The Menstuff® library lists pertinent books on Pornography.
Aperture, The Body in Question. (This
is really a high-class magazine but has more of the appearance of
a coffee table book on photography of the body, so we've included
it here. Our apologies to the photographers and our visitors for
not showing the cover. It is beautiful and should be seen by all.
I hope you understand. - Editor) This issue was on sex and
sexuality and the powerful efforts that are underway to define and
control expressions of sex and sexuality and to reinstate the
traditional family and institutionalized religious practice as
ideals. One can recognize the support that such families and
belief systems, at their best, can provide, and still feel that to
impose any particular way of life as the American norm is to
indulge a repressive impulse. What we are in fact threatened with
is a drive toward a rigid social conformity, with the body as the
pawn, or (as Barbara Kruger has termed it under the Lenny icon)
the "battleground" in struggles between differing conceptions of
public morality and individual freedoms. This issue unabashedly
seeks to explore these issues, beginning with an examination of
gender - the body created and recreated - and then moving through
photographs and texts that consider, among other dynamics, the
body abused, objectified, discovered, aroused, desired, censored,
mythologized, manipulated and celebrated. The images are
corporeal, about the strengths and vulnerabilities of this most
tangible manifestation of personal experience, ourselves, whether
the body in question is a child, a person with AIDS, a victim of
physical violence, or someone at the point of orgasm. Conversely,
many conservative political and religious leaders, nervous that
certain presentations of the body, of difference, challenge their
notion of public morality (Mayor Guillani), seek to suppress these
issues and have launched an attack on the arts in the United
States in such a way as to undermine the First Amendment by
attempting to have conditional (that is, limited) freedom of
expression. Artists' studios are being raided and work
confiscated, NEA grants are being revoked, a museum and its
director are being tried on obscenity charges, and more. In light
of these events, it is not surprising that some of the artists
represented in this publication, particularly those whose work
focuses on children, feel threatened. Initially, a few of them
considered withdrawing their pictures - pictures to which they are
committed, and which they , and the publication, believe to have
integrity and merit. Although the publication shared their
concerns - having no desire to put the magazine and its
contributors at risk - we feared succumbing to them, for what
could be rationalized as an editing decision might really be an
instance of self-censorship, one of the most subtle and insidious
of the possible results of the ongoing assaults on literature and
the arts. Clearly, it is difficult to remain impervious to the
demoralizing effects of assaults by those who so aggressively and
manipulatively cast aspersions on others' convictions, motives,
and choices: working through issues of quality (and what
constitutes an "art" image), elitist attitudes, self-censorship,
and even exploitation became an impassioned process as the editors
considered the images for the issue. Some readers may think we
have erred in our selection. But without the free play of images
and words in magazines, book, exhibitions, and other public
forums, it would be impossible to address and debate the vitally
important ideas involved as fully and deeply as their seriousness
demands. We hope that our audience will take this issue to heart
and mind at a moment when our right to our bodies - to represent,
use, protect, enjoy, and view them - is increasingly questioned
and menaced. Aperture Foundation, 20 East 23rd Street, New York,
NY 10010 (4 issues/year, $36.) Fall, 1990
Chancer, Lynn S., Reconcilable
Differences: Confronting beauty, pornography and the
future of feminism. This book breathes sanity, balance and
wisdom into debates about the current state of feminism. Why, the
author asks, do we so often find ourselves lining up on one side
or the other of a great divide? What are the
costs? How do we learn to think in terms of "both/ands"
rather than "either/ors"? These are key questions for
our times, and the author does them brilliant justice, challenging
rigid positions on pornography, sex work, beauty and
sadomasochism, showing that even with these charged issues, we can
be attentive to our differences without denying our commonalties,
acknowledge women's agency while criticizing coercive
institutions, and celebrate sex without giving up the battle
against sexism. The author is a passionate and persuasive enemy of
the oversimplified polarities that have dogged feminist debates.
Her radical and richly nuanced essay on the "beauty issue" sets a
standard that any future argument on the subject will have to
meet. A must read for feminists of all persuasions. University of
California Press, 1998 ISBN 0-520-20923-0 Buy
This Book!
Christensen, F. M., Pornography: The other side. In
the continuing clamor over pornography, the claims most often
heard are these: (1) it is evil so it should be banned,
and (2) it is evil but censorship is a greater evil. The other
side - that pornography is not in itself morally bad - is rarely
defended. The purpose of this book is to present some of the
evidence for that other side. In fact, it will be argued that the
current antipornography campaign is in many ways itself morally
evil. This will be a startling claim to many, but that is largely
because they have been given so little opportunity to see the
whole picture. Actually, pornography itself is not the fundamental
issue; opposition to it is only a symptom of more general beliefs
that are tragically mistaken. What this book is really about, at
bottom, is sex - and the evil effects on the lives of all of us
that irrational attitudes toward that subject continue to have.
This book cites various sources of information and argumentation
on each topic discussed, in the hope that readers will pursue the
subjects on their own; some of the more comprehensive ones are
mentioned parenthetically in the text. But notes are kept to a
minimum, used for referencing only those claims that are both
crucial to the case and also not well known within the literature
on human sexuality. Praeger, 1990 ISBN 0-275-93537-X
Buy
This Book!
Delacoste, Frederique & Priscilla
Alexander, Sex Work: Writings by women in the sex
industry. The first (and only?) book to be reviewed favorably
by both The Women's Review of Books and Hustler,
this book popularized the term "sex work" to describe the
occupations of street prostitutes, exotic dancers, nude models,
escorts, porn actresses, and workers in massage parlors and so
changed the way we talk about sex and money. Features the original
stories of women in the life, including writings by Sapphire, Nina
Hartley and Joan Nestle. Includes Sex Workers' response to AIDS.
Latest information on the legal status of sex work in the US,
Europe and Asia. Growth of the international prostitutes' rights
movement. Bibliography, revised to reflect a decade's worth of
writing and publishing on sex work. Resources, including activists
organizations and publications - many just a web click away. Cleis
Press cleis@aol.com 1998
Glenmuller, Joseph, Pornographer's Grief: & other
tales of human sexuality. This book offers, really...a series
of psychological and moral fables...The author is too modest to
say so, but these stories tell us about more than human sexuality.
In a larger sense, they inform us about what it is, again and
again, that goes wrong in the overall life of so many men and
women. What helps people is not only the insight the author takes
pains, every day, to offer his patients (and to us, here) but also
the attitude he presents, the healing presence of someone who
cares to listen, to make sense of what he has heard, to speak with
candor and compassion, and thereby repairs any number of old and
festering wounds. Harper Perennial, 1994 ISBN 0-06-092203-6
Buy
This Book!
Hardy, Simon, The Reader, The Author, His Woman & Her
Lover: Soft-core pornography and heterosexual men.
Taking as its focus soft-core pornography and its impact on the
sexuality of young men, this book is intended as a contribution to
the developing discussion of heterosexuality and its cultural
representation within sociology, gender studies and media studies.
This book was conceived as a response to the divisions among
feminists concerning pornography and as an attempt to disrupt the
existing pattern of entrenchment into which critical discussion of
sexual representation has fallen. The harm which pornography is
thought to cause women is obviously mediated through men, and yet
the male perspective, until now, has not been clearly stated.
Drawing on interviews with young men about their experience and
interpretation of pornographic material, the book shows that they
have, paradoxically, a keen awareness of the pleasures which
censorship would curtail, but also a strong sense of danger
attending the use of pornography. Whilst this male perspective
perhaps only restates the dilemmas of heterosexuality which have
troubled feminists for so long, the lack of male input on this
topic in the past has encouraged a situation in which the
harmfulness of pornography, is either arbitrarily assumed or
dismissed, as if the outcome of consuming such material were not
contested and determined in the minds of men. Cassell, 1998
ISBN 0304-33642-4 Buy
this book!
Juffer, Jane, At Home with
Pornography: Women, Sex & Everyday Life.
Twenty-five years after the start of the feminist sex wars,
pornography remains a flash point issue, with feminists locked in
the familiar argument: Are women victims or
agents? This book exposes the fruitlessness of this
debate and argues that we need to stop emphasizing pornography's
transgressive aspects and start focusing on the place of porn and
erotica in women's everyday lives. The author asks where do women
routinely find pornography, for how much, and how is it circulated
and consumed within the home? How is this circulation
and consumption shaped by marketing categories that try to
distinguish erotica, such as sexual self-help videos for couples,
from porn? The author demonstrates how women's
consumption of erotica and porn for their own pleasure can be
empowering while simultaneously reinforcing conservative ideals.
She shows, for instance, how the Victoria's Secret catalog
functions as a kind of pornography whose popularity is enhanced by
both its reliance on Victorian themes of secrecy and privacy and
by its appeals to the pleasures of modern career women. In her
pursuit to understand what women like and how they get it, the
author delves into adult cable channels, erotic literary
anthologies, sex therapy guides, cyberporn, masturbation, and sex
toys, showing the degrees to which these materials have been
domesticated for home consumption. Representing the next
generation of scholarship on pornography, this book will transform
our understanding of women's everyday sexuality. New York
University Press www.nyupress.nyu.edu
1998
Kimmel, Michael, Men Confront Pornography. Virtually all
American men have at least a passing familiarity with pornography.
And although most pornography is produced by men for other men to
consume, men have never before explored their relationship to
pornography. Now, in this collection of thirty-five essays, men
candidly examine the role of pornography in their own lives. In
the explosive controversy over the impact of pornography versus
the constraints of censorship that has bitterly divided the
feminist movement, here voices of men - particularly those who
genuinely care about women's issues - have seldom been heard. The
men writing here - including cartoonist Jules Feiffer,
psychoanalytic critic Jefffrey Masson, novelist and essayist
Phillip Lopate, social scientist Edward Donnerstein, media critic
Todd Gitlin, and psychotherapist Bernie Zilbergeld - look at how
pornography affect the lives, sexuality, and politics, as well as
their relationships with and views of women. Through their
expressions of fascination, confusion, repulsion, guilt, insight
and concern, pornography's impact on its intended audience comes
into focus for the first time. Exploring both the political and
personal, the topics covered here - including the relationship
between pornography and violence against women, fantasy and male
sexuality, the Meese Commission and the question of censorship, as
well as the politics of feminism and pornography - indicate the
wide range of voices with which men speak to this issue.
Provocative, disturbing and enlightening, this book is a revealing
portrait of the male psyche. Crown, 1990 ISBN 0-517-56931-0
Buy
This Book!
Nagle, Jill, Whores & Other
Feminists, Jill Nagle. This is the first volume to examine sex
work and the sex industry through the eyes of self-identified
feminist sex workers - strippers, prostitutes, porn writers,
producers and performers, dominatrices - and their allies.
Comprising a range of voices from both within and outside the
academy, this collection draws from traditional feminism,
postmodern feminism, queer theory, libertarianism and sex
radicalism. Through essay and personal narrative, the contributors
liberate the exchange of sex for money from its arranged
ideological marriage with sexist oppression, highlighting instead
more local questions about particular sex work practices and their
interface with feminist thought. This is a who's who of
contemporary progressive thought on the sex industry. This
sparkling collection brings together some of the most passionate
and articulate feminist activists on the planet: feminist sex
workers. These eloquent partisans provide a badly needed
immunization against moralistic versions of feminism. It asks that
other feminists accept their challenge by joining their efforts to
decriminalize all voluntary sex work. This indispensable anthology
will help feminism renew its historic commitment to a vision and a
political agenda for true sexual justice. Routledge, 1997
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This Book!
Segal, Lynne, Sex Exposed: Sexuality & the pornography
debate. Over the past twenty years debates about pornography
have raged within feminism and beyond. Throughout the 1970s
feminists increasingly addressed the problem of men's sexual
violence against women, and many women reduced the politics of
men's power over women to questions about sexuality. By the 1980s
these questions had become more and more focused on pornography -
now a metaphor for the menace of male power. Collapsing feminist
politics into sexuality and sexuality into pornography has not
only caused some of the deepest splits between feminists, but made
it harder to think clearly about either sexuality or pornography -
indeed, about feminist politics more generally. This provocative
collection, by well-known feminists, surveys these arguments, and
in particular asks why recent feminist debates about sexuality
keep reducing to question of pornography. Rutgers Univ, 1993
ISBN 0-8135-1938-1 Buy
this book!
Stoltenberg, John, What Makes Pornography Sexy? What makes
pornography "Sexy" to men? To help men answer that question
for themselves, the author devised a unique workshop in which
several men are selected at random and told to "do the pose" in a
designated photograph from a magazine such as Penthouse.
Other workshop participants are invited to compare the poses to
the photographs. With eye-opening results, participants then talk
about how it felt to pose and how it felt to watch. Drawing on his
decade-long experience conducting this "pose workshop" on
campuses, in classrooms, at conferences, and on such TV talk shows
as Sally Jessy Raphael, the author delivers a vivid activist
memoir, filled with original and provocative insights into men's
perceptual relationship to pornography. Milk Weed, 1994
ISBN 1-57131-201-3 Buy
this book!
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