Our Crumbling Civilization: FemPorn Edition

Feminism and porn? How do those two go together? (And whether they do or not, how in the heck will I illustrate this post?)

Porn makes billions because it makes men shop. Women shop enough already; just stop by the directory the next time you're at the mall and compare the number of women's clothing stores to men's clothing stores. But men ... men just couldn't be bothered.

The seedy porn industry has succeeded because it discovered how to unleash the man-bucks. In 2006, sales, rentals and downloads of porn videos, plus "exotic" club revenues, porn magazines and porn gizmos (I don't want to know!) totaled $13.3 billion in the US, up about half a billion from the previous year. (source)

That didn't happen because porn films treat women and women's issues sensitively; guys just won't pay for Steel Magnolias Naked or Thelma & Louise & Bubba. Guy's fantasies aren't generally tender and soft, and the porn industry has made itself rich via compliant women who exist not for themselves, but to satisfy men, no matter what.

So if women want to get in on the fantasy action, with sensitive porn films (possibly with more talk than action, I don't' know ...), I can't really say great, but it's certainly no worse and possibly quite a bit more noble than the traditional porn biz. Or so I thought until I took a look at the Feminist Porn Awards, and discovered that the philosophy behind these awards is that "the answer to bad porn isn't no porn, it's more porn."

And, as expected, feminism turns out not to mean "celebrating the feminine mystique" so much as it means "getting really sick in a woman's [?] body." For example, one of the nominee directors is described as "a queer femmegimp who is a PhD student at York University in Toronto, ON. Her work tends to focus on the intersections of radical queer, disability and sex/uality."

Another is "a transgender performance artist, filmmaker [whose] work [covers] deconstruction of gender, power dynamics, erotic methodology and public personas."

A third is a former female firefighter who runs a little outfit called "GoodDykePorn."

I can't imagine that these feminists are producing work that appeals to the feminine. And sure enough, while the festival's Web site isn't updated with the winners yet, Salon tells us it was a tender little movie that appeals to womankind's deep yearning for understanding and sensuality called "Bondage Boob Tube."

Women are half of our civilization, and we're crumbling if this is how those who supposedly care about them treat them.

Corrupters Of The World, Beware!

Note to the San Fernando Valley: Do not outsource your porn industry to Iran.

All that's needed is Iran's Guardian Council's stamp of approval and a new law subjecting key porn industry players to death will become the law of Iran. The law apparently was spurred by a fuzzy film (shown here) purportedly showing a popular Iranian film starlet in the act.

Uncovering the story:

Iran's parliament on Wednesday voted in favor of a bill that could lead to the death penalty for persons convicted of working in the production of pornographic movies.

With a 148-5 vote in favor and four abstentions, lawmakers present at the Wednesday session of the 290-seat parliament approved that "producers of pornographic works and main elements in their production are considered corrupter of the world and could be sentenced to punishment as corrupter of the world."

The term, "corrupter of the world" is taken from the Quran, the Muslims' holy book, and ranks among the highest on the scale of an individual's criminal offenses. Under Iran's Islamic Penal Code, it carries a death penalty.

The "main elements" referred to in the draft include producers, directors, cameramen and actors involved in making a pornographic video.

The bill also envisages convictions ranging from one year imprisonment to a death sentence for the main distributors of the movies and also producers of Web sites in which the pornographic works appear. (source)

Islam, the religion of cowards.

Islam and Christianity share a similar repulsion to gratuitous sex, debauchery, immodesty and indecency, but Christianity doesn't call for death penalties to shore up its faith against those outside the faith who corrupt our world. We pray for them (as I do routinely for the people caught up in the porn industry), we support reasonable laws against it (bans and restrictions, but hardly death penalties) and we have faith that our religion will survive no matter how corrupting the pornographers become.

Islam, on the other hand, favors extreme penalties in order to protect the faith from challenges. Adultry? Stone the woman, whip the man. Heresy? Issue a fatwah approving the killing of the heretic. Converting from Islam? Simple. Death.

Islam is a religion that can't afford to rely on the abiding faith of its practitioners. When we say "fear God" in Christianity, it means respect his awesome power. When they say "fear god" in Islam, it means duck and cover.

Note: About that starlet, Zahra Amir Ebrahimi:

The videotape was leaked to the Internet and released on a black market DVD, becoming a full-blown Iranian sex tape scandal. Ebrahimi later came under an official investigation, which is still ongoing. She faces fines, whip lashing or worse for her violation of Iran's morality laws.

The unnamed man on the tape, who is suspected of releasing it, reportedly fled to Armenia but was subsequently returned to Iran and charged with breach of public morality laws. He remains in jail.

In an exclusive interview with the British newspaper The Guardian early this year, Ebrahimi denied she was the woman in the film and dismissed it as a fake, made by a vengeful former fiance bent on destroying her career.

I'd say he's done a pretty good job, eh?

Porn And Pity, Or Porn And Responsibility?

James Pacenza just might shake up the American workplace ... in a very weird way.

Pacenza is suing IBM, his employer, for firing him just because he was logged onto an adult chat site while working.

They should have helped me not fired me, say Pacenza, because he's just self-medicating, not getting into pornography at work.

Well, he could be right, of course. A lot of sexual addition is just an owie-cover, just as lots of alcoholics and drug addicts use their habits to cover the deep psychological ailings within. In Pacenza's case, he says its to cover post-traumatic stress disorder from his time in Vietnam.

Sorry, Jimmy, you ol' lech. You've had 40 years to get over that stuff, so I don't think it's really that great an excuse for chompin' in the pornocopia.

Besides, it would be a real shame if Pacenza prevailed because it won't end when he pockets the $5 million he hopes to strip from Big Blue's pockets. If companies are forced to keep se addicts who are acting out at work on the payroll, it's a bit different from having to keep the druggie or boozer on the payroll.

For starters, they look at porn on their computers. For the person at the next work station, that's not exactly like their co-worker having the munchies or beer-breath.

And you can't type your credit card number into your computer and get a drink or a joint, but you can get everything from horny nuns to gay pipefitters -- and once that happens, it's as likely that the addict will get back to work that it is to get a drunk out of the bar before Happy Hour is over.

Pacenza is pathetic. Either he's hiding behind his addiction instead of dealing with the problems in his head, or he's fabricating the problems in his head to justify his addiction -- and he thinks IBM has an obligation to deal with this mess.

I just hope the judge isn't a guy who logs onto porn sites when the doors close to his chambers.

Falwell And The Pornographer

"We became friends."

Thus concludes a fascinating op/ed in today's LATimes by one of my least favorite people, Larry Flint, about his friend ... Jerry Falwell.

Their relationship went back to the 1970s, with Flint, as he puts it, "pushing the envelope of taste," and Falwell using Flint and Hustler as examples of all that is morally wrong, deeply morally wrong, with society. Falwell's attacks got under Flint's skin, and ...

I decided it was time to start poking some fun at him. So we ran a parody ad in Hustler — a takeoff on the then-current Campari ads in which people were interviewed describing "their first time." In the ads, it ultimately became clear that the interviewees were describing their first time sipping Campari. But not in our parody. We had Falwell describing his "first time" as having been with his mother, "drunk off our God-fearing asses," in an outhouse. (Here's the ad; be forewarned.)

Typical Flint. A normal pornographer might have done something similar, but it would have ended with Falwell and a cousin, or even a sister, but his mother? Flint had left the "envelope" of taste far behind; he was pushing the upper stratosphere of bad taste.

In 1983, Falwell sued Flint for $50 million over the ad and Flint lost every round until the Supreme Court, very rightly, found for Flint. A Falwell victory would have stifled political free speech and swamped the courts in lawsuits filed whenever someone's feelings were hurt.

In most cases, the story would have ended there, but Falwell was a remarkable man with a deep conviction that forgiveness is asked of us by God, that efforts should be made to save even the most lost of all ... and that a Falwell and Flint show would be good for the soul-saving business. Flint tells the story, picking up just after Falwell surprised him with a hug on the Larry King show:

Soon after that episode, I was in my office in Beverly Hills, and out of nowhere my secretary buzzes me, saying, "Jerry Falwell is here to see you." I was shocked, but I said, "Send him in." We talked for two hours, with the latest issues of Hustler neatly stacked on my desk in front of him. He suggested that we go around the country debating, and I agreed. We went to colleges, debating moral issues and 1st Amendment issues — what's "proper," what's not and why.

In the years that followed and up until his death, he'd come to see me every time he was in California. We'd have interesting philosophical conversations. We'd exchange personal Christmas cards. He'd show me pictures of his grandchildren. I was with him in Florida once when he complained about his health and his weight, so I suggested that he go on a diet that had worked for me. I faxed a copy to his wife when I got back home. ..

We steered our conversations away from politics, but religion was within bounds. He wanted to save me and was determined to get me out of "the business."

My mother always told me that no matter how repugnant you find a person, when you meet them face to face you will always find something about them to like. The more I got to know Falwell, the more I began to see that his public portrayals were caricatures of himself. There was a dichotomy between the real Falwell and the one he showed the public.

He was definitely selling brimstone religion and would do anything to add another member to his mailing list. But in the end, I knew what he was selling, and he knew what I was selling, and we found a way to communicate.

The self-righteous Left behaved far worse than the pornographer in responding to Falwell's death. Their minds and hearts were closed; they wouldn't have let Falwell in had he come buzzing at their office door. They couldn't risk the face-to-face and the dogma-wrestling that might follow.

Flint's story portrays the Falwell I've come to know since his death, thanks to the lengthy interviews Hugh aired with the man's close friends. He couldn't let Flint go to hell without a fight for his soul, so he -- not the pornographer -- humbled himself and made the first contact.

Had Falwell opened one of the magazines stacked on Flint's desk, Flint would have told us. But it appears Falwell was not interested in Flint's porn; apparently all that interested him was Flint's soul, and his mind.

Lt. Col. Steele's Tragedy

Here's a tragic story, worthy of the attention of a new Shakespeare:

BAGHDAD (AP) - A senior U.S. officer has been charged with nine offenses, including aiding the enemy and fraternizing with the daughter of a detainee while he commanded a military police detachment at an American detention facility near Baghdad, the military said Thursday.

Army Lt. Col. William H. Steele was accused of giving "aid to the enemy" by providing an unmonitored cell phone to detainees.

Steele was the commander of the 451st Military Police Detachment at Camp Cropper, a U.S. detention center on the western outskirts of Baghdad, when the offenses allegedly occurred between October 2005 and February, military spokesman Lt. Col. James Hutton said. ...

The other charges included unauthorized possession of classified information, fraternizing with the daughter of a detainee, maintaining an inappropriate relationship with an interpreter, storing classified information in his quarters and possessing pornographic videos, the military said.

Steele also was charged with improperly marking classified information, failing to obey an order and failing to fulfill his obligations in the expenditure of funds, the military said.

What a complete fall from grace! One can assume that Steele, having attained the rank of Lt. Col., was passionate about his military career and his country, and spent years in dedicated service. He was willing to put his life at risk for his country and obviously had made sacrifices to be where he was.

No comfy life in the suburbs, no going to the game with buddies on Saturday, no easy job in the corner office; instead, Steele opted to serve. Close the curtains on Act One.

In Act Two, we begin to see Steele's fatal weakness manifest itself, as he begins to make a bad decision here, is forced to cover up a small error there. A cycle of lies, secrets and self-recrimination follows.

As Act Three opens, Steele has sworn to himself that he can change his ways and he does; he's strong and focused and worthy again. But then the detainee's daughter enters the scene.

Alluring, shapely and possibly available, his focus tragically shifts from his desire to change to his desire to see her change into something more comfortable. She keeps him awake at night; she poisons his thoughts.

As the act unfolds, he makes his fatal mistake, providing the phone. He gets sloppy because his mind is lustily involved elsewhere, and forgets to return files. Then he tries to cover it all up by not following a direct order from his superior officer. And everything crashes.

Steele falls far, from warrior to traitor, and we leave him at the final curtain alone in his cell in Kuwait, torn between feelings of guilt and failure ... and thoughts of her.

What was Steele's fatal weakness? It lies in one of the minor charges against him, "possessing pornographic videos."

Steele didn't fall for money or false allegiances. He fell to lust, a sex addict whose addiction caused him to make a series of bad choices and live a life of secrets and lies.

Lust fueled by pornography destroyed Lt. Col. William Steele as it does millions of greater and lesser men every year. What he didn't know is that there is a life free of this addiction.

For Christian men, visit Celebrate Recovery. There should be a Celebrate Recovery group at a church near you. Here are the program's workbooks. And here's a message from Pastor Rick Warren on addiction and recovery.

Any concerned man or concerned wife should also read Out of the Shadows by Dr. Patrick Carnes, the premier secular work on the subject.

For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good purpose. (Phil. 2:13 NIV)

Update: True to form, a porno spam-bot latched onto this post and posted a comment with links to porn sites. I've deleted it, of course, but it shows the lengths the porn industry goes to suck in new addicts and to get more money out of those it's already ensnared.

Judge: Porn Not That Bad For Kids

Old fart Senior U.S. District Judge Lowell Reed Jr., threw out the 1998 Child Online Protection Act yesterday that makes it a crime for commercial Web site operators to let children access porn, saying:

"Perhaps we do the minors of this country harm if First Amendment protections, which they will with age inherit fully, are chipped away in the name of their protection."

Perhaps not. Perhaps it's not too much to ask scumbags who are profiting off porn's chipping away at American decency to at least try to protect the next generation from their filth ... at least for a few years. Heck, even tobacco companies do that.

But Reed, a Regan appointee who graduated from law school waaaaay back in '52 and has therefore won himself an official "dirty old man" designation, thought it too chilling to ask smut peddlers to require a credit card number or other proof of age. Again, you need proof of age to buy a pack of cigarettes -- why not for porn?

Reed may have been duped by the porn industry, that loves playing in the grey area. Maybe kids couldn't access health sites ... who's to say what's porn or not ... but here's a hint: If naked people are doing it in graphic detail, it's porn, and it's better for kids not to see it.

The judge should know that access to porn at an early age is not without its risks, so on his scale of kids accessing porn on one side and First Amendment freedoms being micro-chipped away on the other by limiting access to graphic sex sites by 12 year-olds, it's an easy call. Protect kids from too much early focus on sex, which can lead to early sexual activity, STDs, adults who would exploit them, and all the other ills porn brings with it.

Satellite Porn Debate Rages

The Senate hearings into the proposed merger of Sirius (my carrier) and XM has spawned an interesting side debate on satellite porn, and an equally curious proposal from Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin.

Sens. Orrin Hatch and Sam Brownback have used the merger hearings to grill Karmazin about the adult content on his network and XM, according to coverage in a trade magazine.

Hatch said he was concerned about protecting children from some of the "aberrant" content on satellite radio. ...

Senator Sam Brownback, who helped boost indecency fines, said he was also concerned about adult content on radio. Brownback cited Playboy Radio and its Sexy Stories and Night Calls programs, among others, as satellite radio content he had concerns about.

Karmazin said he believed that not all content that is available on satellite radio had to be acceptable to children.

Karmazin said he would not agree to adopt broadcast-style indecency regulations or harbors, though he said he might if there were ever a clear definition of what the government did or didn't want. Give me a speed limit, he said, and I'll follow it. Hatch appeared to agree that it was tough to hold any media to a vague standard.

Brownback asked whether Karmazin would agree not to carry "pornographic" material on the merged service. Karmazin said no. He added that he was not interested in airing obscenities but he did not know what Brownback would define as pornography, and that he remained a strong defender of the First Amendment.

Brownback said that a monopoly not willing to limit that content was a "problem."

I still don't think the Founding Fathers thought the First Amendment was designed to protect women who want to exercise their "free speech" by taking off their clothes on the stage at the Kit Kat Club in front of drooling men, and I don't think they'd be too keen on whatever it is they air on Sexy Stories. Well, maybe that old bon vivant Ben Franklin would ...

Sexy Stories
Daily 5 pm ET
The finest providers of sensual audio in the entire world present 60 sizzling minutes of fantasies. Sexy Stories embarks on its fourth successful season of taking you behind the closed doors, under the covers and into the fantasies of your friends and neighbors. It's only on to get you off.

"It's only on to get you off?!" Sounds like pornographic intent to me.

But in the world we live in, you accept even marginally good ideas as improvements over the rash of rash-inducing concepts, so a muted kudo to Mr. maybe I'm a pornographer, maybe I'm not:

Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin told legislators on Tuesday that his company has proposed giving customers a price break if they choose to block channels with adult content. He did not say how much or what would qualify as adult content, calling it a more "à la carte" model of service.

How about that? If the trend grows, maybe we'll see lower ticket prices for G and PG movies, discounts on clean-cut video games ... maybe even lower prices for skirts with lower hemlines and blouses with higher necklines.