Okay, this is too much
I stopped reading Alas months ago because the anti-feminist quotient there was just too high. So I’m just now discovering what some of you may already know: Barry sold his domain to a pornographer, so now his blog is hosted alongside hard-core porn reviews. The deal is that the huge traffic to Alas — feminist traffic, generated by people who have built up that readership over years — drives up the search engine rankings for the pornographer. (Heart has a fuller explanation of the deal.)
Barry didn’t bother to tell any of his readers about this until someone discovered the links and asked him what the fuck was going on. Even now I’m not sure most of his readers are aware of it, since Barry’s explanatory post didn’t allow comments and so rapidly sank to the bottom of the list.
I think this is absolutely vile.
Some people are drawing a connection between this and Playboy’s recent endorsement of Pandagon, which is understandable given the timing. It’s like the porn Borg ship has arrived and is assimilating the feminist blogworld. But Pandagon didn’t solicit the Playboy endorsement — that’s kind of an important point. And Amanda’s flippant response, while not exactly the anti-Playboy manifesto I might wish, is nevertheless in keeping with her stated opinions and longstanding persona.
This thing with Alas, though…this is sneaky. Back-door selling out to pornographers. All those feminist women posting to Alas, all engaging in heartfelt discussion…while unbeknownst to them, every bit of their traffic is driving up the business for exactly the kind of hard-core pornography that many of them have spent their lives opposing.
Barry says that:
I was assured by the buyer that he would never host porn sites on “amptoons.com.” And I wrote into the contract that his link on “Alas” could never be a direct link to a porn site.
Let’s parse that, shall we? Barry was able to stipulate in the contract that his Alas blog would not contain a direct link to a porn site. But he was not able to stipulate in the contract that the rest of the domain would not link to or host porn sites. He only received a verbal “assurance.” Why? Why wouldn’t the buyer put it in the contract that there wouldn’t be porn? Because porn was the whole intention, as Barry must have realized. After all, he tells us the “wrangling” over this contract took months. If Barry is able to tie his own shoes, then he was able to sort out why the buyer was unwilling to put in the contract that there wouldn’t be porn. What the contract does stipulate is that:
…he has absolutely no say in what’s on “Alas,” but we also agreed that I have no say over what he does with his own property.
I’m sorry, there’s just no way I can believe that Barry didn’t understand perfectly well that this was going to be a porn site. No wonder he didn’t say anything to his readers.
Alas was probably the first blog to link to Reclusive Leftist when I started; certainly it was the first major feminist blog. Even though I’ve long-since bailed on reading it because of the anti-feminists, I’ve always wished Barry well. I never imagined he would do something like this. This is fucking bullshit.
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UPDATE. I’m pasting this from the comments; Richard asked me why this matters, really, and here’s my reply:
There is a large contingent of feminists who oppose pornography on explicitly feminist grounds, so it’s definitely a feminist issue. It’s not like Barry’s just linking to stock-car racing sites or something that is of no concern to his feminist readers. That’s why it was dishonest of him, I think, not to be upfront about this. The pro-porn feminists who are fine with XXX BangBros can continue to patronize Alas, but the feminists who don’t want to support that kind of thing deserve to be aware of what the site is linking to.
63 Responses to “Okay, this is too much”
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witchy-woo says:
Fucking bullshit indeed. Bullsit that has now hit the fan and, I hope, will spread far and wide across the internet so that everyone who needs to know will find out about this.
Barry has not done the shaky standing of anti-sexist men any favours either. They need to be angry too. I mean, how do we know who we can believe?
October 10th, 2006 at 5:17 pm EST -
Mandos says:
Well, I for one can’t really say anything since I’ve only read Alas like 5 times in my life. I feed off blogular negative energy but there was too much negative energy and I would have overloaded.
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richard cherry says:
I never went there. When you got kids you can’t get out at all. But reading just how pissed off everyone is was fun - also the whole pandagon thing.
Two common threads - ‘look at what this guy who claimed to be vaguely feminist did’ and all the views of what a male feminist is like. I’m certainly of the camp that has trouble with any man calling himself feminst (it’s a silly name for a boy anyway …I thank yow) and fear that they are the sort of people who might actually wear the t shirt violet likes so much. never let a nice pair of boyboobs blind you to reality, doc. I get uneasy with men calling themselves feminists cos it’s like the fat bloke going to the pub wearing his all blacks shirt to watch the rugby - and he’s thinking he’s a rugby player. Like it or not we’re never gong to get closer to female oppression than the front row of the stalls. Not to say we can’t clap at appropriate points and enjoy our ice creams at the interval and help push forward the artform by going to the right plays - oh lordy I think my metaphor is dead and I never even noticed.
And the other common thing is porn. Now I know it’s an important point in the whole feminist discourse - I mean it must be because it seems to make up about 99% of the bloody discourse - or maybe it looks bigger online because, like Belgium, it’s where everyone goes for a good punch-up. But is it truly that central to the whole thing?
Anyway it seems clear that Alas bloke and playdagon or whatever are not on many christmas card lists. -
Mandos says:
Actually, they are. Just not on antiporn Christmas cards. It’s a big fight because the Sex Wars were very divisive in a previous feminist generation. People trying to figure out their boundaries.
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Violet says:
But is it truly that central to the whole thing?
For some feminists, yes, and there are many others for whom it’s not “central” but certainly important. There is a large contingent of feminists who oppose pornography on explicitly feminist grounds, so it’s definitely a feminist issue. It’s not like Barry’s just linking to stock-car racing sites or something that is of no concern to his feminist readers. That’s why it was dishonest of him, I think, not to be upfront about this. The pro-porn feminists who are fine with XXX BangBros can continue to patronize Alas, but the feminists who don’t want to support that kind of thing deserve to be aware of what the site is linking to.
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ginmar says:
I didn’t think I could get more cynical. Now I’m sorry I was wrong.
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Hugo says:
This is bizarre. In the male feminist blogging world, Barry and I don’t always see eye-to-eye, but this absolutely floors me. I get flak because I link to PETA (and believe me, I understand the flak).
But this is weird. I don’t see any actual ads when I visit Alas, though I haven’t visited in a while…
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delphyne says:
“‘look at what this guy who claimed to be vaguely feminist did’”
He doesn’t claim to be vaguely feminist. His whole blog was set up on the premise that he was a feminist (I don’t think he makes the nod to pro-feminism, his claims go further than that) and attracted readers to it on that basis. He even appeared on a national radio programme as the representative of “feminist” bloggers once. When he got called on the fact that he had taken the spot that should have gone to a woman he denied there was a problem.
He appears to be in denial about this too as he has refused to publically answer any of his critics either on his blog or theirs. Mind you there isn’t much for him to say, I think he’s finally burnt his bridges this time. He can use the one that Amanda has created with Playboy instead.
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Violet says:
Hugo, there aren’t actual ads on the blog. There’s a link to “review software,” which takes you to a page of porn links. This seems bizarre until you realize that amptoons is a very highly ranked domain, so links off of it go to the top of search engines. That’s why the pornographer bought the domain from Barry, so he could feed off of Alas’s traffic.
A commenter at Heart’s explained it better:
“The idea behind the outgoing porn link is that Google ranks websites based on “authority”. The more your site is linked to by other sites - especially from already established, high-authority sites - the higher its perceived “authority” on a subject; hence the higher your site will be ranked on Google for various search phrases.
“So what these “SEO’s” (search engine optimizers) do, is they buy links from high authority sites to try to raise the authority of their new/low-ranked/spam sites. And as internet profit goes, porn sells like nothing else.
“When it comes to porn, you don’t need anything resembling content, you just need A) naked women; and B) for people to actually choose your site over the millions and millions of others. Which is why someone would attach a monetary value to links from a site like Ampersand’s, which obviously has a high authority, having been linked to over and over again by other respected sites.”
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Noumena says:
This analysis is only legitimate under a rather crucial assumption: that Amp knew what kinds of links would be put up on the domain when he made the deal. If this isn’t the case, I don’t see how he’s in any way morally culpable. The contrast here with Amanda is particularly apt: if you’re going to excuse her, at least partially, because she didn’t solicit the relationship with Playboy, then you ought to excuse Ampersand if he didn’t know he was entering a relationship with pornographers.
You claim that “Barry must have realized” that “porn was the whole intention”. But what is your argument for this? If you mistype an URL, you can come across the sort of hit farms that I would probably expect (try nytimes.net). These often don’t link to porn, at least not in any obvious way. Maybe this means I’m also too stupid to tie my own shoes. But I would suggest that you’re just flinging ad hominems because you’re pissed off, not giving a reasoned case that he’s morally culpable.
I’m not claiming that I know Amp is innocent. I’m just pointing out that you need a crucial assumption to convict him, and I want to know what the evidence is for it.
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Violet says:
I’m just pointing out that you need a crucial assumption to convict him, and I want to know what the evidence is for it.
It’s not an assumption; it’s a deduction. Barry himself says that the contract was developed over the course of months, with lots of discussion. He understood that his domain was being purchased because of its high internet rating, and that the whole point was that the purchaser planned to use this high rating to boost his own links.
As for why Barry could have figured out that porn would be involved, there are two reasons:
1. General: If you run a website and you get how this business works, you know that the porn sites are the number one guys looking for link boosts.
2. Specific: Barry admits that he was able to stipulate in the contract that there would not be direct links from the Alas blog to porn. So porn links were under discussion. If Barry was thinking about the possibility of porn, if porn was under discussion as the terms of the contract were being worked out, and if Barry didn’t want to be associated with porn, it’s reasonable to assume that he would have said to buyer, “okay, but let’s put in the contract that you won’t use this for a porn link farm.” The fact that this stipulation is NOT in the contract is telling. Why? Either Barry asked and the guy said no, or Barry never even asked because he knew from the gitgo this was going to be a porn site. Either way, Barry knew before he signed the contract that porn was on the menu.
If you really want to argue that in the months of wrangling over this contract Barry never ever thought of the possibility that the buyer was building a porn farm, or that he only thought to worry about direct porn links from the pages of Alas, then I think you need to argue that Barry can’t tie his own shoes.
But even if you do believe that Barry can’t tie his shoes and the porn link farm came as a huge surprise to him, you still have to explain why he remained silent on the subject for MONTHS, only copping to the situation once his readers started asking questions. That means that for months he was allowing anti-porn feminists to continue to post on and link to Alas, thus maintaining his high internet rating, without telling them that they were helping drive business to XXX porn sites.
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Hugo says:
Thanks for clarifying, Violet!
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will says:
VS:
I was wondering whether I could buy your site?
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manxome says:
Notice how nowhere does Barry say that he was all gosh-golly-gee-whiz-forehead-slapping shocked to find that the clients were porn sites? Funny, that.
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richard cherry says:
sorry, delphyne - my ‘vaguely feminist’ term was because I didn’t know much about the egregious barry and my discomfort above with man = feminist thing.
Vi - Is it really central - well yes I suppose I had already worked out that it’s central to the arguments, but I guess what i wanted to know is why it’s really worth feminists tearing chunks out of each other. Yes I know one side sees it as about freedom and the other about oppression of loads of women and that’s what feminism should be fighting but can’t there be any truces so that the feminist army can march together? Suppose this is just the sort of question I, as the fat guy in the all blacks shirt, would ask. I know it’s important (vital whatever) but will feminism ever get past it? It’s frustrating is all - and I know you and many others share that frustration.
Whatever happened to the chartists? -
gordo says:
Manx–
I’ll have to remember that when I sell my domain to a pornographer:
1) Assume that someone will notice, and announce the sale right away. That way, people won’t think I’m hiding something.
2) When someone points out that the buyer is probably a pornographer, act as though that idea hadn’t occurred to me.
I learn so much from reading blogs.
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Violet says:
Hey, you’re awake! Me too. I must move to GMT; then I’ll be in sync with the normal people. Here on the East Coast of the USA everyone’s in bed. Except the gay Republican Congressmen, of course.
Ricahrd, I don’t know why there can’t be truces. I myself have never gone to war on this issue, and I’ve always tried to disagree without demonizing. Always. It seems to me we ought to be able to discuss the issue rationally. When I expressed dismay at Pandagon’s reaction to the Playboy endorsement, for example, I wasn’t intending that to turn into “Amanda Is The AntiChrist,” which it seemed to become. I like Amanda, and I think she’s a good feminist; but I thought Pandagon’s reaction to the Playboy endorsement was off-base and worth talking about. Without demonizing Amanda.
With this Alas thing, the issue for me is the underhandedness of it. Even though not all feminists are anti-porn, quite a few are, which Barry knows perfectly well. It’s kind of like an animal rights activist site secretly selling its Google ranking to Fred’s Furs. Barry should have been upfront so that the anti-porn feminists would know what was what. There are many feminists who care passionately about this issue and are horrified to learn that their time and energy are in any way contributing to the commercial exploitation of women’s bodies.
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richard cherry says:
oh you being all sane and rational at 3am. can’t you be cranky like the rest of the world. clearly time for another fake flame war.
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delphyne says:
“Without demonizing Amanda.”
Her stance on porn is anti-woman and anti-feminist. It ought to be possible to say that without being accused of demonization.
I agree with you with regards to the insults issue, it doesn’t help to start insulting her, although she was having a pretty good go at me on her thread calling me a troll and implying fairly blatantly that I was an anti-sex prude (and maybe even a right winger!). It’s depressing to hear that from feminists who ought to know better.
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Mandos says:
Delphyne “doesn’t bother to read [my] posts”, but I’ll discuss this posts for the benefits of other readers…
“Her stance on porn is anti-woman and anti-feminist. It ought to be possible to say that without being accused of demonization.”
This is what was meant when Delphyne was accused of *petitio principii* on the Worm Can thread. Whether (Amanda’s stance on) porn is “anti-woman” and “anti-feminist” was itself the subject of discussion.
Anti-woman, in feminist vocabulary, obviously implies Bad Person. Presumably, we “demonize” people who are Bad People. So what Delphyne is saying here is “It ought to be possible to say that Amanda is a Bad Person without being accused of calling Amanda a Bad Person.”
But again, the entire argument was on whether it was possible to watch commodified sexual images without being a Bad Person.
“I agree with you with regards to the insults issue, it doesn’t help to start insulting her, although she was having a pretty good go at me on her thread calling me a troll and implying fairly blatantly that I was an anti-sex prude (and maybe even a right winger!). It’s depressing to hear that from feminists who ought to know better.”
It’s not entirely clear that Delphyne wasn’t being insulting on that thread, but deciding she wasn’t being insulting by using the *petitio principii* trick I mentioned above.
Obviously, none of this means anything to Delphyne, since she isn’t reading it.
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Infidel says:
I’m reading it, Mandos, and none of it means anything to me. Petitio principii, hah! sounds like the head of a midget school.
As far as Violets’ blog goes, though, bless her and bless anybody who follows her example. -
Pony says:
I read you too Mandos, although I do not usually do so. I regret having done so and will not again. As I now understand the meaning of the term troll, I think it applies exquisitely to you. If you have any honour, or ethics at all, please stop it. Just stop it.
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Mandos says:
Infidel: I knew you would read, just not Delphyne. It’s Latin for begging the question.
http://www.nizkor.org/features.....stion.html
I only used the Latin word because someone brought it up in the Pandagon worm can thread in Latin.
Pray tell, Pony, how am I a troll?
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richard cherry says:
oh lordy, vi, now we’ve got people calling other people trolls… the ultimatum has passed and for no discernible reason we are all going to Belgium in the mud.
Again.
The blogs are going out all over Canada - we shall not see them writ again in our lunchtime - poutine anyone?
Did they learn nothing from the last one? -
Infidel says:
Fowler’s Deductive Logic (1887) argues that the Latin origin is more properly Petitio Quæsiti which is literally “begging the question” as opposed to “petitioning the premise”.
Wickipedia has the Greek too- it is just I don’t use or hear much. Pump up the volume, pump up the volume! If I hear it louder, I hear it better. I still don’t understand it. “Amanda is the antiChrist”"The Can of Worms Thread”Anti-Woman”"Anti-Feminist” Juicy peaches, clean fuzz brushing lips, teeth puncturing, juice spurting, mouth filling, swallowing, yummm.
Pornographers should not be feminist blog sponsors- they should sponsor pornography blogs. -
The Grouch says:
Mandos’s point was that whether or not Amanda’s stance on porn (which isn’t, by the way, “pro-porn” in any broad sense) is anti-woman or anti-feminist is itself the subject of debate–and it’s a legitimate subject with many thoughtful and committed feminists on both sides. So, if you just state that Amanda’s being anti-woman, you’re assuming what you have yet to prove.
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Mandos says:
TheGrouch: Yes, thank you for being less obscure than me. However, some people believe that the case has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt.
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Mandos says:
Well. Well. Pony, who accuses me of being a troll and tells me loudly, with Delphyne, that she doesn’t read me, posts this on Amp’s site (just read the full thread for the first time):
Amps site links to porn.
Amps site posts pix of his daughter.
I think what Amp did was a tad underhanded and some of his defenses maybe a little disingenuous—for this Amp outsider—but. Isn’t. That. Special.
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Violet says:
A tad underhanded? A little disingenuous?
(BTW: no, of course you’re not a troll.)
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Mandos says:
Well, I was using understatement for effect.
However, I do also regularly read belledame, and she’s a little Schadenfreudische-gleeful at all of this (for her own nontrivial reasons, it seems), so my perspective may be a bit tainted.
As for Pony, well, there’s a small industry of ideologues who think I’m disruptive, and so I’m more amused than anything else.
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Violet says:
Okay, I finally read through the worm thread, or at least the exchanges between Amanda and Delphyne. It was annoying because there was a lot of talking in circles and past each other, lots of red herrings.
Amanda says she likes and uses pornography. She knows most of it is misogynistic crap, and (presumably) she knows that there are serious abuses in the industry, but she enjoys it anyway and just tries to avoid the bad stuff. Sounds to me like she’s got a conflict to work out.
The feminist question I would ask is not, “Is a photograph automatically degrading?” because I don’t think that’s the issue. The feminist issue should be, “If you know that there are problems in the porn industry, if you know that you may be watching filmed rapes or the equivalent thereof, how can you still enjoy this stuff?”
Of course, part of the problem for me in a discussion like this is that I don’t understand the enjoyment of pornography at all. Even the “good” kind, wherever it is, doesn’t appeal to me.
The most interesting thing Delphyne said in that thread, which kind of got lost, is that masturbation/sex does not equal porn. That’s certainly true for me. It’s not a case of my disapproving of pornography and therefore avoiding it; it’s a case of my not being interested in it at all. It has no place in my sex life or fantasy life. In fact, the pornography I’ve seen has been so repugnant to me that it might as well be an anti-aphrodisiac.
I’ve never even understood why men need to look at pictures to masturbate. Bizarre. Can’t you just think about something you like? Why do you need to rifle through magazines to find a picture? Or now, rifle through videos to find a scene? Just close your eyes and imagine whatever you like. It always seems to me that a person would have to be extraordinarily lacking in imagination to need these manufactured external images.
And of course this reliance on images is just an effect of conditioning; before pornography became common or even before the days of French postcards, people were whacking off as much as they do now, but they didn’t need to look at anything. It’s just this modern reliance on pornography that renders so many men incapable of coming up with their own fantasies. And women, too, it seems now.
Well, I’m rambling, but my point is just a full-disclosure kind of thing. Anti-porn feminists often suspect “libertarian” feminists of not owning up to their own enjoyment of pornography. In that same spirit I’m owning up to the fact that I don’t enjoy pornography at all, so it’s hard for me to put myself in the shoes of people who need it.
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Violet says:
However, I do also regularly read belledame, and she’s a little Schadenfreudische-gleeful at all of this
Gleeful? That’s bizarre. Even if she’s not anti-porn herself, which of course she’s not, it’s a question of respecting other feminists’ concerns. How would she feel if Amp were supporting an anti-BDSM/gay task force that was in the business of hounding lesbians and arresting people in S&M parlors?
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ginmar says:
Belledame belongs to a pack that seems to rejoice when her enemies suffer a setback or something. If she could help it along, she would. She’s pretty good about minimizing stuff her set does while maximizing and holding grudges against people who don’t agree with her pro-pornism.
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Mandos says:
So generally the feeling from that corner is that a large number of Amp most strident critiques in all of this were people for whom Amp spent months trying to accomodate their insatiable demands about how a radfem-friendly space should be set up, and who were still never satisfied, and who are (to belledame and others at least) very often massive Pharisee-like hypocrites besides.
Consequently, this kind of betrayal feels like a comeuppance. Belledame notes that she might be EV0L for thinking this, but the brouhaha is nevertheless quite satisfying. The threads at Heart’s place are, to her, an exemplar of what’s wrong with Heart and the people in *her* corner.
I never saw any of this so I can’t vouch for the interpretation.
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ginmar says:
I like the part where Belledame and her buds think it’s totally unreasonable to tolerate male trolls and woman-haters, as well as the Alpha Bitch types, and then whine that not having misogynists around is oh so demanding. Taht’s cute. Hey, as long as she and bitch/lab get those male readers, it’s all good.
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ginmar says:
Sigh. I need more caffeine. Because that was the substance of the most common complaints. He had a shitload of anti-feminist trolls, but they were guys , and some of them were his friends. So much for feminism. The feminists got angry at being constantly confronted with the shit the MRAs spewed, which was pretty damned offensive. I love it that that’s being unreasonable.
How bad was it? Some of my old trolls showed up there and whined. Strange. I remember one woman who bitched at my readers that all of us were just wusses who dressed like sluts and then complained when a man got provoked by our clothing. She also told us to stop wathcing Thelma nad Louise and a whoel bunch of other stuff. Funny, trolls like that always start it and it’s always a certain type of person who’s on their side. That kind of thing was very common over there.
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Violet says:
As I said here, you don’t have to be an anti-Amp fanatic to be disturbed by this. I haven’t been a regular at Alas for months and I’ve had no quarrel with Barry, but as soon as I heard this I was appalled. I’m also not in Heart’s “corner,” whatever that means; I’ve never read or posted on her blog before this incident.
Viewing this thing through the prism of some kind of war between factions is absurd.
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Mandos says:
I like the part where Belledame and her buds think it’s totally unreasonable to tolerate male trolls and woman-haters, as well as the Alpha Bitch types, and then whine that not having misogynists around is oh so demanding. Taht’s cute. Hey, as long as she and bitch/lab get those male readers, it’s all good.
Yeahso, the point is this whole debate (including the pro/anti-porn stuff) really revolves around the concepts associated with the term “political lesbian”, at least for belledame, etc. That you care that she gets male readers or not is, to her, the problem here. Much of her feminism is based on attempting to construct a sexuality where males aren’t the implied center of the sexual world. For her, political lesbianism, anti-porn-centric feminism, etc, all have the implicit side-effect of centralizing hetero male sexuality, this time as the *opponent*, but central nevertheless. So that you care so much to make that accusation of her is the problem in this debate itself.
This, of course, has the effect of making her project less threatening to certain classes of liberal males. So, fine then, says belledame and her allies. Who cares? Maybe it will help hetero males come up with reimagined sexualities and sexual boundaries of their own. Fine and good.
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Mandos says:
So, in response to your images post, Violet, I think that’s very interesting and the heart itsef of the whole debate. The role of images in human response. However, there are people who go further and say that fantasy itself is problematic. And some would argue that the use of images is just a neutral extension of fantasy.
It would take a while for me to go through this interesting issue, but I had a thought that you might find interesting. You know all those Venus figurines? You know how some male anthropologists/archaeologists used to theorize they were some form of caveman masturbation objects? You know who some later more feminist thinkers objected and said they might be goddess figurines representing fertility?
Why not both?
I’m not saying it *is* both, just thinking of the possibilities for the role of the image.
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Mandos says:
“Viewing this thing through the prism of some kind of war between factions is absurd.”
Yes and no. There’s more than one mode of criticism here. There’s the main one you raised, which is the “what-if-PETA-sold-its-domain-to-texas-ranchers” objection. Then there’s a whole bunch of anciliary criticisms about male feminists and their perfidy. Those latter criticisms seem to come from, well, a political faction among feminists. BD has a lot of problems with this faction.
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ginmar says:
Belledame and B/L might care if they get male readers: I don’t give a shit. The issue is that they’d reather appeal to male readers than to feminists. B/L made that pretty damned clear when she jeered at the idea of sexual harassment in school, simpering at the end that she was not dismiswsing the point. Well, yeah, she was, and while bitching about other feminists, too. IF she wants male readers, she has to do certain things. That’s acceptable to her. I’m a feminist. My primary concern is women. That’s not acceptable to me, and I don’t do it. Not having to kiss male ass is kind of the point of feminism. At Alas, you had to tolerate sexist men and women. Being pro sex—as they insist on calling themselves—seems to involve kissing more male ass. Not my job. Not going to explain it again, either. If resenting mens’ sexism makes me uppity, then so be it.
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ginmar says:
And you have less problems iwth BD because her pro man attitude than you do with radfems.
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Mandos says:
“Belledame and B/L might care if they get male readers: I don’t give a shit. The issue is that they’d reather appeal to male readers than to feminists.”
I don’t read B/L very often so I don’t know much about her perspective. I read Belledame a lot more. I don’t think that BD sets the categories “male reader” and “feminist” against each other, is the point.
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ginmar says:
Did you read what I said? Yes, B/L does. She made that pretty clear. What, do I stutter or something? She had along piece jeering at the very concept of boys harassing girls, while reminiscing over how SHE never got harassed—becuase of course if it didn’t happen to her, it didn’t happen, ever, and besides, she was SUCH a badass that nobody would dare. Oh, yeah, and not to dismiss the point or anything…..Sorry, but it doesn’t get much clearer than that. As for BD I don’t know because I have no use for her, but they seem to wind up agreeing with one anotehr a lot. The less time I spend devoting any thought to the sex poz crowd, frankly, the better.
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Mandos says:
And as *I* said, I don’t know much about B/L as I don’t read her site very often. So we’re just talking past each other.
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ginmar says:
No, we’re not talking past one another. I guess you don’t think about what you read. I do.
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Mandos says:
OK, Delphyne is right. I don’t get obvious things sometimes.
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NYMOM says:
Well I’m kind of glad that Amp lost his standing with feminists.
The bottom line is that the most popular sites and leading speakers on womens’ issues should be OTHER WOMEN, not men…no matter their credentials.
Just as other groups all have their leaders, stars, most popular people talking about their issue to come from their own group, so should women…
I can’t believe that we have no women of sufficient talent to start up a blog with cartoons and other amusing figures to pick up where that one left off and continue drawing in the same number of hits or MORE…
I just refuse to believe that we have to accept that porn is the price we have to pay in order to participate in an interesting conversation on a blog…or that we have no women bloggers of sufficient artistic talent to fill that niche left vacant…
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delphyne says:
“The feminist question I would ask is not, “Is a photograph automatically degrading?” because I don’t think that’s the issue. The feminist issue should be, “If you know that there are problems in the porn industry, if you know that you may be watching filmed rapes or the equivalent thereof, how can you still enjoy this stuff?””
That will pretty much put you in Amanda’s camp then, Violet. On its own your question leads not to no porn and no women being degraded, but to better porn, ethical porn where no human beings were harmed in the making of this product - human rights-approved or whatever. That’s what Amanda and all her male friends who fast-forward past the nasty parts claim they are arguing for. The problem is that it’s an exercise in denial, because porn’s purpose is to degrade and dehumanise - if someone can get sexually excited by it at the same time all the better. Nobody would argue that sexual assault should be defended because somebody gets sexually excited by it, why should this form of abuse be any different?
It is degrading to be used in this way. Having your sexuality stolen or paid for in order for another person to achieve sexual pleasure at your expense is inhumane. You noted in that in another thread when you described how Playboy has consistently worked at putting down women and sexualising us whenever it gets the opportunity. I’m wondering why you would step back from that analysis now.
Obviously your question is important too, but only when it’s seen in the context of all porn rather than just the “bad” stuff that can be done away with.
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Mandos says:
In other words, the image as such steals something from the imaged. It’s a very metaphysical objection.
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Violet says:
Stop. I’m moving all this to a new thread.
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Victoria Marinelli says:
Wow. Just… wow. I take a blogging hiatus (e.g. neither keeping up with other blogs nor doing anything with my own) for one measly month, and… this erupts. (Actually, I’m still on that hiatus, and likely will be for another few weeks. But I digress.)
I’m stunned by Amp’s decision here. I mean, shit. How bad can one’s bandwidth overages be? Was there really no more viable and ethical way he could think of to compensate for his expenses?
Mind you, I say this as someone who is barely able to keep the electricity turned on in my house. The only reason our internet hasn’t been turned off is that it happens to be a fringe benefit of my husband’s cable company job (via which the four of us are barely surviving right now, since I lost all my own viable, independent income this time last year). I’ve got kids to feed and hundreds of dollars in medical expenses from some recent, and still unresolved, asthma and pneumonia “adventures,” and still, for the life of me, I cannot fathom Amp’s choice to do this, much less all his bizarre justifications.
I’d been a big fan of his site, with occasional misgivings I could never fully articulate. The general high quality of the content, along with the community-building value of the comment exchanges, however, had generally made up for those inchoate, nagging misgivings - but now, needless to say, I’m forced to rethink the site’s merits.
Because this is just not okay. It smacks of patriarchal collaboration in a big way. (Corollary to the patriarchal collaboration phenom: the deliberate, painstaking co-optation of feminist and other progressive political communities, which tends to take place under all kinds of apparently high-minded pretexts.) This fucking stinks.
Thank you, VS, for your attention to this situation and for articulating all of it so well. I am in your debt.
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Victoria Marinelli says:
Doh! I only just noticed your “stop” comment (#51) immediately before my own long-winded comment (#52) just posted… I am a terrible thread-drift contributor (when I’m contributing anything at all) in addition to being generally unobservant. (All the more reason, perhaps, for my almost complete blogging/commenting hiatus of this last month to be continued indefinitely.)
So sorry.
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Violet says:
No, actually, Victoria, you’re right on the topic of the thread. What I was moving were the comments about the ‘worm’ thread at Amanda’s. I said “Stop” so abruptly to rein in that crazy Mandos.
This thread is still open for discussion of Amp’s selling to pornographers.
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NYMOM says:
Well since we can still comment on some aspects of this situation I’m just wondering why he keeps putting that kid’s picture up on his site for the so-called ‘baby blogging” feature…
I mean he knows he’s feeding into a porn site now so common sense would dictate to remove all kid stuff from his blog…but then I’ve often heard common sense is the least common of all the senses.
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Patriarch Verlch says:
I see the echo chamber is in full effect!!!
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Pony says:
The wrongheadedness of this doesn’t seem to occur to porn hounds or knee jerk sex-positives. I’d be looking into legal action if he had done that to my children, but the parents involved seem a-ok with it. Which doesn’t make it any the less of a crime. And I do mean that, literally.
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NYMOM says:
Well I wouldn’t go so far as to claim it’s a crime. It just appears to be another example of how tone-deaf he is to the appropriateness of his own actions.
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Pony says:
It depends on the jurisdiction. In Canada, if you suspect a child is being abused you are legally obligated to report it. That is a statement of the law apropos children and abuse, nothing more.
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BNP member says:
LOL, that is really funny. Boy meets feminist, boy hooks up with feminist, feminist thinks he is wonderfull, boy pimps her out.
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Violet says:
Richard Cherry! Is this your doing? What is a comment from a British National Party member doing on my blog? Are you sending the UK white supremacists my way as some kind of karmic punishment? And for what?
Or is this because I’ve been linked by Vox Day? (And yes, I have been.)
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richard cherry says:
I have checked all the cages and my BNP members are all accounted for. Please contact the other UK owners of dim racists and don’t automatically assume it’s one of mine that has got out. Is it because I is white?
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Victoria says:
Goddammit. I’m still finding links on my site going back to Alas, including this one, just edited.
After learning elsewhere that Amptoons’ Alexa rating (not that I’m particularly clear on whatever the hell that means) has apparently slipped since this brouhaha erupted, I offered this commentary, which I’d meant to share with you before:
Good. I was wondering what the net effect (no pun intended) of the wave (even if in miniature) of delinkage would be.
At some point I’m going to have to do a post on the fucked up irony that prior to the debacle re: his selling of the domain name, I actually had an email exchange with him, prompted by my sending him (out of the blue, to him and one other cartoonist I know online) a political/progressive cartooning job lead which I’d stumbled upon.
No, I never donated to his tip jar (we can barely keep food on the table and the electricity on right now, and anyway, if I were going to donate to a feminist blog it would be one run by women, ahem), but to all the self-righteous people who complained that the people with a problem with his selling the domain ought to have given him money to stave off his financial crisis, etc., well, I at least (not that I should have to have done anything for him) sent him that lead. (Which he said he’d definitely apply to - dunno what the result was.)
Anyway, serves him/them right. Ptooey, leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.
Of course I may never actually get around to doing such a post. The above-referenced ‘bitter taste in my mouth’ is all the more bitter given the subsequent wave of blogwarfare resulting in an apparent delinkage-wave WRT I Blame the Patriarchy, an exercise in extreme kneejerkism and stupidosity for which I blame (naturally) the patriarchy. (At least I did get around to saying something about all that rot here).
Okay, as y’all were…
