Reply #79: Okay. Let's make this as simple as possible- a man and a woman having sex.

[Warren DeMontague]

You know, standard, penetrative sex between a man and a woman. With a camera. Following me, here? A graphic depiction of a heterosexual sex act. On film.

Can you explain, precisely, what theme of "violence and domination" is contained in such a representation? Or how about a picture of a naked woman. Or a naked man. Again. Please explain where "violence and domination" comes into it.

Now, I will ignore the lame implied insults in your post ("a relationship with a piece of paper or a video isn't really a relationship." - really? No shit.) except to say that I've been happily married for years, and before that I had many, many years of sexually active single-hood combined with several medium-term and long-term relationships.. with actual, flesh-and-blood women, even! Yeah, will wonders never cease. In fact, I would wager that the majority OTHER men (and women) on DU who oppose censorship of consenting adult erotica -something like 80-90%, depending on the poll- are also somehow capable of maintaining actual relationships with living, breathing members of the opposite (or same) sex, even if they have been exposed to porn! Imagine that!

Personally, while I've certainly looked at my share of smut for purely entertainment purposes -no denial there- I also spent years working for a medium sized chain of indie video stores, through which I worked around a decent amount of this supposedly evil, "oppressive" porn. What I saw gave lie to the axiomatic bullshit being floated by the MacDworkinite "liberal" crowd- I saw men, women, couples who enjoyed viewing adult erotica without turning into evil, violent beasts or even misogynistic fucks who could only relate to women as though they had a staple in their navel.

(People who watched a lot of zombie movies were somehow able to avoid relating to their fellow humans as zombies, too! )

I also did see some people who actually were, as you so charmingly put it, "dependent upon photos and film for their sex lives"- like the guy in the wheelchair, with AIDS. Please spare me the lecture about how this individual was harming "women as a class" by indulging in the only sexual outlet available to him. Seriously, I'm sure he should have spent his evenings at home studying his Dworkin, learning about how his male sex drive was intrinsically oppressive- certainly far better than "harming female equality" by partaking in material produced by, with, and for consenting adults.

And that's the rub, here- consenting adults. What consenting adults do with their own bodies is THEIR OWN BUSINESS. Period, end of story. That's the part the Dworkin crowd doesn't want to get. Andrea Dworkin- who quite probably suffered from serious mental illness and spent the latter part of her life consumed by paranoid delusions- Dworkin and her rants about the evils of heterosexual sex are held up as gospel by a small crowd, here. We know that. Dworkin and MacKinnon's "logic" and "arguments" were the basis of Canada's anti-porn laws. You want to talk about people with warped views of sex? The Dworkin gang takes the case. Where most people see consensual sex between adults, if it involved penetration with a penis, Dworkin saw oppression. Violence. Rape. Little wonder, then, than her acolytes see a film with a man and woman consensually, voluntarily, enthusiastically copulating, and they see oppression. Violence. Rape. Warped viewpoints on sex? You can't get much more warped than the angry, sulky delusion that heterosexual sex involving an erect penis is the source of all evil, sex as practiced by the vast majority of humans on this planet is done so under coercion and duress (without the participants realizing they're being coerced or under duress, of course) and that heterosexual relationships and sex are inherently abusive and degrading to women. People who look at nothing more than simple, erotic images of naked adults, alone or happily having sex, and project degradation, oppression and abuse onto them.

That's the warped approach to sex, if you ask me.