In an essay on “The Pornographic Imagination” Susan Sontag writes, “Most pornography points to something more general than even sexual damage. I mean the traumatic failure of modern capitalist society to provide authentic outlets for the perennial human flair for high-temperature visionary obsessions, to satisfy the appetite for exalted self-transcending modes of concentration and seriousness. The need to transcend ‘the personal’ is no less profound than the need to be a person, an individual. But this society serves that need poorly.” While bizarrely phrased (“perennial human flair”?), this assessment seems to point in an interesting direction. To Sontag, the use of pornography, entering its totalizing universe that’s free from the accepted logic of cause and effect—is a deformed, sexualized version of a spiritual impulse—an impulse to that hyperrationalist capitalist society tries but fails to squelch. Pornography deindividualizes both its users and those whom it depicts, and we take it for granted that this is bad. (It’s “dehumanizing,” which in the context of late capitalism means it doesn’t celebrate the myth of the autonomous individual agent maximizing his or her marginal utility.) But if you accept the critique of capitalism’s hyperindividualism, you can see how an obsession with pornography can seem a misguided attempt to break free from that straitjacket of subjectivity. It demonstrates an eagerness to deindividualize oneself, embrace operative instincts that transcend your individual desire and root you instead in some form of species-desire—not the noblest instinct of the species but a trans-personal one. In a way, porn is a substitute for what meaningful work might supply, if our society provided it for anyone. Rather than losing oneself in some social work—a path that our culture scorns and obfuscates—one loses oneself in smut, a path that yields profits to many and is thus well encouraged with a variety of cultural winks and nudges.
Article by Rob Horning, Pop Matters
http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/the_pathos_of_pornography/
“The law was passed twice in Minneapolis in 1983 and 1984 by two different city councils; it was vetoed each time by the same mayor, a man active in Amnesty International, opposing torture outside of Minneapolis. The law was passed in 1984 in Indianapolis with a redrafted definition that targeted violent pornography—the kind “everyone” opposes. The city was sued for passing it; the courts found it unconstitutional. The appeals judge said that pornography did all the harm we claimed—it promoted insult and injury, rape and assault, even caused women to have lower wages—and that these effects proved its power as speech; therefore, it had to be protected.” —Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women
Those morally offended by women’s choices—and so inclined to stop those choices being made—would just love it if every menstruating woman had to report every period and sexual encounter so that they could restrain and/or imprison her until they could ensure she wasn’t pregnant. Heaven forbid she ever got pregnant.
And that’s the thing with ANY law restricting women’s access to birth control and abortions. When anyone justifies the means for the end, they’ll stop at nothing to ensure that thing in your body turns into a fetus and then a full being capable of living independent from a human body (at least for a little while until it’s hungry). And it will be useless to argue with them because in their minds you had sex and deserve whatever treatment you get.
“If your experience—far deeper than belief or perception—is that your food comes from the grocery store (and your water from the tap), from the economic system, from the social system we call civilization, it is to this you will pledge back your life. If you experience this social system as the source of your life, you will be responsible to this social system. You will defend this social system to your very death.
If your experience—far deeper than belief or perception—is that food and water come from your landbase, or more broadly from the living earth, you will make and keep promises to your landbase in exchange for this food. You will honor and keep and participate in the fundamental predator/prey relationship. You will be responsible to the community that supplies you with food and water. You will defend this community to your very death.
When the social system into which you’ve been enculturated is destroying the landbases on which all life depends, that question of who you are responsible to—to whom you make and keep your promises—makes all the difference in the world.” —Derrick Jensen
Iran is always presented with such ugliness here in America. It is rare to see anything that portrays just common life…it’s much different than how America propaganda loves to spin it.
nuesommes:
“A Yemeni young girl takes part with her fully veiled mother a protest in Sanaa, Oct. 26, against the death of sereval women by forces loyal to President Ali Abdullah Saleh.”
(via nuesommes-deactivated20120426)
