Okay, serious business now.
Very serious.
So serious I am taking it very seriously. And looking forward to it in my uniquely grim and serious way. Planning and preparing with a very serious, serious sneer on my face.
And also laughing like a super villain the whole time.
Why?
Once upon a time, I had a wish, a dream, a surely wank worthy fantasy of some anti-porn sex work types having to face down, in a forum, and debate those from the other side. And I wanted to be there.
That day has come. Behold!
On Monday, April 21st, at 5:30 pm, in the Andrews Building on the Campus of William and Mary College, there will be a debate focusing on…you guessed it, porn (and presumably other sex work related stuff).
On the Anti Side, we shall have John Foubert, who is a professor of education at the college who adamantly and publicly opposed the Sex Workers Art Show. He is a self-identified feminist, and he believes that viewing pornography increases male sexual violence against women. He also believes that the SWAS is pornography, and thus that having it on campus increases the likelihood of rape for women at this school. He’s also the founder of the national all-male sexual assault prevention group 1-in-4 (http://oneinfourusa.org/). Also on the anti side will be Samantha (Sam) Berg. She’s the creator of the web-site genderberg.com. She also seems to have coined the term “pornstitution,” and is a co-founder of the Antiporn Activist Network, and “has dedicated herself to educating people about the inherent harms of sexual capitalism.”
On the other side, well, we shall have Jill Brenneman, former sex worker, sex worker rights advocate, program cordinator for SWOP east, host of XBN Swop East Radio, and all around kick ass woman who has done this dance before. Also on this side, we shall have…me, what with my legendary porn creds and all.
That’s right. Me. They are even paying me gas money!
The event has been organized by students, namely those who took flak for having the sex workers art show there in the first place, who are also taking women’s studies.
And, yes, oh yes, I am seriously looking forward to it. I have so lusted for such an opportunity.
Very seriously.
I think I shall wear this shirt.
And yes, if possible, I will have the whole thing on video. Get your cerebral wanking tissues ready.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
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26 comments:
Cerebral wanking tissues?
I'm gonna need a fucking cerebral wanking beach towel.
I'd wish you luck, but you never seem to need it.
Well congratulations! I'm anxious to read the transcript (or whatever), and confident you'll be a credit to your cause. What an honor!
Cool – the great debate is on!
And this John Foubert guy, OMFG – this guy outdoes even Robert Jensen in sheer rectal-cranial inversion. This guy actually had the gall to try and ban the Sex Worker's Art Show from campus with the argument that it will cause men to rape.
This is a textbook example of how anti-porn feminism is fundamentally and broadly anti-free speech.
(And doesn't this idiot even begin to understand that the First Amendment very much applies to speech and expression public universities?)
ahahahahaha!
This guy actually had the gall to try and ban the Sex Worker's Art Show from campus with the argument that it will cause men to rape.
omg DICK
Oh Well done Ren well done.
Look forward to the results
Sb
(((screams))) Please go to C-Span's website and suggest they cover it on their weekend schedule. Lots of times, if it's a subject and/or conference they've never done before, they will. They cover most Pride marches; they are fairly positive.
Try it! You could be on all over the WORLD!!!!!
Proud of you! Remember not to say "fuck"--I got on some radio station in the 70s and I got to where I would have ordinarily said "fuck" and stuttered and said "fig" or something cutesy like that. People never let me live it down... practice with another word--FRACK is good, but people will assume you are a fan of BSG!
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daisy- LOL ah yes, the swearing...I shall keep myself in check.
I will pass on the c-span info to the students organizing this, I wouldn't want to send it in without their blessing, it is their event.
And this group that Foubert started – Yikes!:
http://www.wm.edu/so/oneinfour/index.htm
The flipside of this perhaps. There's just gotta be better choices than these for young dudes....
Cerebral wankage indeed!
This shall be fun to watch. All the best to you.
(cackling evilly in corner)
You go love sounds like your going to rock out at this.
OMG - a whole website named after the 1/4 collegiate rape LIE?
This mother of all factoids is based on a fallacious feminist study commissioned by Ms. magazine. The researcher, Mary Koss, hand-picked by hard-line feminist Gloria Steinem, acknowledges that 73% of the young women she counted as rape victims were not aware they had been raped. 43% percent of them were dating their "attacker" again.
What a tool. Please rip him a new one...
Woohoo! I'm really interested to see, especially as the very same controversy erupted over my campus after the Sex Workers Art Show came.
WOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
That sounds like a really interesting debate to watch, if it's going to be recorded.
But I don't see what's wrong with the one-in-four group. I think it's a good thing when men are supportive of rape victims. I didn't see anything on the site about a sex worker art show making men more likely to rape or anything like that. It looks like a group that teaches men how to be supportive.
I believe we were promised a cage fight.
(Best of luck, and, seriously...the guy says sex workers should not be allowed to exhibit art? Can you get any more anti-woman, fascist and moranic?)
Congratulations and good luck Ren. I have no doubt you'll emerge victorious. This is exactly the kind of direct confrontation we need and you're the perfect choice for the job.
Why do I get the feeling that Sam Berg will get seriously cold feet and attempt to pull out in the end, citing the usual stated policy against debating "pro-porn" activist lest they "legitimize abuse and murder"?? Or, if she does attend, she will be raging at her forum after the even, accusing the forum sponsors of "bias" because of the selection of Ren and Jill as "paid agents of the pornographers"???
Oh, and this John Foulbert dewd...yuck. Forget Bob Jensen; he makes Richard frickin' Leader of Adonis' Ladder look humanitarian in comparison.
Whatever..I know that you will represent. Take no prisoners, Ren...and kick plenty ass like you usually do.
Anthony
There's a one in four chapter at my school--they actually seem like a pretty good organization to have on campus, plus we also have a sister organization which does the same presentations for female students. If their founder's an ass, fine, but the organization itself is good.
Hooray, HOORAY, HOOOORAAAYYY!!!
I am so glad this is happening, and it is important to have skilled and knowlegeable speakers who have actually "been there" talking back to these fools. You and Jill will be excellent!!
IACB- I guess I don't see what the problem is with the 1 in 4 group itself from just looking at its website. But, the fact that Foubert started the group does make me a little suspicious that it might possibly just be a bunch of Promise Keeper type Neo-Victorianism. On one hand, I'm glad he wants to stop myths about rape, but...the idea that porn causes rape is itself a myth, and I think studies have shown that!
Foubert sounds like a closet-perv. We've seen this repeatedly with Eliot Spitzer, Senator Larry Craig, Mark Foley, outspoken homophobes, etc etc. All hypocritical men who are externalizing their internal battles. And generally easy to spot because they overcompensate to hide their own inner struggles.
So, what is Foubert personally hiding to make him go so far out of his way to fight these molehills?
This guy probably whacks off to rape porn on the net.
However, John Foubert, an education professor who researches sexual violence toward women, said studies confirm that exposing men to pornography made them more likely to commit sexual assault.
"I'm opposed to ? and working strongly against ? pornography and the industry," Foubert told the paper. "What I believe the Sex Workers' Art Show does is promote the porn industry, and it goes beyond a speech issue. ... The issue here is an issue of public nudity."
But actually, studies seem to imply the opposite:
The bottom line on these experiments is, "More Net access, less rape." A 10 percent increase in Net access yields about a 7.3 percent decrease in reported rapes.
That's not a direct correlation between porn and rape...but we all know there is a strong tie between the net and porn - so it at least points in that direction.
Re: One in Four –
Well, I thought the whole "uniform" thing was a bit creepy, myself, and not exactly the best way to come across if you're doing peer education. And they do look a bit Promise Keeper-ish.
But the most damning thing for me is the totally fucked-up politics of the founder, John Foubert. Yes, he did make statements to the effect that hosting the Sex Workers Art Show will provoke men to violence – see his statements in the responses to this article in the W&M student paper:
http://www.flathatnews.com/opinions/1744/the-show-must-go-on
(BTW, I've actually read the Malamuth, et al 2000 paper that Foubert cites, and his interpretation of its conclusions is so wrong and so grossly exaggerated, its not even funny. The paper does not even remotely "prove" any link between porn viewing and violence in most men, much less a causal one. Yet this idiot goes on to compare people who disagree with his conclusions to flat-earthers! That this guy is completely sloppy researcher along the lines of Melissa Farley (who he also cites as "proof") is readily evident.)
OK, so maybe "One in Four" doesn't incorporate the full measure of Foubert's views, but I guess I don't have a lot of confidence in that. Particularly the W&M chapter, which has this guy as their direct advisor.
Poor Neil Malamuth. Ever since he and Ed Donnerstein published their first research on porn and aggression back in 1984, he's been gamely trying to prevent its distortion and misuse by anti-porn fanatics, at one point even writing to the L.A. Times in response to an op-ed piece citing his work a "proof" that porn inspires anti-social behavior, just to say that his studies to date had come to exactly the opposite conclusion.
As he tirelessly points out, all he was ever able to demonstrate by exposing test subjects to "violent" pornographic imagery was a slight and statistically insignificant bump in aggressive ideation, with no demonstrable link to behavioral changes of any kind whatsoever.
Like any good scientist, he's excruciatingly cautious when it comes to social or political extrapolations from what he consistently describes as extremely limited exploration of a complex phenomenon, and it must drive him nuts to see his work cherry-picked by head cases like Foubert to "prove" a contention Malamuth himself carefully avoids.
These jerks use science the way a drunk uses a lamp post - for support rather than illumination.
Well, actually Malamuth does claim a statistically significant jump in aggressive behavior among men already predisposed to violence viewing violent porn. Though Fisher and Granier dispute whether even this has been clearly demonstrated.
Hence, the strongest behavioral claim that's been made against porn by any actual research scientist is that in a small subset of already-violent men, violent porn might be triggering.
That's a pretty far claim from "(all) porn causes (any and all) men to behave violently", which is what Foubert and other antis claim has been clearly established by Malamuth's work.
And as I've said before, if you're going to ban triggering material, you need to start with the Bible.
For what its worth, here's a direct link to the Malamuth, et al 2000 article that Foubert likes to quote:
Pornography and sexual aggression: Are there reliable effects and can we understand them? The concluding remarks of the article (starting here) are concise and particularly worth reading over, as Malamuth provides some what should be obvious contextualization of media exposure and behavior research, context that seems to be entirely lost by the anti-porn folks.
Malamuth even goes so far as to make this statement:
"The current findings do suggest that for the majority of American men, pornography exposure (even at the highest levels assessed here) is not associated with high levels of sexual aggression"
Foubert takes the above study as direct proof that exposure to any and all sexual imagery is directly causal to aggression. I'd say this guy has serious problems with reading comprehension, which is not a great characteristic in a college professor.
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