, I just want to throw up.
“Which seems, I think, to be where a lot of the "anti porn is anti sex!" stereotype seems to come from -- pro-porn folks thinking we should consider only the effect on the consumer, rather than the effects on the models/actors.”
True, Occhiblu, I will give you that. There was a through line to my two arguments; I just had trouble expressing it. What I was trying to point out is that as long as sex work as a career is looked down upon, it will continue to be a profession whose workers are marginalized. As long as feminists call all pornographers sell outs and part of the patriarchy, sex workers with feminist leanings will feel excluded and persecuted. And as long as women do not buy porno, it will be made for the people that do buy it.
For all the people who have been worried about how these photos will affect the futures of the models, we could take it upon ourselves to change that. If we all fight (in our subtle or large ways) to give women space to be sexual beings, perhaps in ten years there won’t be such a stigma to sex work. Apnea will be applying for a home daycare license so she can take care of her children and make some money and it won’t end up on the nightly news as “Former porno star wants to be alone with your child”. Woman will be allowed a sexual past, future, and present even if they have shown their naked body or sexual ability on camera. Women are a growing market in porn and the changes this has caused are important and exciting.
I do not mean to say that sex work is a good job for everyone. As Canuckdoc points out, we need to be willing to listen to all sex workers’ stories. As pro-porn as I am, I do realize that abuse and negative experiences happen way too often in sex work. But the less stigmatized we make it, the more sex workers can ask for rights and try to remedy the things they don’t want to have to do/deal with. And a great way we can make a difference is as consumers. Watch the behind the scenes DVD with your feature presentation (yes, many videos offer this now). See a bit about how the movie was made and hear what the stars had to say about it right before and after scenes. If you don’t see what you want in porn, tell the porn makers! Money talks and the more feminists demand to see porn with healthy, happy ladies and men and gender queers who love to fuck, the more that will be produced. We all know how capitalism works…so choose who you are going to support whether that ends up being Larry Flynt or an independent company doing documentaries that include real couples having sex.
Just wanted to say Hell Yes to Frowner's comment, far far above. Hel -uh -ell yes.
Laura:
"I was trying to point out is that as long as sex work as a career is looked down upon, it will continue to be a profession whose workers are marginalized."
There's a major flaw in this laudable argument. It's not feminists who marginalize sex workers- we're too damn marginalized ourselves to be very effective at that. It's the mainstream- not just the Christian right, but the media, the average moral viewpoint, and mostly, overwhelmingly the average consumer of porn, and all other forms of the flesh trade. Those people hate sexualized women with a force no actual feminist could muster.
I've been a sex worker. I've been interested in feminist porn. I have tried to make this whole crazy thing work, and I'm not saying its impossible, I'm saying I haven't seen it. I believe that it's a responsibility of feminism to protect women in the sex trade, and you can't deny that the vast majority of them desperately need protection.
The speed with which pro-women's sexuality urges get co-opted and exploited is breathtaking. Suicide Girls is a shining example. The ex-girls discontent rises from a discrepancy between expectation and experience? What- their expectation that they had control over their sexuality and image? On a site that touts individuality and self expression? Foolish, foolish girls.
SG is exploitative as heck. It's tricksy. It tricked those women. Just because it spouts some of the ideals you like doesn't mean it should get a pass. It should get less of a pass. It should get a big red rubber stamp that says "LIAR."
If you really want to help women in the sex trade (as distinct from the sex trade itself) have a zero-tolerance policy for this kind of crap. Women's sexuality is so unfortunately fucked-up that the line between choice and exploitation is painfully thin. And once money gets involved, the forces pushing you to the wrong side of that line are stronger than you can imagine.
Also, re Bitch's initial post "a softcore site that itself is playing around with the issue of where, exactly, sexual desire and porn interact with and part ways from feminism""
For "playing around with" read "making money from." For "the issue ....part ways from feminism" read "porn". Then you will have an accurate sentence.
Whether a noted bitchy feminist writing feminist content on a softcore site that makes money from porn is an interesting or worthwhile project, I'll leave to you all to decide. Perhaps it is. But certainly not if said noted bitchy feminist is pre-fabricating excuses for the site in question. We all know the primary purpose and methods of SG, so let's boil the debate down to the marrow, shall we?
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Amptoon started a club and I just now noticed? Shame on me.
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