by Silence*
Content Warning: Every Link
Feminists used to be famous for speaking out against pornography. Then the left got mad at them for it. Liberals even accused them of working with conservatives in the 1980s, though it wasn’t true. Gradually, men affiliated with the left found more compliant women to be the public face of feminism, many of them either drawn from the sex industry or groomed by porn-worshipping male liberals to expect no better for themselves.
Newer waves of activist-minded women keep rediscovering that pornography is unethical, and that even nonviolent, real-world imitations of pornography culture are unsatisfying. They keep trying to fix it. It keeps failing. The enterprise is doomed because pornography is irredeemable and women aren’t benefitted by life as a sexual object, not even for supposedly enlightened, liberal men. Most of the women who called themselves feminists once knew that.
Now, like the existence of transgender male rapists, the fact that pornography is an exercise in torture for women is a truth that the left will no longer tolerate hearing. Women who speak out against any aspect of the sex industry get blacklisted by people like Lux Alptraum, who runs a major women writers network and conference. She seems nice, doesn’t she?
Alptraum is a major gatekeeper in feminist journalism. Explains a lot, right?
I know the word you’re probably thinking; I’ve heard it from the lips of Rush Limbaugh. But what I’m telling you is that this promoter of Nazi porn isn’t a feminist. She’s someone who has unrepentantly profited from the sex industry’s torture and degradation of women. And it’s important to realize that the so-called fantasies depicted in violent pornography — which is the majority of all pornography — are recordings of the torture and degradation of the women in the film, before it has been shown to anyone as a consumer product.
Torturing and degrading women, either doing it or being entertained by it, has never been feminist.
Alptraum and her cohorts demand that women not speak aloud the truth that Elizabeth Smart knows. Sex “positive” pornography enthusiasts like the Center for Sex & Culture, who sponsor the site Feministing, don’t want to hear about the negative effects the industry and its products have on women, both behind the camera and in the audience.
So you won’t see many feminists sharing or talking about Elizabeth Smart’s courageous statements. Even when they want to, they know it’s a risky proposition.
I know a lot of my friends would hate that I’m writing with an organization that opposes abortion. If you are wondering, I support it. We don’t have to talk about that here, but I bring it up as an example of how bad the relationship between liberals and feminists has become.
Because if you think about it, everyone who follows politics knows of male Democrats who we on the left would call “bad on choice,” by which we mean they would agree with conservatives about abortion. Are these men blacklisted? Do they get threatened with violence over social media? Does the entire left rise up as one to call them backstabbers?
No.
Male Democrats get to cross over on issues like abortion because everyone understands that they have to win a swing district. Or it’s about their faith. Or they had to trade a favor for a vote. They always have some excuse. Feminists grumble about it, but in the end these men are still part of the team.
A man crossing over to work with the right on a matter of conscience is a bipartisan statesman. A woman doing the same thing is treason. Especially on this subject. Because men love their pornography.
He can cheat. She has to be completely loyal. How feminist.
This is why women’s criticisms of the sex industry have become more marginalized within the left, even as pornography has become so much more extreme and violent than the pin-up posters of nude women that were the mainstay of the porn industry even 30 years ago.
*Note from the Author:
“For reasons of personal safety and livelihood, I cannot disclose my real identity. But I can tell you this much: I’m a progressive feminist who has spent years working on the front lines of the left. I have opposed conservatism my entire political life in the most strident of terms; under other circumstances, I wouldn’t admit to even reading this site.”
