For those that still think I may be brainwashed by the patriarchy…or something

http://stoppornculture.org/watch/

“does that really give you the right to make all these false assumptions about Penny, or the Night Heron in general?”

The movie, the way it was presented, the group she promoted, I don’t think I’m too off base. As far as you falsely assuming I am slamming Night Heron as a whole, I wrote: “This letter is to the charter of Night Heron and not to particular individuals.” I wrote to the charter of the group, get it?

Since you want to still bring up that I wrote to the racist group, and as I’ve mentioned to others since then, you’ll remember I wrote “I’ve written to the group’s yahoo address without response.” Hope that cleared it up.

The “complaints” as you say were just instance written in a blog post. Blogs are mediums for a lot of things. Anarchist that get easily offended. That’s a post in itself.

Now for the icing. I have even less respect for someone there who was a sex worker and didn’t speak out against that movie. Outing themselves is their choice but if there was a time to do it, then would have been a perfect opportunity and would have made a timely point. They would certainly have my respect and support in whatever followed them afterwards.

I’m over this issue. You guys feel free to keep backtracking and voicing how it really was. The last thing we need to do is come there and listen to this shit all over again.

also, just touching on the subject of violence in the film,it’s hard to imagine that you could say that a man fucking a woman while shoving her head in a toilet and hitting her calling her a bitch and a whore, is not violent, or couldnt conceivably be encouraging of violence against women. the violent parts of the film were NOT just the parts taken from kink.com and anyone reading this should watch the film and decide for themselves… (its called The Price of Pleasure) i’m not saying that i agree with everything in the film,or that it was unbiased (just as your comments and feelings are not unbiased either) but its misleading to say the only violent parts were the BDSM parts.

this has gotten pretty long so i guess theres a good chance it wont be posted. i tried to keep it concise but you’ve given me a lot to want to respond to, and theres a lot more i wish i could say, which is why the internet is a shitty way to communicate. im assuming that since you told penny not to communicate with you further, that you wouldnt be very open to talking to me either.

the last point i’d like to make is that i have seen A LOT of porn in my life and you should know better than to assume someone hasn’t done sexwork, just because they dont out themselves in a discussion group.

I’m sorry if it came across that I was saying your opinion doesn’t matter because we were talking about mainstream porn. It seemed to me that what you had to offer was heard and appreciated, and there was a place for that.

That said, the film was about the products and effects of the mainstream porn industry on society and individuals, and so I attempted to keep that in focus while facilitating a discussion about the movie.

As far as my comments that have offended you, I will take what you’ve said into consideration. I would like to meet with you, to talk about it and learn from the experience. Please let me know if you are open to this.

Penny

After the discussion Monday night, I was in a personal conversation with someone *talking about* (not advocating) a wave of anti-porn activism in the 80′s. Andrea Dworkin and Catherine McKinnon worked on an ordinance that “proposed to treat pornography as a violation of women’s civil rights, and to allow women harmed by pornography to seek damages through a lawsuit in civil court.” (inspired by the experience of Linda Boreman, of Deep Throat fame, who later spoke publicly about being coerced into the making of the film). Unfortunately, they got into bed with the religious right to get it passed; that caused a rift among feminists. (Can’t swear to these details, but this is the gist of what I remember reading about it).

Anyway, bottom line is, as I said in my email to Hawk, I am not working on some ordinance and I’m not part of right wing conservatism. If you don’t like me or what I say or do, that’s fine, but please do not spread untruths about me. I’m also not sure why it’s implied in the post that I think I’m doing sex worker activism – I made no claims of such, although I think sex worker rights and safety are important.

The point that Jordan and others are trying to make is that they don’t want to be lumped in with that movie and that belief system simply because it was shown at a center that claims to be a public space. Thats cool and I understand that, however, Penny and others made it clear that my opinion doesn’t matter because they’re only attacking the mainstream. My point was that in order to change an industry the consumer needs to take responsibility and subscribe to and support the products that they prefer, in this case Feminist porn.

When I told Miranda that I’d love to do a night there on good porn, she seemed hesitant to give me the go ahead and reminded me that as long as it was with the space’s mission, etc. as if the movie they had just shown was supportive of their mission at all. I don’t feel it was, nor the discussion following.

None of these people watch porn, buy porn or are involved in the porn industry. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised (and I’m gathering this by the reactions) if this was the first porn that they have ever seen. What an introduction.

All wasn’t unheard. Penny does things she doesn’t intend to do but she’s more rational and understanding than I am. I’m clear.

What makes you think I wouldn’t post anything where you made sense if I posted your last comments. These last two were just slams.

As I said in an email to Hawk, I do not excuse anything oppressive, misguided or insulting Penny may have said, but the response she wrote to Hawk’s email seems much more rational and understanding than what he has written. And, for whatever it is worth, in that letter, she claims that was not her intention.

In whatever way the event or what she said was oppressive than it is my desire to address that and attempt to remedy it to where it doesn’t happen again. Obviously there were misunderstandings and a vast difference of opinions on the subject matter.

I still don’t see how writing the whole of the activist center off over this one event is rational or any of the arguments against the group are sound. But once again, that is your and Hawk’s prerogative. At any rate, there is apparently nothing more I can say that is of use here since so much I have said has gone unheard.