Charming article this weekend in the Seattle Times by the Associated Press’s Kathy Ritchie called The Catty Syndrome.

...As I got off the train, I remember thinking, “Yeah, she has fabulous hair. But she doesn’t have it all. Her butt and her thighs are way bigger than mine.”

When I first started pondering the meaning of “chick-hater,” it occurred to me that while most women may not fit the textbook definition — feeling threatened or simply flat-out hating another woman based on her beauty, career or relationships — we may be engaging in something that is just as insidious: chick-hating-lite.

“I don’t think there’s anyone out there who hasn’t had a negative feeling about another woman,” says Elizabeth McDaniel, a therapist in New York. “You’d be lying to yourself if you didn’t acknowledge that.”

When I ask McDaniel about my chick-hating episodes (yes, there have been several), she tells me that, for some women, self-doubt can translate to self-hate — that women manifest their insecurities into anger toward other females. When I prod her further, she suspects that, despite my insecurities, the fact that I know who I am and who my friends are may make me a chick-hater with half the calories than a regular one.

As I would soon discover, this is all only part of a larger problem among us sisters.

Read the whole thing here.

Ritchie places herself squarely in the Patriarch’s Lady’s Auxiliary by attempting to place the blame for “cattiness” squarely outside women’s control: on men.

“Women don’t have real authority to direct their anger against men,” McDaniel tells me. “Directing our anger against other women undercuts our power — we aren’t cohesive.”

...

So what gives? Why are so many women essentially anti-woman?

As I thought about it more, I began to think about women who have clashed with other women over what essentially boils down to power — who is in control of the situation.

Think Elizabeth Taylor and Debbie Reynolds. Princess Diana and Camilla Parker Bowles. Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston. And my personal favorite, Cinderella and her wicked stepmother?

“Psychically, it’s clearly insecurity,” McDaniel says. “This culture doesn’t want women to be empowered. ... By creating conflict between women, you certainly keep them in their place. If you fight amongst yourselves, if you are so broken up and can’t unite, you’re certainly not going to be able to pose any threat to the majority.”

Translation: We live in a world still very much dominated by men, and society praises women who can’t sustain relationships with other women…

Note: Even if both clauses of the last sentence were true it would still be a non sequitur. (And speaking of clauses, we could reverse the two and see what kind of unrelated-but-implied causality emerged: “Society praises women who can’t sustain relationships with other women, and we live in a world still very much dominated by men!”)

I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe that society praises women who cat out. Or if it does it’s not orchestrated by men and I wish people like Ritchie would leave men out of it not because men aren’t responsible for all sorts of inequities. Goodness knows we are, whether intentionally or unintentionally! Instead it’s because men aren’t responsible for people like Ritchie’s and McDaniel’s choices to construct themselves as helplessly competitive, and men sure as hell aren’t responsible for Ritchie and McDaniel’s decision to try and persuade other women that cattiness is, in fact, out of their control.

...And one needs only to walk past a newsstand to see exactly what McDaniel means.

Everywhere we look, there are the big, bold cover lines on celebrity magazines: “Angelina vs. Jen.” “Paris vs. Nicole.” Rarely do we hear about the men fighting it out — I certainly don’t recall seeing Brad Pitt and Vince Vaughn grace the cover of a weekly with a headline that read, “Brad vs. Vince: it’s on!” Apparently, two dudes fighting it out simply isn’t as hot as A-list chick-haters.

Of course, it’s easy to point the finger at the men. But women participate, too: They buy the magazines, dish about the stories, participate in the scurrilousness.

But Ritchie isn’t pointing “the finger at the men.” She’s waving a big red cape and shouting “Toro, Toro! ol&eacu;!” The wise bull ignores the cape and goes for the matador.

But I digress…

This is all actually about a post by O of Eros, Logos about why women (and, I’d argue many men) blog about sex.

Those are some personal reasons for me to blog anonymously. Here are the political, that apply to us all:

My anonymity means that I am like that girl you fuck from behind, the girl whose face you never see.
Who am I? I’m one of many, many women.

I could be the girl next door.
I could be your ex-girlfriend; I could be your best friend.
I could be your doctor.
I could be your librarian.
Maybe I’m your sister; maybe I’m your co-worker.

Or maybe I’m your wife.

I could be any woman; and this forces the reader to realise that I could be speaking for every woman. Maybe you read us and think we’re an aberration; maybe it makes some (men, especially) more comfortable to think that. That way the spectacle of female desire can be ignored or dismissed.

See O’s whole excellent post here.

Wow that just totally resonates for me — I think it’s one of the best reasons to blog anonymously.

But then in response an anonymous commenter says

I won’t presume to speak for your female fans, who are obviously legion, based on other posts. Clearly you are appreciated by boys and girls, men and women, and probably many in between. But I’ll try to speak about the women who might read you but who might not feel that you speak for them.

(I think there are probably many women who do read you and think, “Ah, this is me, these are the thoughts that I would speak if I had the courage to speak them.”) And then there are some women who read you and think, “Oh please. Who the hell does she think she is?” There are probably lots of women who flip back and forth between these two positions.

One might say of the women who take the latter position, “Oh, how sad. Insecure women who can’t handle the spectacle of O’s intense and beautiful sexuality.” There’d be more than a grain of the proverbial truth in such saying. Yet I can’t help but wonder if it doesn’t go beyond the simple jealousy of the plain girl that the boys never look at for the girl who is visible, and thus alive. It might make you feel good to write it off that way (and I realize that I’m being presumptuous in using that “you”) as indeed it makes me feel good to say, “Who the hell does she think she is?” But beyond these reflexes, perhaps inscribed in us by a (dare I say it?) patriarchy that makes male attention the coin in which female power must circulate, I wonder if there isn’t some sort of utopian space in which plain girls and pretty girls could get together and talk without it being about who’s more luscious to the boys.

At least, I’d like to think so. But in order for that to happen, we’d all have to stop being threatened by me. I’d have to stop being threatened by your sexuality, and you’d have to stop…wait, you’re not threatened by the women who don’t want to be your friend, are you? Does it matter to you one way or the other?

And there I think we have it?

A.a.a.a.n.n.n.d while both Ritchie’s reaction to the fair-haired stranger, or O’s anonymous commenter’s remarks are sort of outside my preview (in the sense that I dispute that only — or even especially — women feel that way) I do feel comfortable talking about self-esteem in general and to that…

Boy oh boy do we set ourselves up for failure! And here’s now we usually do it:

We cast our gaze upon someone else (or someone else’s text or other artifacts) and see that they are taller or more athletic or wittier or wealthier or healthier or wiser or more fashionable or a “better” age than we. And in order to measure up we must be taller and more athletic and wittier and wealthier and healthier and wiser and more fashionable and a better age. And if we’re not, we tell ourselves we’re just complete losers.

And no, Ritchie and Anonymous’s protestations to the contrary, this trait is linked to humanity, not gender.

At school the under-20 set seems way more comfortable with — almost unconsciously unconcerned about — casual sex. Yet they still fall in love, have amazing crushes, tragic heartbreaks, and generally care for each other quite a bit.

This totally contradicts the “buy a cow” model of relationships. They have all the sex they want… without it affecting their romance.

This makes sense in a big way because conservative “values” refer primarily to marginal values.

For instance only a small handful of U.S. Protestants believe men and women dancing together are immoral, and to the extent those societies are closed it’s probably accurate to say that those who dance probably are inclined to immorality. And within that society there’s a chance that relationships involving dancing have a lower probability of leading to a deep partnership.

In slightly larger circles kissing before the third date is a sign of weak character and, to the extent those societies are closed it’s probably accurate to say that those who kiss before the third date probably are inclined to immorality. And within that society there’s a chance that relationships involving dancing have a lower probability of leading to a deep partnership… while those who merely dance together go completely unremarked.

And in an even larger set of circles having sex before marriage is a sign of loose morals and, to the extent those societies are closed you could probably say that those who do have sex before marriage are loose men or women. And within that society there’s a chance that relationships involving have a lower probability of leading to a deep partnership… while those who merely dance or kiss before the third date go completely unremarked.

In other words very few conservatives argue that we should go back to completely sequestering men and women who aren’t related (as Osama bin Laden evidently believes is proper moral behavior.) And while 100 years ago quite a few conservatives decried dancing as undermining morals, common decency, and the underpinnings of meaningful relationships, today’s conservatives don’t give it a second thought because dancing, in fact, isn’t an issue at all. And while 50 years ago quite a few conservatives decried kissing as undermining morals, common decency and the underpinnings of meaningful relationships, modern conservatives don’t give it a second thought because kissing, in fact, isn’t an issue at all.

I expect that some of the under-20s who are cheerfully bopping away today are just as conservative as their elders, and I’m sure that in their middle age they’ll find something to fulminate about as undermining morals, common decency, and the underpinnings of meaningful relationships. But I’m betting they won’t give casual sex a second thought because for them it won’t be an issue at all.

And in a sense this makes perfect sense. By definition conservatives cast a gimlet eye on new developments in relationships. And by definition conservatives are going to worry about how relationships will be affected by those changes. But also by definition conservatives are absolutely, perfectly, comfortably at home with whatever was the norm in their formative years.

The prudish libertine in me celebrates the fact that “today’s youth” suffers no less romantic anguish or elation than their antecedents, despite taking sex far less seriously The libertine prude in me is happy as well since I believe that past failures to distinguish between love and lust has brought more grief who have mistaken the two than 10,000 blog posts could possibly fill.

Update: I want to make it very clear that I’m neither idealizing nor necessarily advocating casual sex (any more than, by extension, I’m calling for casual kissing or casual dancing.) I’m just saying that romance, love, and partnership don’t seem to depend on a “mystery” of sex, kissing, or dancing to endure. Or thrive.

Some years ago I was looking into the mechanics of the pornography industry. Part of the process involved looking at the ads people were using to recruit models. In almost all of them, early on in the sometimes endless paragraphs outlining possible pay, expectations, caveats about age, you’d see these disclaimers saying, basically, that proportionality and weight weren’t impediments, that on the internet there were markets for “all interests,” and therefore even people who weren’t perfect “centerfold material” were very strongly encouraged to show up anyway.

Now even a cursory check showed that the sites and photographers in question displayed the same narrow range of models, generally slender, generally busty, and (of course) generally young.

It’s worth adding that since I was looking for porn sites that really were all-ages, all looks I was actually pretty motivated to find out who was buying images of all the “off-size” models the other sites were trying to recruit.

The answer? As you might expect, there were very, very few. (Yes, there are more such sites now but still not that many.)

So! If there was scarcely any market for “not so perfect” models after all, why do you think virtually every site out there was soliciting them?

I have a theory.

Wanna know what my theory is?

If you’re at all familiar with HNT, and the process nearly everyone goes through the first time they post, I bet you can guess.

In case you’re not familiar let’s do a quick review:

- You decide to post a photo – You get terribly anxious about it – You put it off, sometimes for months and maybe sometimes forever – If you finally do post you often add heavy disclaimers saying things like “I’m not in the best of shape” or “This is my first time, be gentle.” – You expect the worst – You rarely get it – Instead the people who see your photographs have surprisingly positive things to say about them…

So!

Why do you think all those pornographers, who almost to a man (which they were, almost to a man) wound up choosing only standard-skinny models, went out of their way to solicit “all sizes and shapes” models?

Well, because scarcely anybody thinks they’re good looking “enough.”

Even though…
We look just fine.

Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)

Last Saturday Madame X of The Madame X Files wrote about bloggers who suddenly disappear.

I like getting up every morning and reading my blogs.
I like that I can have my coffee with some guy from Guam, a chick in Kentucky and a Bon Vivant in England among others.
I know that blogs sometimes run their course and go black.
I respect when a blogger realizes that they have said all they can say in this forum and then packs up and moves off to another medium.
Having been a victim of blog harassment I understand the need to delete and disappear or reinvent one’s self.
What I don’t understand is how a person can spend great chunks of their lives with you, reading and commenting on everything from the weather to whether or not have ass sex,and suddenly just vanish with no looking back.
How do you just walk away?

Read her whole post here.

Speaking of which, I went out of town for a weekend and when I came back one of my frequent reads, Emma/ Everything Nice’s BubblegumMeltdown was almost shut down with only a single entry, an extended, vaguely “moving into the light” type of quote, posted by her colleague Shawn. A day or two later the blog went dark altogether. Last time I looked the URL had been adopted by a Japanese blogger so I won’t bother posting the link.

Emma was always waiting for a kidney transplant and grumbling about her deteriorating condition but I have no idea why she went dark. All in all I hope she just got pissed off about something or other, or outed to her grandma, or joined the Krishnas, or just got bored and quit because other explanations can get gloomy pretty quickly.

Update: According to Scumbag at The Wedding Party (and various commenters including Emma herself) Emma is just fine, which is a good thing because I would have so kicked her ass if she was dead. The point of this post stands, however. That’s one of the reasons I’ve given my real-life name and phone number to a handful of people so they can get and post the story in case this site ever went dark and my email went unanswered. I know the solution doesn’t work for every anonymous blogger but it’s something to think about if you have constant readers.

Following up on my follow-up to Amber Rhea’s comparison of music and porn.

As it happens, soon after my post I was yakking with neighbors in one of the local bookstores and spotted Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music by Blair Tindall.

The Publisher’s Weekly blurb captures the essence of my point (though I admit even I hadn’t considered the exploitation factor extended to classical music… until I started thinking about who did and who of my high-school and college-age friends did or didn’t seem to get “special mentoring” at summer institutes and the like.)

By age 16, the author of this alternately piquant and morose memoir was dealing marijuana, bedding her instructors at a performing arts high school and studying the oboe. Later, her blossoming career as a freelance musician in New York introduced her to a classical music demimonde of cocaine parties and group sex that had her wondering why she “got hired for so many of my gigs in bed.” But the vivace [sic] of the chapters on her bohemian salad days subsides to a largo as she heads toward 40 and the sex and drugs recede along with dreams of stardom; the reality of a future in Broadway orchestra pits (where she reads magazines as she plays to stave off boredom) sets in.

Snippet comes from the book’s Amazon.com page.

Again, the point isn’t to single out music per se (though it might have more in common with the porn industry than other hierarchical, over-supply-of-talent businesses like politics, television, and real-estate to name a few.) Instead it’s meant to place problems that occur in porn in a relative matrix. Continuing what Amber started, I think it’s important to stop looking at porn in isolated, absolute terms. And I think it’s important because, really and truly, I don’t think it matters to me whether, for instance, Patsy Cline was a grievously abused and exploited-by-her-husband country-western singer or a porn star. Nor does it matter to me whether, for instance, the actress known as Linda Lovelace was a grievously abused and exploited-by-her-husband porn star or a country-western singer. Both were grievously abused and exploited. And while it’s true that Lovelace was obliged to perform sex acts under bright lights, it’s also true that Cline was obliged to perform sex acts in darkened bedrooms, at the end of the day both were obliged to do so. Industry A meet Industry B.

Final note: If you wanted to go dig up a Marxist to talk about this they’d probably say something about how both music and porn have traditionally big a major “means of production” business where scarcity has been maintained by monopolization of a handful of resources (air and theater time, record and video-store shelves, audio and cinema production studios, manufacturing and distribution channels.) The entirely-laudable-to-me phenomenon of Half-nekkid Thursdays, sex blogging, Flickr, YouTube, and sound recording and mixing tools like Audacity or GarageBand, mixed with the stunningly low distribution cost of internet hosting create some seriously long-term problems for both the music and porn industries in the sense that the “return on investment” equation for forcing women into pornography (or forcing performers into blowjobs for record contracts) holds up very poorly in the face of millions of people who are happy to do much the same thing without coercion… and (worse for commercial exploitation) publishing their stuff without expecting payment to people who will consume it without expecting to pay. (I think our straw Marxist would gloatingly say this was analogous to “the withering away of the apparatus of the state” or something, and though the interpretation might be slightly off I’d give ‘em the point anyway.)

This post was originally inspired by a Maureen Dowd column titled “Taming of the Slur.”

The column was mainly about what women think of the word “slut” these days. There was the usual mainstream recitals of too tight clothes at work or whatever and how it’s unfair that promiscuous men get to be called players while comparable women get called sluts. (Plus an interesting distinction I hadn’t heard of before of “Wednesday night dates” vs. “Saturday night dates” which, Dowd points out, is fairly confused and non-specific anyway.) Something towards the end really caught my eye.

That men are counting those spins around the block is a fact that’s not lost on women. The late-night comic Craig Ferguson dryly observed that women often get back with their exes because they don’t want their total number to go up.

One 24-year-old Washington reporter agreed that “redos” of previous partners can keep your number below the slut threshold, defined by two of her male friends as “less than 20.” She thinks she is “chaste’‘ with a number of six, but admits she sometimes subtracts one or two when telling a guy her romantic history. She said she kept dating Mr. Six after she’d lost interest simply because she didn’t want to up the number to Mr. Seven.

One 25-year-old writer in D.C. said his ideal girl’s number is one or two fewer than his. When he had “the numbers talk’‘ with one date, she gave him an answer that he found both satisfactory and sexy: “Enough to know what I’m doing.”

I pulled the quote from this randomly Google’d source but it looks like the column appeared first in the subscription-only NYTimes.com.

Ok. So what’s the deal with this number thing?

I know men learn somewhere that they’re supposed to brag about how many women they’ve had sex with. And that women learn somewhere that they’re supposed to brag about how few. I even know that at least one researcher (sorry no source) says men and women exaggerate so consistently that the accurate number for men tends to be one third partners as they claim while women’s tends to be three times higher.

But this afternoon as I was drifting off into a heat-induced nap I started wondering…

Exactly why do men think more partners indicate greater prowess?

Exactly why do women think fewer partners indicates greater virtue?

A) I mean, do we imagine men are more attractive if we think they’re just really dreadful poor at relationships? And do we imagine women are more attractive if we think they’re dreadfully inexperienced?

B) Oh wait, no, of course we don’t think that! Oh right, we’re supposed to think men are more manly studs if they’ve had lots of partners, and that women are icons of propriety if they’ve had few or none.

Oh yeah, right, right. B, above, is correct. A, above, is just wrong.

And that justifies why our numbers are so important everyone just assumes we fudge, respectively, up or down.

No really!

That’s why.

(It’s just so obvious I shouldn’t have to ask.)

(And so manifestly true I’m not struggling, hard, to sound convincing.)

Anyway, exactly how much longer do we want to maintain this sort of accounting? I mean, really, at the end of the day, the only number that really matters is… 1-on-1.

So. Any number of people on all kinds of blogs have wondered why fellatio, of all things, should be such a lightning rod for controversy. (And don’t read “lightning rod” as a pun, intended or no, it’s just the most appropriate cliché analogy since it attracts a lot of flashes and rumbling.)

So, I ran across this great post from [redacted at the original poster’s request] of [redacted at the original poster’s request], and the comment I started out with kept growing until it became its own post…

She provides a cool summary of the position a lot of people I’d like to think of as affirmative moderates take. (Non-affirmative moderation means being either sort of wishy-washy or else doormat-tishly saying “whatever you whatever is whatever with whatever”)

And she states the case very well. Once again you can, and should, [sorry, again redacted at the original poster’s request].

I just happen to be in the middle of a post about why fellatio, of all things, is the source of so much controversy. The short answer, I strongly suspect, is that fellatio is the pivotal sex act in the transformation from women as receptacles of men’s desire vs. women as actors in their own right.

If you see things from the “receptacle” side of the divide then it represents male gratification without direct recompense. (Yes, you can make a plea for your turn after but that would delayed or indirect compensation. Plus receptacle theorists believe the man will break his promise at the first opportunity.)

It looks totally different from the direct action side of the divide. From there it’s a matter of choice. And not a “choice” to submit to some representative of the patriarchy but a choice to pin someone and make him make funny noises.

Somewhere not too long some time no earlier than, say, 1980 and no later than, say, 1995, the role of women as sexual actors rotated in a subtle but very big way. Subtle in the sense that most people never noticed the shift, and others outright dispute that anything happened at all. Big in the sense that before that heterosexual sexual feminism was still about persuading male partners to properly satisfy their partners while afterwards heterosexual feminism began to be about being the source of one’s own sexuality rather than the receptacle of someone else’s.

And, I think, fellatio — or more properly, attitudes about fellatio — can be seen as a proxy for that huge, initially unnoticed revolution.

And that’s why, I think, everyone has something to say about it.

Twisty is still firmly in the receptacle camp when it comes to men and so the whole idea of fellatio seems like an affront that goes beyond the merits or demerits, the aesthetics, the dynamics, or the potential submissiveness and/or dominance of taking erectile tissue into one’s mouth.

And that’s not a stupid place to be. Possibly out of date for most people, yes, but since a significant portion of men (majority? minority? plurality?) still see it as an opportunity to “nail” another receptacle it’s not irrelevant.

On the other side people like you, she, and many, many other feminists and “post-feminists” alike are saying something like “well, yeah, there are still guys like that but I refuse to have anything to do with them. And, again, that’s not anything as lame or backwards-looking as the stereotypical “post-feminist ‘choice’ to submit to the patriarchy.” It’s about choice choice, determining not whether you’ll do something with (the only real choice in the patriarchal model) but which and what kind of partners you’re going to do it with…

...and even then only after you decide it’s something you want to — you enjoy — doing in the first place. (Because, after all, everybody (“even women!” as the insincere of left and right would say) has personal likes and dislikes.)

So there. Fellatio is the act around which the entire debate about women as passive vs. active sexual beings can revolve and consequently discussions of the issue are far more heated than the matter in isolation would suggest. And that’s why we find it such an irresistible debate topic. That’s my hypothesis and I’m curious to see if it’s testable.

So Cheryl of Claiming my inner bitch has an excellent summary of the last month’s worth of fellatio wars which begins this way

Pinko Feminist Hellcat did it for me today in a quote she placed in her post:

the “woman who has sex for pleasure is a slut.”

Thanks. Now I know. I don’t have sex with men for money to feed my children or keep a roof over my head. I don’t have sex with men because I love them or respect them or want to marry them. I like sex with men and have had sex with men primarily for my pleasure, making me a slut. I like sex with women, too…more than sex with men, actually. But women are a little more complicated for me. That’s another post.

Phew! “Slut.” Thank God that issue’s settled. Next issue?

and ends thusly

I guess I know where I stand in the feminist sex wars. I’m a Feminist Slut Extraordinaire, and damned proud of it. ... I still don’t enjoy BJ’s (sorry, guys) but I love cunnilingus! ; )

Read the rest of her chronology and commentary here

I love Cheryl’s stance: She doesn’t object on principle. She doesn’t consider them an affront. She just doesn’t enjoy giving blowjobs.

I strongly get the impression she and I are roughly the same age, and as I read her post I kept thinking about her personal chronology and how it corresponds to mine. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere when I was growing up cunnilingus as foreplay or simply for its own sake simply wasn’t optional for progressives. At the same time, for progressives, to seek or offer fellatio was simply unthinkable.

Anyway, back in those pre-Title-9 days progressives tended to look at women as equal-but-special, still physically delicate, still easily offended, still sole arbiters of propriety, still the sole gatekeepers for sex. In other words still “sugar ‘n spice ‘n everything nice.”

And meanwhile men were still considered elemental, coarse, and constantly thrusting. “Snakes ‘n snails ‘n puppydog tails” for short.

Within that (quintessentially heteronormative) framework cunnilingus made perfect sense because, whatever else could be said about gender relations, men, if they were going to be involved at all, were held absolutely responsible for women’s enjoyment of sex. (If not in the way Oliver Mellors satisfies Lady Chatterley then the way Dr. Reuben recommended.) Similarly within that old framework the idea that women in an equal relationship might actively (rather than passively) seek to satisfy their partners just didn’t make sense. [Note: This wasn’t a crazy position, by the way, and counterexamples fly to the tips of our tongues — criminal sexual assailants require no initiative from their victims, for instance, but by definition neither do they seek consent, and in any case the gratification they seek is scarcely sexual in the first place. —fl]

All in all I can think of 10,000 reasons not to “commit” fellatio, from concern about nurturing patriarchy to ordinary esthetics. But I can really only think of two bad ones, where “bad” means “ill-considered, self-limiting, and inequalitarian.” Those would be a) that it’s physically impossible for anything as delicate as women are to do it, let alone enjoy doing it, or that b) it’s an affront to expect women to do more than make themselves available to their partners and perhaps (considering what animals men can be) an insult to suggest that they’d need to do more than show up. On the off-hand chance anyone still buys either of those they might want to consider reconsidering. And don’t get me wrong here — by “reconsider” I’m not saying “start giving blowjobs” though that might be a consequence. I’m just saying there’s probably value in examining the propositions. After all by my reckoning there are still another 9,998 perfectly good reasons not to.

Sorry about the rude interruption. If the nominal person of faith who felt the need to deface my site wishes to contact me I’ll be happy to provide space to promote his or her religious beliefs.

I suggest

“But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,”
“Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you. And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take thy coat also. Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again. And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.” (Luke 6:28-31. King James Version)

or if you prefer a more recent translation

But I say unto you that hear, Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you. To him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and from him that taketh away thy cloak withhold not thy coat also. Give to every one that asketh thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again. And as ye would that men shou do to you, do ye also to them likewise. (Luke 6:28-31. American Standard Version)

Amber, of Being Amber Rhea provides one of those brilliant-because-it’s-so-obvious insights into how most of us can enjoy pornography in the face of so much genuine awfullness.

If you say, “I like music,” no one assumes that you like every piece of music ever created. In fact, usually the follow-up question is, “What kinds of music do you like?”

There might be some kinds of music that you thoroughly, passionately love; music that you can listen to over and over again and never get sick of; music that speaks to you on a deeply personal level; music that is theraputic for you – or just downright fun to dance to.

Some other kinds of music? Eh, you might feel like you could take it or leave it.

You might be annoyed by some of it.

You might find some of it downright weird.

You might be disturbed by some of it – e.g., violent lyrics in some rap music. On the other hand, you might see that as a healthy outlet for anger.

You might think that the commodification of “boy bands” stifles true musical creativity from getting the attention it deserves.

You might think that in the music industry as a whole, there is too much focus on monetary gain, and the barrier of entry is too difficult for small-time musicians starting out.

You might have strong ideological and/or pragmatic reasons for supporting independent artists – and still sing along with pop music on the radio.

Read her whole post here

She’s got a wonderful point coming from the content/consumption perspective but if you include the underlying work behind the music and porn industries Amber’s point begins to turn the argument right around.

The music analogy works extremely well for me, in part, because of my peripheral but lifelong relationships with performing musicians I gotta tell you that no matter how behind-the-scenes bad the aggregate pornography industry might be it simply can’t be more exploitative, more destructive, more false-hope-building, more genuine-hope-shattering, or more sanity, health, and soul robbing than the aggregate music industry.

The difference being that you leave your pants on slightly more often to play music. But! If you really think about it which industry do you think has the most deaths by overdose, suicide, or murder? The most liver failures? The higher rates of drug and alcohol addiction? The greater number of promising-but-naive talents ruthlessly exploited by cynically jaded money bags? The more low-paid or unpaid hours working in inhumane conditions? Even more transmission of STDs than in porn, even more nonconsensual sex than in porn, and more violence than in porn.

Eww!

I say all this not because I particularly approve of pornography but because until I read Amber’s piece I’d never considered that — for all it’s genuinely lovely bright spots — the production end of the music business is a shockingly high-risk enterprise. More so, when I think about it, than coal mining, or copper smelting, or commercial fishing.

Enough so that anyone who owns an iPod probably needs to do a little introspection before tossing stones at anyone else who downloads porn.

For the record I think pornography, and music for that matter, are both fine but I have an even lower tolerance for most of the stuff that’s out there than I have for advertising.

(Note: I thought about getting all clever and interpolating links to music-related examples of addiction, exploitation, violence, and woe throughout this post but do I really need to say more than “Hank Williams, Marianne Faithful, Janice Janis Joplin, John Fogerty, and Curt Kurt Kobain” to make the point? And they’re just some of the people you might have heard of and there are more unheard of than any of us could begin to count.)

[Note: Spell-checkers don’t help with given names, let alone stage names. Worse luck. :-) —fl]