Let's Discuss Feminism - Page 3

I would have a hard time lumping something as commercially motivated as porn into the "free speech" catch-all.

God, this Dworkin Library thing is really coming in handy tonight -

STATEMENT BY CATHARINE A. MACKINNON AND ANDREA DWORKIN REGARDING CANADIAN CUSTOMS AND LEGAL APPROACHES TO PORNOGRAPHY

Forgive the caps. I am lazily copying and pasting. As fun as this has been, Mad Men is on in seven minutes.

You shouldn't watch Community, Thursday nights on NBC. Not good.

Eh, it belongs there. It becomes a slippery slope otherwise.

edit - Dave's right, even though he's very obviously an enemy of freedom.

Miss Zooey - a slave to the cathode ray. Who'd'a thunk it?

After much consideration, I think the "slippery slope" applies essentially to Nazi Germany and not much of anywhere else. It's an overblown fear.

My world stops for two programs and two programs only - Mad Men and The Office. Peggy Olson and Pam Beesly (Halpert) are right-on women.

And maybe "slippery slope" was the wrong phrase. Basically, I don't trust someone else to tell me what is and isn't acceptable for me to read or watch, a point on which Cuchulain and I agree.

I'm not necessarily denying porn's right to exist (let he who has a free palm...), I just don't know that it really falls under "free speech."

"Commercial speech" (if that exists), yeah, sure.

I think the reason Miss Zooey is going for the "slippery slope" is once you outlaw one kind of expression, you lower the bar to other kinds of expression. For example, is any tangible form of art that enters the realm of commerce "commercial"? If so, that opens the door to going after paintings in galleries, which Giuliani and others have tried in the past. You see how it unravels from there. When it comes to our basic rights, I think it is best to heed the founders: "These rights are absolute or they do not exist."

By the standard I view porn, cigarette and liquor advertising are a similar form of "expression" yet they are HIGHLY regulated, if not outright banned.

No, art is art. Porn IMO is strictly a commercial entity - it exists solely to move units and make money, not to endure. Like Thomas Kincade paintings.

I will certainly grant that at times the line between "art" and "porn" can be EXTREMELY blurry.


I agree with this for the most part. However, I think that as wonderfully constructed and flexible the Constitution is, that the men who wrote it had little to no conception of some of the consequences an absolutist interpretation of the Bill of Rights may entail.

Your take on art is problematic. The definition that art is something that is meant to endure would seem to condemn the "Piss Christ" and the paintings that Mr. Noun-Verb-911 went after, for example. Most art after the modern period seeks to blur the lines of what is and isn't art to get us to engage with our conception of aesthetics. This kind of exploration isn't possible with a conservative view of free expression.

Also, yes, taking all the rights in the bill of rights absolutely can lead to conflicts between rights and the interests of persons and other entities. Sorting those things out is the responsibility of the authorities who govern by our consent. One should never help them curtail rights in those instances or advocate that. Authorities are all too happy--especially in a country that has a judiciary as packed with rabid right-wingers as we do--to take out rights away. Our job is to check the power of the state as far as possible to counterbalance that tendency. When you sit back and let the authorities do what they will, you get this decade and its events.

Hm.

Perhaps "endure" was the wrong word....I understand that some art is transitive in nature. Let's rephrase that as:
Porn is still similar to Thomas Kincade paintings, however.

I'd love to see a Thomas Kinkade painting that examined the "poetry of light" as reflected through a voluminous load.

"The poetry of light" IS a voluminous load. Close enough?

Slippery slope be damned, the freedom of Poland and France to be rid of Kincade seems like a fair trade.

I knew a guy growing up who LOVED Kinkade. Adored the guy's work. I still don't understand how or why.

I mean, come the FUCK on.

lol

I take it back, comparing porn to something as soulless and calculated as Kincade insults all the dirtbags working in porn.

The only thing missing from that painting is fucking Jesus. I failed to scan the crowd with the zoom feature, though. He could be a "hidden secret".

I know, I know. Not only are their brains all fabulous and such, but please - people trying to go up against Miss Zooey in a feminism discussion? It's magically delicious. I want to watch.

Wait a minute, I always interpreted his works as iconographically ironic. He was earnest? Fuck me...

Feminism dose not necessarily derive from Capitalism, but historically it did, and here's why:

money.

What simpler way to double the productivity, by increasing the number of workers by 100%, of each Western household?

:: facepalm. the one with the wedding ring. ::

What the hell...did I fall asleep and wake up in 1952?

Did you know that feminists also breath oxygen? Wow. The things you. Learn. Every. Day.

Looks like conservatives are starting to take bigger steps toward claiming feminism when it comes to their politics.

Thoughts? This one kinda seems like a no-brainer to me (I agree with the author), but I'm sure the point can be argued to some extent.

Oh, no - no argument here. The author is as right as rain. One of the things that continually stuns me to no end about Sarah Palin - y'know, besides the stupidity - was that she's a female politician, claiming to be feminist, and totally against everything that is important to women's rights.

Hasn't feminism already gone through its post-modern phase, where neo-feminists already questioned many of the assumptions of the first wave of feminism? And haven't both of those sides already rejected this silly co-opting of feminism by conservative non-feminists?

I mean, if you want to critique feminism from a conservative perspective, Sarah Palin is SO not the way to do it. I know it's controversial, but I think an argument that has some merit would be to tie traditional feminism to the rise in divorce. I know conservatives only trot out the sanctity of marriage issue when it suits their narrow whim, but at least there is some circumstantial evidence to debate.

There is no one way to be a feminist (as we demonstrated with our discussion of Dworkin above), which is why many feminist writers often refer to "feminisims" or, in the case of bell hooks, use the phrase "feminist movement" in a way that connotes activities and efforts on the part of small groups or individuals. As such, it's difficult to say definitively when the label is being misapplied, but here? This? The quote you posted above says it all. A belief system that does not support women, one that blames rape victims and limits their abilities to make intelligent decisions, is not feminist. Period.

My problem with the right appropriating the term is that they haven't done either the legwork or the reading - calling Palin and her ilk "feminists" seems to be enough to make it true for them, just as calling Obama a "socialist" automatically makes him a pinko. You can't even argue against it, because persons who espouse such viewpoints don't know enough to engage in an intelligent discussion. There is no serious consideration, no understanding of what these words actually mean. It's ignorance of the highest order and very nearly Dadaist in its absurdity. Duchamp would be proud.