Debbie Nathan - Pornography: A Groundwork Guide

Slavery Today

Kevin Bales & Becky Cornell

The Betrayal of Africa

Gerald Caplan

Sex for Guys

Manne Forssberg

Technology

Wayne Grady

Hip Hop World

Dalton Higgins

Democracy

James Laxer

Empire

James Laxer

Oil

James Laxer

Cities

John Lorinc

Pornography

Debbie Nathan

Being Muslim

Haroon Siddiqui

Genocide

Jane Springer

The News

Peter Steven

Gangs

Richard Swift

Climate Change

Shelley Tanaka

The Force of Law

Mariana Valverde

Series Editor

Jane Springer

Thanks to Bobby Byrd at Cinco Puntos Press, who connected me with my wonderful editors for Pornography Patsy Aldana, Jane Springer and Sarah Quinn. Thanks also to Vicki Mayer for getting me to the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas. Kudos to my children, Sophy and Willy, who provided teenaged and early-twenty-something answers to my endless questions about their (and their friends) take on porn. And thanks especially to Morten Naess, whos always with me as I work, in body, soul and mind.

Copyright 2007 by Debbie Nathan

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a license from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

Groundwood Books / House of Anansi Press

128 Sterling Road, Lower Level, Toronto, Ontario M6R 2B7

Distributed in the USA by Publishers Group West

1700 Fourth Street, Berkeley, CA 94710

We acknowledge for their nancial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) and the Ontario Arts Council.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Nathan, Debbie

Pornography / by Debbie Nathan

(Groundwork guides)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-88899-766-1 (bound)

ISBN-10: 0-88899-766-3 (bound)

ISBN-13: 978-0-88899-767-8 (pbk.)

ISBN-10: 0-88899-767-1 (pbk.)

1. Pornography. 2. Pornography social aspects. I. Title. II. Series.

HQ471.N34 2007 363.47 C2006-906684-1

Design by Michael Solomon

In memory of Ellen Willis (1941-2006), who always had her eyes open, and who knew that in order to think hard and hold our visions, we must have the right to look.

Chapter 1

When was the rst time you received an email message whose heading made you think it was from a friend, but when you opened it, you found pictures of nude people in sexual poses? When did you rst type XXX into a search engine such as Google, then click on some of the thousands of sites that popped up?

Nowadays, sexual images are absurdly easy to nd for anyone with a way into the Internet. Unless a web connection has a lter on it there is almost nothing to keep people including minors from entering porn sites. A 2001 study by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found that seven out of ten fteen- to seventeen-year-olds in the United States have looked at pornography online.

Images are not the only porn available these days words are everywhere, too. When this writer was in high school in the US in the late 1960s, a cheerleader was suspended for using the word horny at a school assembly. Today, the vocabulary in Internet chat rooms including those for teenagers routinely gets far more hardcore and no one bats an eye. Even when the discussion is about something besides sex, conversation often gets waylaid by unknown newcomers maybe adults, maybe not spouting dirty language. Meanwhile, bookstores display products like the bestseller How to Make Love Like a Porn Star. Its a memoir by Jenna Jameson, who has been lmed having sex in dozens of XXX-rated DVDs. Jamesons co-author is a former reporter at the highly respected New York Times.

There is also cable TV, with some channels showing porn late at night and others running it twenty-four hours a day. Viewers without subscriptions can make out nude bodies through the snow that supposedly blocks the visuals, and they can clearly hear moaning. Sex is on prime-time TV, too, in wildly popular shows such as Sex and the City, a US product that has also been a hit in countries like the UK and Canada. The series cheerfully promotes practices such as anal sex and sex toys. Look, exclaims Charlotte, one of the four main characters, when she gets her rst vibrator. Oh, its so cute!its pink! For girls!

And there is music. Hip-hop includes torrents of pornographic lyrics. Conversate, sex on the rst date, goes a typical song by The Notorious B.I.G. that often plays on daytime commercial radio. Then I, whip it out, rubber no doubt/Step out, show me what you all about/Fingers in your mouth, open up your blouse/Pull your G-string down South. These days, dancing to all kinds of music involves moves that only strippers used to make in public and not many people used to see strippers. Yet today, exotic dancing is so well accepted that gymnasiums in Canada, Britain, Australia and the US offer classes in pole dancing for women as a form of exercise. These classes resemble aerobics sessions, except that instructors tell students to smack your butt, touch, feel, and caress the body.

Sexualized language and imagery is so widespread now that even conservative, religion-based businesses are jumping on the bandwagon in order to sell their products. Thomas Nelson, Inc. is a US-based Christian publisher with titles such as Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder and Home Invasion: Protecting Your Family in a Culture Thats Gone Stark Raving Mad. But in 2006, Thomas Nelson started a new Christian imprint. It is called Naked Ink, and it will include a child-rearing guide for parents called The Hot Moms Handbook.

US writer Pamela Paul has coined a word to describe what has happened to modern life. It has been pornied, she says. Barely forty years old herself, Paul remembers that things were much tamer when she was a teenager, in the days before Internet, cable TV and the Jenna Jameson book. That was a generation ago. Now, says Paul, pornography is hurting people, including children and young adults.

But is it really? Who says so? And why do they say it?

Some people who are troubled by porn claim that it makes men want to have sex outside of marriage or masturbate, which are sins against God. This reasoning comes from traditional Jewish, Christian and Muslim beliefs. It is a moral argument, and those who do not take the Bible or Quran literally who dont nd anything wrong with masturbation, for instance probably will not take such arguments seriously.

Still, many people think pornography is dangerous for other reasons.