Our Porn, Ourselves

I want to say thanks to Violet Blue for working her butt off over the last couple of days, organising a new pro-porn group that she’s called Our Porn, Ourselves.

Violet was spurred into action by news of an anti-porn conference to be held in Boston by the Stop Porn Coalition, an organisation that calls itself feminist but in fact has hidden fundamentalist Christian roots. This “conference” is long on speakers who condemn porn but pretty short on alternative views or real science. They’re happily pushing the “porn addiction” paradigm which is, as I’ve previously said, bullshit.

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Also this group were happy to make use of extreme hardcore images in their presentations without checking the age of viewers or obtaining 2257 records. Most of the images were taken from online sites without attribution. I recommend you read Violet’s article from 2008 for more information about this organisation.

I’m completely in support of Violet’s efforts to counteract the “Feminists Against Porn” (FAP) argument. Too much of it is based on dodgy science, hysteria and a real misunderstanding of sex and gender relations. Throw in a dash of religious fundamentalism and you have a dangerous ideology. And I think one of the worst effects of their Chicken Little crap is that this stuff gets in the way of real discussion about porn and what it means.

I call myself a feminist and I like porn. And yet I do have problems with a lot of the porn out there. I think we need to be talking about it and thinking about how to make porn better without it turning into a “them versus us” war. Unfortunately, the way this conference is framed, there’s no room for questioning the anti-porn line.

This new movement is a way for sex positive women to stand up and tell that world that not all feminists accept the Dworkinesque arguments pushed by these puritans. And I think it will also give us an opportunity to start a real dialogue about what we really want from porn.

So I’m standing behind Our Porn, Ourselves and For The Girls is sponsoring the film competition.

Please also check out Violet’s Facebook page for the movement (at least, until FB gets puritanical and takes it down).

You might also want to read a few of my previous posts about porn, feminism and “porn addiction”
Naomi Wolf talks porn… again
This load of guilt and shame brought to you by Dirty Girls Ministries

Here’s the little image I made for the campaign: