Boston, Massachusetts - from www.bostonherald.com - There’s a sisterhood smackdown brewing this weekend at Wheelock College. Pro-pornography feminists have launched an online protest of a “Stop Porn Culture!” conference at the Boston campus.
On one side is sex columnist Violet Blue [pictured]. Her slogan, “Our Porn, Ourselves,” is a take-off on the feminist classic, “Our Bodies, Ourselves.” Blue’s manifesto declares, basically, that no woman should be told what to enjoy sexually and that pornography is empowering for the sexually liberated woman.
Her side also claims that one in three pornography consumers is a woman.
I’m suspicious, even if Oprah herself made the claim on a show featuring both Blue and Jenna Jameson, the retired, multimillionaire porn star and author of “How to Make Love Like A Porn Star.” More likely this number is what the pornography industry pushes to convince women that what they see online - “oh my God” - is just a terrific marital aid.
On the other side, longtime anti-pornography crusader and Wheelock professor Gail Dines, the conference organizer. This is not your father’s ‘Playboy,’ she says of Pornography 2010, which she calls more degrading than ever to women. Women defending porn are likely deluded by the near trillion dollar industry, she said. Meanwhile widespread viewing of on-line pornography has become a huge problem in real lives.
You wonder why your teenager sports cleavage and so-called stripper shoes? Look at the hypersexualized images from pornography all around her, like ex-Disney star Miley Cyrus posing in bondage attire.
You wonder why your husband/boyfriend has lost sexual interest in you? Millions of men now see so much pornography, they’re bored with real women who don’t perform, or look, like porn stars. Even Blue admits pornography can intimidate. Its stars get cosmetic surgery literally (and sometimes frightfully) from head to toe. They have makeup in places you’d be surprised makeup can be applied. They shave and wax everything and they’re as flexible as circus contortionists.
I am, as you might guess, 100 percent with Dines. Her latest book, “Pornland,” is filled with bleak statistics.
Example: the average boy first sees on-line porn at age 11 .
By the way, at the end of the Oprah show featuring Blue and Jameson, Jameson is asked about explaining her career to her infant sons. She says she doesn’t care a whit what other people think. She only cares what her sons think.
Then she starts to cry.
