See our earlier post, Hall of Fame: Take Back the Night
Here are two great passages from the book to get you started. The first addresses the charge that “anti-porn feminists are puritans,” and the second explains how the trend of increasing sexualization of violence and of children has been going on for decades, with Playboy leading the pack starting in the 50’s.
1. From the essay, “Questions We Get Asked Most Often”, by Diane E.H. Russell with Laura Lederer. The questions and answers in this piece were compiled after a series of speaking sessions by the group “Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media” (WAVPM, Wikipedia link) , when they noticed that many audiences had similar questions.
Q: What about films which have sexual scenes in them – are you saying that ALL films and pictures showing explicit sex have a destructive effect?
A: Not at all. WAVPM has no objection to explicit sex, nor do we object to depictions of nudity per se. [....] Pornography is not made to educate but to sell, and, for the most part, what sells in a sexist society is a bunch of lies about women and sex. Women are portrayed as enjoying being raped, spanked or beaten; tied up, mutilated, or enslaved; or they accept it as their lot as women to be victims of such experiences. In the less sadistic films, women are portrayed as turned on and sexually satisfied by doing anything and everything that men order them to do, and what this involves is for the most part totally contrary to what we know about female sexuality; that is, it is almost totally penis-oriented, often devoid of “foreplay,” tenderness, or caring, to say nothing of love and romance. In short, pornographic movies, pictures and stories are a celebration of male power over women and the sexist wish that women’s sexuality and values be totally subservient to men’s. (Take Back the Night, pg. 27)
2. From “Why Playboy Isn’t Playing: An Interview with Judith Bat-Ada”
LL: You talked about a trend from ‘38D’ to ‘pedophilia.’ Can you explain that?
JB: Saturation with straightforward female sexual stimulus leads slowly but inevitabley to the need for, and the acceptance of, such things as child molestation, incest, and sexual violation. Hard-core pornography is like any other marketed product – it needs to be revamped periodically to stimulate flagging sales. We have made women easy and accessible targets for sexual violence so there are very few final taboos left to break – children and incest are the last.
The American media have moved into an acceptance of pedophilia, and are progressing very rapidly toward the endorsement of incest. I believe the final taboo now being breached is child sadism. For example, a recent edition of Forum magazine [this is in the late 70's], published by Bob Guccione of Penthouse, carried no less than twenty accounts of adult-child sex (the children being from eight to twelve years of age), in the first quarter of its pages. The issue them moved on to incest, which it has cozily familiarized under the title “Home and Family Sex.” Forum claims it is simply reflecting readership views, but I think the selling of incest is part of a process whereby a particular kind of pornographic imagery percolates through all the media until it has saturated them, and then a new level of degradation begins to become acceptable. (Take Back the Night, pgs. 122-123)
