Noam Chomsky: “Pornography is the Humiliation and Degradation of Women”
Jul 31st, 2008 by admin
A few years ago Noam Chomsky was interviewed by Larry Flynt’s Hustler magazine. To say the least, I was so disappointed; I would not have expected Chomsky to have agreed to be interviewed by a publication like this. I had had deep respect for him; once I learned he’d been interviewed in Hustler, I couldn’t really read what he had to say any more.
As it turns out, Chomsky didn’t know what kind of publication Hustler was when he was contacted for the interview. He was given a list of names of people who had been interviewed in the past, and he recognized some of them as the names of friends. The topic of the interview was to be war and nuclear weapons, which are subjects he writes and speaks about. So he gave the interview. He says in the video above that he was surprised he never got a transcript back to review, which is standard practice, but he just sort of forgot about it.
Here is a transcript I created of some of this interview. Read it and be encouraged! And watch the video. It will be very obvious what happened here.
Partial transcript of the video:
What is your view on pornography?
Chomsky: Porn is humiliation and degradation of women. It’s a disgraceful activity. I don’t want to be associated with it. Just take a look at the pictures. I mean, women are degraded as vulgar sex objects. That’s not what human beings are. I mean, I don’t even see anything to discuss.
But didn’t porn performers choose to do the job and get paid?
Chomsky: The fact that people agreed to it and are paid is about as convincing as the fact that we should be in favor of sweatshops in China where women are locked into a factory and work 15 hours a day and then the factory burns down and they all die. Yeah, they were paid and consented. That doesn’t make me in favor of it. … As to the fact that it’s some people’s erotica, that’s their problem. That doesn’t mean I want to contribute to it. If they get enjoyment out of the humiliation of women, they have a problem. It’s nothing I want to contribute to.
How should we improve production conditions of pornography?
Chomsky: By eliminating degradation of women. That would improve it.
[It's] just like child abuse. You don’t want to make it better child abuse. You want to stop child abuse. Suppose there’s a starving child in the slums and you say, “Well, I’ll give you food if you let me abuse you.”… Suppose someone gives you the argument that after all, a child is starving otherwise, you’re taking away his chance to get food if you stop abuse. Is that an argument? The answer to that is, you stop the conditions in which the child is starving. The same is true here. Eliminate the conditions in which women can’t get decent jobs, not permit abusive and destructive behavior.
Is this great or what!? For one thing, I can read Noam Chomsky again!
Heart
Yeah, Heart, I’d seen that link before somehow. Excellent!
A thoroughly decent human being.
This is good to see, for there are too many men on the left that feel entitled to use or make porn..
He is stating what should be obvious to anyone who has humanity.
I love how he answer the old question of the women being paid, so that somehow makes it ok. I never understand so many on the left will do great work campaigning against sweatshops, especially child labour. But ignore the conditions of porn and prostitution.
They frame it as “choice” in order to do nothing. For many of the men that do campaigning against sweatshops, feel they should have the right to view or make porn.
That is why they will ignore the conditions of the sex trade. If they refuse to see the harms done to women and girls in the sex trade - then they can not feel bad about using those women and girls.
Good old Noam Chomsky. Didn’t think he had a feminist bone in his body! All his work has the assumption that only men are involved, and he quotes and seems to associate with only men in the liberal left academic clique that I call the NPR gang. It’s men writing about men and men only. I don’t think as a linguist he has ever said anything about sexism in language either.
So this was really encouraging, and I loved the way he really didn’t know what that magazine was. Ever met a man who claimed this and it seemed like he really meant it?
My question is, did “The Hustler” as Chomsky says, actually write his comments on pornography in the magazine? Or was this interview something that came along later?
Good going Chomp the Champ!! Wish other “liberal” men would start flooding the radio/NPR waves with their outrage over porn and prostitution! Men need to be condemning men for this behavior, and when they say nothing, which is almost always outside right wing christian talk radio men, then we can assume that liberal men go along with the degredation and exploitation of women, and that they buy prostitutes now and then. I assume that they do unless proven otherwise. Elliot Spitzer, Bill Clinton, Dick Morris, Eldridge Cleaver, every other gay man that you meet is a porn addict… and well…. we all know the story.
Men visiting this site, get out there and talk to men about getting rid of porn, and throwing Johns into jails! Let’s get the guys out there carrying signs on Hollywood Blvd. snapping YouTubes of men picking up prostitutes, and have them carry signs that say “Johns Belong In Jail!” That’s the job assignment for guys in Los Angeles for the day. Report for duty next Wednesday at 11:32 AM in front of the Kodac Theater!
Well, I hope he’s being sincere, that Chomsky, in his talk on eliminating the degradation of women. Do you think he is?
He’s a leftist, no?
Is this great or what!?
Well, if he means what he says, Heart, yeah. And also I guess he should maybe read the feminist critique of pornography. That would give him more insight on the torture that’s goin’ on in the ’sex’ industry. I dunno…
I liked when he didn’t buy into the “choice” argument (which is often used as a conversation-stopper to any fair critique) and I also liked when he equated pornography to child abuse (that leads to the truth that pornography is rape).
I don’t think Chomsky is a leftist, he’s an anarchist. And I think he’s sincere. He’s always been a champion of justice and nonviolence and of, just in general, caring about human beings, which is why his interview in Hustler was so jarring and disappointing!
I doubt there’s anything about this video in Hustler. It was up to Chomsky to do his homework about who it was who was interviewing him. Instead he relied on the fact that friends had been interviewed for “The Hustler” and he didn’t really investigate beyond that.
I’m betting this video was the result of the KPFK/Aura Bogado/NION (Not in Our Names) series of events in 2005. It all started with this letter written to Not In Our Names by Aura Bogado:
This was Hustler’s response, posted to its website:
It got really ugly with NION issuing statements, Hustler publishing all sorts of attacks on Aura Bogado and using the fact that it had published progressives (like Noam Chomsky) in an attempt to establish cred as a progressive organization. We had a huge thread on it on my old (hacked) boards but I still have the thread and i’ve got all the back and forth. It’s interesting, I should blog about it.
Note how the Hustler idiots, two white men, call Aura Bogado, a woman of color, a “racist”, a “sexist,” a “Stalinist,” a censor because she doesn’t want Not in Our Name affiliated with Hustler! (Not in Our Name was and is an anti-war, anti-Iraqi war in particular, organization). And where have we read this kind of attack before. I always think, those who attack feminists in this particular way are porn freaks and take their cues from absolute idiots like the people who publish Hustler.
Here’s what’s also infuriating that I dug up and put into the thread. NION was really begun by radical feminists and feminists and was co-opted by the male left which was how this happened in the first place. I wrote:
Heart
I don’t think Chomsky is a leftist, he’s an anarchist. And I think he’s sincere. He’s always been a champion of justice and nonviolence and of, just in general, caring about human beings
Good
I’m an anarchist too. I’m an anarchist of the patriarchy, Heart.
The content of Hustler is absolutely sickening in its sheer misogyny and racism. And I hate how that dreadful porn magazine has always repeatedly slandered radical feminists & other women in their cartoons. Flynt is an absolute sexist & rapist scumbag.
I’ve just discovered this video through IBTP, and I’m glad I did. I have only recently found out about Chomsky and started reading his books and listening to him.
I particularly like how he states that “there’s nothing to discuss”. Do we anti-pornography (radical) feminists know it! That’s precisely the problem. If you can’t see it, if your sensitivity to another human being’s suffering has been numbed to such a point, then there’s little hope that a few women with data and arguments will be able to open your eyes.
I think (some of) it’s on Nikki Craft’s site.
Will anyone hear, if a trees falls in the forest?
I think this video is one of the extras on the forthcoming Media Education Foundation film on pornography, “The Price of Pleasure” — an interview that the filmmakers did that didn’t make it into the film proper.
Oh, I can already hear the porn apologists response to Chomsky. Unfortunately, I’ve had way too many arguments with these guys and once they hear the analogy about the child that Chomsky made they will immediately respond with something like “you are infantilizing women/being paternalistic. Why are you comparing women to children. Women are adults and can make choices of their own… or are you saying women can’t decide for themselves?” and on and on. Porn apologists will basically say ANYTHING to defend porn. The porn apologists I’ve argued with will use every argument in the book because they’ve already made up their mind that they like porn.
Porn addicts, apologists and profiteers are in it for the billions of dollars in income worldwide, the profits from the sex trade, and the perverted power they feel addicted to that is porn induced sex.
It’s about how porn rewired the male brain, so that a porn addicted husband will begin to treat his wife more and more as an object, and women are horrified at the transformation in their husbands. This is becoming more and more common.
Even lesbians are being victimized by the pornified world, and that scares the hell out of me. Lesbians have been relatively free of this nonsense mainly because we are largely invisible and fly under the radar of patriarchy a lot of the time. Since most straight people know nothing about us, it becomes an advantage, because we can’t easily be “marketed to.” But this is changing!
It’s all about how they want these profits unfettered, and they have no conscience. There is no arguing with them, because they are plain evil. You can’t have an honest argument with criminals, and that’s what they are. That and violators of human rights.
Compare them to drug traffickers worldwide, drug lords in Mexico, Columbia or Thailand, major drug dealers in the U.S. That’s who porn dealers and makers are. And drugs, prostitution and porn are interconnected. Get as many people as possible addicted to as much stuff as possible. Get men addicted to porn, and they’ll become Dr. Hyde.
Porn is a rape manual. Nothing more and nothing less.
I have personally known porn addicted and sex addicted men, men who go to orgies regularly, and who brag about their huge porn collections. I’ve seen these men slowly slide into complete tone deafness and moral degeneracy. Believe me, I’ve personally witnessed friends slide down into the abyss with this, and they are no longer friends. Just as a crack addict can’t be a friend and is a danger to themselves and others. And I’ve seen drug addiction and alcoholism out there too. So many people I’ve known have died, and I still get so upset at the waste.
I get upset at the dealers and the distributors, and I hate vice of all kinds. I only wish “liberals” would start rejecting it, because the ONLY men I’ve heard go against this stuff is conservative christian talk show hosts and Focus on the Family. Then lesbians and gays get lumped into this mix too by them. Geez.
The easy availability of porn made all of this possible. So these evil men who profit from this stuff will try to stop feminism, and they’ll try to con young feminists into going along with their “choice” arguments. Chomp the Champ says nobody “chooses” sweatshops and horrible factory conditions. Nobody “chose” child labor. He is so right and clear. But remember, the porn people are like drug lords. So we have to warn women, and we have to find young men who will listen to older men. We have to speak out like we’re doing, and it won’t be easy.
Creepy how that feminist peace group was co-opted by liberal men. What’s wrong with these yo yo liberal men anyway? They’ve been bad for decades! Bad during the anti-Vietnam war movement, bad in SDS, bad since the 60s! Bad since they insisted on cashing in on women’s bodies during the so-called “sexual revolution!”
So thanks Heart for putting this out here. The evil is getting worse out there. Even you would be shocked at some of the things I’ve heard men say! There is some Flynt comment about how these women “hate men.” Well, yes, I do hate men, I hate them for sitting on their butts and not stopping other men or shaming them into getting out of the porn /prostitution world. That’s what I hate about men. They are such ignorant cowards, such useless nitwits. It’s all about their right to sexual gratification at any cost, and they don’t give a damn who gets hurt.
Never in my life have a heard such vile anti-human comments as I’ve heard coming out of the mouths of so-called progressive men.
And the ultimate truth here that no one wants to believe, is that hardly any sexual contact between men and women is EVER consensual. I don’t believe women consent often. They might believe they do, just as 19th and early 20th century men ”courted” women until they gave in and married them. This is the truth about men and their aggression and manipulation, and their sexually degraded selves.
I get so angry at this, and I get so upset when young feminists are conned by their nonsense. They are always trying to co-opt women in my opinion, and with billions of dollars of porn profit these men are truly scary!!
How to rid the world of porn? Well the first thing is to work hard at creating loving and authentic relationships. The second is to look after people, and try to protect the young. I try to keep my eye open when children or young people are around. I try to warn girls to stay away from creepy guys, and to find out if they are using porn. Make porn a date deal breaker!
We can speak out to friends, family and groups we are in. We have the power to warn people, and steer women to sites like this and others. This is what I have been doing for a long time.
Writing, caring and acting do change things!
** PS I meant Mr. Hyde NOT Dr. Hyde! Boinng oinggg, can’t even proof my own words!
P.S. Read the LA TIMES Friday, August 1 edition — front page story by Tracy Wilkinson email: wilkinson@latimes.com
The article about Bosnian Serb rape monster organizer Karadzic–
no mention of the thousands of women raped under his command is even mentioned in this article! I sent Wilkinson an email this morning about it, and if other wrote too, we might get the Times to take women’s lives seriously.
What made me mad is the reporter specifically mentioned the killing of boys and men in a village — which was evil too, but nothing about women and how the war affected them. Geez malestream reporting at its best!
I know this doesn’t belong here, but feminist pressure must be put on the LA TIMES during this war crimes trial!
I wonder how many ‘left’ or ‘progressive’ men would agree with him. It is so cool to be into porn today, and violence against women is celebrated.
I don’t believe that Chomsky didn’t know what Hustler was. Impossible to be a part of this culture, living in a big city, and not know about Hustler Magazine.
The real question is, how far will we go to end violence against women? Will men join us? If not, why continue to be with them?
Hmm… I’ve read a couple of Chomsky’s books and my reaction to this is the same as Satsuma’s. Chomsky has a feminist bone in his body?? Who knew? He never writes about women specifically, never talks about prostitution and sex-trafficking, never mention male supremacy, rape, battering etc all of the things that women have to deal with because of and on top of transnational, neo-liberal exploitation. I put Chomsky down when I left the left and I found Vandana Shiva and Maria Mies and Farida Ahkter. I find their insights far more compelling than Chomsky. Which isn’t to say that feminists shouldn’t read him, just that women are doing far better and more interesting work than he is. In my opinion at least.
lauren, right on. I agree, it’s hard to think Chomsky didn’t know what Hustler was. Allecto, yeah, I never thought Chomsky was a feminist. He kind of places women’s issues in his lineup, but they’re not what he’s about. I do like his writings about war and colonialism, especially, and about language. But you are so right, give me Vandana Shiva and Maria Mies and Farida Ahkter any day. Still, it discouraged me deeply that someone as highly revered as Chomsky is — he has interviews scheduled three years ahead or more, hundreds of them — would be interviewed by Hustler. Perhaps I hoped he might be something like the Great Women’s Hope so far as his influence on men. This video encourages me. But I agree, women have said everything he has to say better. That’s almost always the way it is so far as men regarded as leaders.
“I know this doesn’t belong here, but feminist pressure must be put on the LA TIMES during this war crimes trial!”
None of them reported it. There was a block of stories on the G&M for days, continually being upgraded etc. No mention of the rapes. I wrote asking about that, just asking the way you have to in a mainstream paper if you want it to go in, and it was not posted. It’s considered ’sex’. Sex only get a focus in mainstream media if it can be pornified.
“Good old Noam Chomsky. Didn’t think he had a feminist bone in his body! All his work has the assumption that only men are involved, and he quotes and seems to associate with only men in the liberal left academic clique that I call the NPR gang. It’s men writing about men and men only. I don’t think as a linguist he has ever said anything about sexism in language either.”
Satsuma, this is a great point. I began reading Chomsky about six months ago and this really started to bother me. I had to wonder myself, as while he seems to be all about publicizing injustice it’s rare that his talks will mention or highlight injustice towards women. Business as usual with left/liberal men.
Thanks everyone for the reality check in on Chomp the Champ. I have always thought Chomp the Champ never even knew what women’s rights or sexist language was at all. I’ve been reading and listening to him for decades now! Not one word!
I am amazed that all these leftist “anti-war, anti-colonialism” men, just don’t even deal with women. When you read an article, and women aren’t specifically mentioned, these men are not thinking about them. What is the ultimate colonial issue — men LIVING with women, men the breadwinners, women the slaves of the house. Heterosexual marriage is a colonial institution, and that is the original oppression. Throw the British out of India? British men you mean. What was Gandhi thinking when he went home to his wife? This is the crux of it. It’s why men fear feminism because it means an end to their sexual colonization of women. It’s what the porn escalation is all about– their pathetic attempt to scare women back into the sex slave man pleasing role.
But women, this is changing isn’t it! We are continuing to rise up, and I felt so heartened that so many women realized that Chomp never talked about women! Bingo!
War and peace are all about male. Men make war, men make peace, men are terrorists and bombers, and still these leftist men don’t get that MEN are the problem, and only MEN can put a stop to the outrages of other MEN.
It’s easy to see through leftist men this way, their language totally gives them away. What is interesting, is that women on NPR and on the left a lot of times don’t seem to realize that when there are international issues being discussed by Chomp or others like him, that this has nothing at all to do with women.
Remember Thomas Jefferson et. al. who wrote that all MEN are created equal. Well they were only talking about white men. They had no intention of dealing with the tyrants of the house.
I’ve read all the guys, Chomp and a lot of others, and they are all like this. When women write these kinds of books, suddenly women appear as actors on the stage of life. Remember Men’s Studies? My little joke when people ask me what I studied. I say, that I minored in Men’s Studies.” Confused looks, until I smile and say, “I believe you men call it history.” That little line has made some men boiling mad. When I wrote a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle many years ago using this same phrase, several men called my home number and left obscene messages– that’s how much I GOT to the oppressors! I now have an unlisted number…
Even feminists can get fooled by all these leftist men who have no intention of EVER thinking about women. They have NO intention of fighting against porn or prostitution. They have NO intention of even speaking up at a cocktail party and saying something like, “Porn and prostitution violate women’s human rights,” should the “cool” topic of porn come up in conversation.
We kid ourselves women by thinking that these liberal men, and academic men, and Chomp the Champs out there ever care! What they are arguing against is other men–one group of men wants to get power and usher in a change in regime — Democratic men want Republican men out of office, for example. Taliban men and Bush Admin. men are in a war on terror — men killing men, or men at peace accords before they go to war again.
It’s why I always hated peace movements… just more damn men blabbing about men. If it isn’t Cindy Sheehan or other women of courage out there trying to end wars, it ain’t about women.
I like Chompsky, don’t get me wrong. I like all that intellectual academic stuff, and his thoughtful critiques of western imperialism and capitalism. He’s great and he knows his stuff, but NONE of his commentaries have anything to do with women! It’s why we have to put his feet to the fire a bit and get him to speak up about this stuff the way he did on the video clip! Because when he does speak about women and pornography, he really gets it right. So let’s keep asking him!
Sis, I’m on it re the war in the former Yugoslavia. I’ll have a post up about it tomorrow. All we’re hearing about is “8,000 men and boys massacred in Srebrenica,” like that’s all that happened and never mind hundreds of thousands of women raped, tortured, murdered. God.
Tracy Wilkinson of the LA TImes wrote back to me about my letter to her about the omission of the rapes. She said that she wrote about the rapes in other articles in the TImes several days in a row in late July after Karajzyk got captured. But I’m still glad I wrote to her.
“8,000 men in Srdbrenica” — men get killed and hey that means it’s real war crimes! Oy and triple lotte vey!
It’d take *at least* a dozen more revered male thinkers/actors/movers/shakers what have ye to make porn something worthy of analyzation at all in the collective male psyche.
As it is any man who sees the above interview w/Chomsky will barely have it blip on his radar. I believe Chomsky that he didn’t know about Hustler. He’s no reason to lie, he never tries to impress anybody. Not the type. And anyways he is one of those uber-brainiacs who miss most of what’s going on in pop culture. I feel the same way about his lack of analyzation of how women as a class fair under imperialism and all of the matters he speaks so incredibly about. He would be that much more incredible if he could look deeper at womankind.
One thought? - I think it has to do with no women close to you having been particularly hurt due to her sex.
People I have known who haven’t themselves been or haven’t known family or friends to be sexually assaulted, incested, raped, or discriminated against in really obvious gender-based ways-(like discrimination due to no control over reproductive system, or being shunned repeatedly by institutions if they are in a male dominated field or some such) - alot of them just don’t see women as we are. They don’t see womankind as it exists– most womankind on the planet. The lucky so often don’t help out teh luckless. It sucks. :(
They are blessed that they have neither endured nor know anyone who has endured what the majority of womankind endures –meaning some form of ongoing terrorization of her person due entirely to her gender. But they don’t realize that they’re lucky.
This is the big problem with academics in my opinion. They usually have just enough money in their background to either have been left in the dark about misogyny even misogyny in their own family, for reasons of image or what have you. Like their dad may’ve beat up their mom but, somehow, b/c the mom had money to go to therapy about it and sort of stand up to the dad, it’s like — it skews the issue. Women who have money (as in family money) in certain ways seem worse off to me than women who don’t. And men from or with money even worse. There’s no analyzation. Not to say it always has to do w/money though b/c I’ve known some lucky women like this who come from poor families. They have this cluelessness about sex abuse and misogyny in general taht comes from them being lucky and having had good supportive dads, no abuse from anybosy–really they’re just very lucky women. So they don’t get it.
I hate the fact you have to have been discriminated against or raped or some godawful sexist thing/s has to have happened to almost every woman you know to *see* the reality of womankind as a class. And see the necessity for feminism.
But all that said, props to Chomsky for speaking up. Many young men consider Flynt a hero so I’m glad the ones who like Chomsky too. They aren’t getting just another no-balls male icon’s silence on the matter of porn.
Yes I have to say I believe him too.
He’s an academic. (Need I say more…? Well, ok.)
2.) He’s an old academic.
3.) He may be working on a laptop, but not on the internet.
4.) He has minions.
5.) He probably has subscriptions to the five academic journals he wants to read which his wife or houseminion places on his desk when they arrive (I know, until recently, I did this, plus a couple other minion things, for a few extra bucks).
6.) He thinks gentlemen wouldn’t do that, and he knows non-gentlemen exist, but not actually in his journal club or real frame of reference.
I’m none of what he is but old. And even that doesn’t count on the next list. Neither does it count that I’m not American. I just am not interested in pornstitution and pop culture, which have increasing become one and the same. I don’t:
1.) Have television. Not for 12 years. And before that only three channels and rabbit ears, and never saw it until I was in my 20s anyway.
2.) Buy mass market or mainstream media publications, ever, and have not bought any newspapers or magazine (but a couple issues of OOB) for over 15 years.
3.) Do not go to movies, do not rent movies.
4.) Have not bought books for about 20 years, but for gifts for kin-kids and favour return when I usually buy a gift certificate.
Have never seen: Friends, The Simpsons, any reality show, or anything else on tv that came after them.
When doing minion work, I sometimes watched Martha.
I do however have a rad collection of roots music and screaming guitar-zan stuff on my hard drive, burned from library cds.
So, see? I believe the Chomster.
Great testimony Sis! And that, as they say, about sums it up!
PDX Indyemdia calls Chomsky ‘Chumpsky’, for refusing to speak out against 911. I think they call him a gatekeeper.
Satsuma, your post is brilliant!
I went to the Conference for Climate Change last week. Most of the workshops were run by men. I did see men in the kitchen. But it seems like the same old nfrastrucutre - just the syles have changed. In this group it’s black clothing, piercings and dreadlocks. And what can I expect under patriarchy?
Just this. New look, same old domination.
Yah as Ron Sullivan said, and it’s a remarkably useable phrase in the context:
“Same entree, different sauce.”
Since this has turned into the thread to dump on left-liberals, let me give you:
Recently on a Greyhound bus in the middle of the prairie, a bus passenger jumped up and began stabbing his seat mate with a hunting knife. Then he decapitated him, waved his head around at the other passengers, and ate some of his body. They were unknown to each other. The deceased was sleeping when he was attacked. The man who killed him is shackled awaiting psychiatric assessment.
PETA, not about to let any opportunity to be unbearably crass go by, booked an ad in a Manitoba daily paper comparing what happened to the man, to what happens to animals. The paper refused to run the ad. Peta stands by it, and a female PETA member has been quoted defending it.
“http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i_4w_sLLEcauM1G4kb0Ld03RCR3AD92DIJ1O0
I’m glad Chomsky’s said what he said but I think we need to remember that Amy Goodman, Christian Parenti and Greg Palast (among others) published in Hustler and only stopped because feminists loudly said “NO!” But they never apologized or offered any public statement.
As I think every woman here knows, a left man (”progressive,” “liberal,” whatever) isn’t always pro-feminism. And if you remember Amy Goodman fawning over Larry Flynt for the hour, you know that many women are not only pro-feminism, they’re not even pro-women.
Oops. Should be “not only not pro-feminism”.
KPFK radio and Pacifica have actually been dealing with several sexual harassment lawsuits, which of course they don’t report on.
So somehow, I’m not very surprised about Amy Goodman and Christian Parenti being published in Hustler. I haven’t seen that magazine in decades— ever since the infamous (this is really going to date me here) cover story showing a woman in a meat grinder.
So thanks Marti for this update. I have never been able to figure out why the left is so out of it when it comes to women and pornography. Perhaps their overriding concern for protecting male free speech rights at the expense of women’s freedoms is behind this blindness.
Feminism truly does threaten all the traditional left/right political arrangements that men have expected women to go along with for generations now!
Pacifica has a policy against its hosts discussing its dirty laundry. Those lawsuits could put Pacifica out of business. Their fund drives have not been meeting goals, and I imagine if more of its listeners knew why Pacifica needs so much money, it would really be in trouble.
I wish feminists would make some noise about Randi Rhodes being so friendly with Larry Flynt. All I can find on Google is some of my posts about it, though Nine Deuce alluded to it. Yet Ms. Rhodes has wondered why feminists do not support her! Perhaps everyone else has had the good sense to give up on her. I used to find her more interesting, before she fell for Obama.
I found the Brave New Films blog posted a Hustler video, via Wonkette late last year, in which the “hooker friend” of Senator David Vitter speaks about their encounters.
I doubt Greg Palast has been dissuaded from publishing in Hustler. According to ThomHartmann.com (Talk Radio for the Rest of Us), both he and Palast have been on the cover of Hustler issues this year. http://www.thomhartmann.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=638&Itemid=9
A couple of random observations:
I [was lucky enough to have] learned about Hustler and Larry Flynt from feminists. Were it not for feminism and that Woody Harrelson movie, I doubt I’d know about them now. The names, probably, but not a lot more. I seemingly always knew about Playboy and Hefner, but then they’ve always been marketed as mainstreamish.
I don’t really listen to radio these days, and have never dug internet radio, and have avoided Air America like the plague for a couple of years now, so Rhodes has been off my radar screen for a long time, ha! But I remember her from waaaay back when I lived in her local market (West Palm). I found her pretty likeable.
I’m really sorry to hear about this stuff with her and Goodman.
I think, unfortunately, that I’m only occasionally able to be surprised or angry at the position one seems to have to take re: porn in order to stay on the air. Bah.
(after all, not even Chomsky has a regular broadcast show, and every one I can think of (other than maaaaybe PBS a little) is supported through advertising by porn-profiteers or contributions by first-amendment-absolutists).
Revealing both their true agenda of censorship as well as a hatred of heterosexual Anglo males that motivates much of their philosophy, the Fifth Column of Stalinists posing as Progressives at Pacifica’s KPFK radio in Los Angeles have again misled their listeners and outright lied about Hustler magazine and us, two of its editors
Oh man, did you ever read such hysterical tripe in your life?
This is the magazine that once put a woman head-first into a meat-grinder - with only the *fuckable* part on display. What a bunch of ugly facists. Can you imagine if a black man had been posed in such a way?
My own theory is that porn/prostitution is full of fuglies with serious ‘rejection’ issues - that’s the only thing that could explain the spite, bile and hatred of female sexuality, the facist reduction of them to a mere set of orifices, the whole ‘meat’ trope…..it’s truly horrific.
Everytime I hear these creeps on the subject of women, I’m reminded of Nazis talking about Jews. Chomsky’s a Jew - and smart as f**k. Think he doesn’t recognise the same facist mind-set?
‘Porn macht Frei’ - we should buy the tee-shirts.
But in this porn-saturated culture, the irony would probably be taken as endorsement.
How sick does it get?
Well, I’m glad to hear Chomsky speak out on this issue–but it’s disheartening that it takes a man to be listened to seriously on women’s oppression by men.
But yeah, normally Chomsky doesn’t discuss women’s lib–I even heard him once say that his daughter now had so many more rights than her mother, blah, blah, blah. I mean, on one level, that’s true, but women’s degradation, humiliation are now everywhere–plastered over billboards, in store windows, on mainstream magazine covers in the supermarket….and on and on and on.
I do like his strategy of just saying there’s nothing more to discuss if you can’t see the humiliation in the photos-it’s rather true, really.
On another note, I’m really sad to hear about the sexual harassment that has been going on at KPFK. Satsuma (or anyone else), do you have more information on this? I don’t want to get into any womyn’s personal business if she does not want to make this public, but I would be interested to know more about a radio station I do listen to, and whose women hosts I think are really fantastic.
Thanks, Marti - I’m not imagining things. Amy Goodman will not report on the Lesbian Seven. DNow was so much better before 2005 - then it changed dramatically. Today most of her guests are men and often establishment men. I find myself turning it off and mostly listen to FSRN.
Last year Rain and Thunder cited a press release posted at the Bay area Indymedia site about several sexual harassment lawsuits against Pacifica. The cases at KPFK were unusual, since the general manager Eva Georgia, a black lesbian, was the alleged culprit. I think the harassers at the other stations were all men. KPFK has a new manager as of July.
Thanks, Aletha, for letting me know. I guess I missed the note regarding it in RAT!
Laur, I found out about the sexual harassment suits against KPFK by accident as I was following several links. I’d always wondered about that radio station, since they’d talk about everything except rape and sexual harassment most of the time. Amy Goodwin seemed like that old school leftist “power to the people” = not talk about real women, and real women’s issues, for example.
Foreign policy types in the usual all men all tbe time forum.
Anyway, on of my old friends who had a radio show on KPFK for years talked about the toxic woman hatred and lesbian baiting that she had to put up with from the male black nationalist people who had the show right after hers. They’d call her “white bitch” her car was trashed, her lesbian bumper sticker slashed. It was always something. The leftist men were really into making sexist comments, asking lesbians out on dates and on and on it went. Management never did anything about it. But apparently some women went after them.
If you keep searching you should be able to find these stories. I found them over a year ago. Leftists don’t equal feminists at that place!!