Whaddayaknow.

I think that junkfood response to porn is probably just about right. No one considers junk food glutting the market a *good* thing most people don’t deny it has its place.

As for the “feminist” label. I don’t think it is as simple as pop-rad fem, that doesn’t seem quite right to me. I think “watered down” does have something to do with it. I’m not sure what to do about 1) – or even specifically what you mean by it. As for 2) – I do think that’s important.

- on 1) – I think we need to define it better for starters, as not just white upper to middle class feminism but as the subset of Radical Feminism that it is… a sort of PopRad feminism – where Radical Feminism gave us the “all sex is rape and every man is a rapist” trope and the “all prostitutes are victims” trope these PopRad types have simply accepted those tropes as truth. — And I think it’s important to point out, time and time again, how the early RadFems were heavily influenced by religion. Mary Daly – hardcore Catholic, catholic schools all her life, and even taught at a catholic college all of her career — her ideology has been shaped by the extreme oppression of women in Catholic institutions – which is all well and good when applied to the church I guess, but her theories don’t apply so well to people who were never infected with those sorts of “God says women suck” messages from everyone around us.

I think that the sexual obsession they have – the anti-sex obsession that many of the early hardcore RadFems had comes from the christian teaching that woman’s sexuality is what damned us all… Xtian Religion teaches that women are naturally sinful and slutty, and must be avoided, and must be silenced because of the sluttiness, otherwise they will tempt men to sin. Radfeminism didn’t ever seem to get beyond that, instead of totally rejecting the church propoganda of slutty women are evil, they sidestepped it and focused on a belief that MEN and Patriarchy are responsible for convincing women to be sinful sluts, instead of saying to themselves “what’s so wrong with sinful sluttiness?” They could never really break away from the notion that Sex Is Sin. They in essence teach that slutty women are indeed sinful (dirty), but it’s the fault of men, instead of recognizing that slutty women are NOT sinful at all and men’ve only called their sexuality sinful to shame them and render them powerless. —-

So the PopRads have read the stuff the Radfems wrote and they take it as gospel – when it’s based on the faulty premise that Sin is real and women are tricked into being sinners by men.

From the start of the anti-porn movements (heck even before that) – it’s been a WTF? alliance between radfems and right-wing religious folks – and PopFems don’t question it, not then and not now— when it’s clear as fucking day… most of the people who are actively fighting prostitution and pornography today are religious extremists who have given themselves the title of “feminist” or say of themselves they are “involved with women’s issues”, the PopRads are as gullible as the people who send in money with a prayer request to a TV preacher – they don’t quesiton AT ALL that maybe the people they are sending their money to are not what they claim to be.

dear god I ramble too much… sorry….

And of course, it would behoove feminists and others who analyze pop culture to take a more nuanced stand and not just use their own personal biases and neuroses to dismiss out of hand pop culture as innately reactionary merely because it flips your personal fee-fees. Liking NASCAR, wearing mullets, and watching the WWE does NOT make you a racist redneck; and enjoying anal porn does NOT make you a rapist stalker, either.

And a special +1 for noting the assinity of Lubben thinking that minimum wage slavery being better than middle-class security from working in porn. Never mind that HER middle-class security is the direct result from HER porn career, mind you.

Anthony

“how she’d rather do something more wholesome and fulfilling from now on – stock the shelves in a rural Mississippi Wal-Mart for minimum wage, maybe.”

Interestingly, that’s not too far from real life example. When evangelical self-appointed savior to the porn stars Shelley Lubben was writing about getting another performer out of the industry (Jersey Jaxin, I think), she made much to-do about finding her a job as a supermarket checkout cashier, followed by the phrase “Praise Jesus”. I’m all for helping people out of the industry who want out, but this seemed a bit much – personally, that’s the kind of job that would rate more of an “Eh, its a living” rather than a “Praise Jesus!”

Another thing about Sasha Grey that I find key to understanding her – she’s not from rural Mississippi, but she is from a California Central Valley town called North Highlands. For most people outside of Northern California the name doesn’t ring a bell, but basically, its a suburb of Sacramento with an unfortunate “white trash” reputation. Its basically the kind of backwater suburb with really limited prospects that somebody with ambition might want to put behind them. (I bet there are places in Ukraine that are a lot like this.) Based on this, the reason for arty, urbane, intellectual persona she tries (sometimes too hard) to project becomes clearer.