In March 2003, the University of Alabama hosted a debate between pornographer-multimedia star Ron Jeremy and new anti-pornography activist Susan B. Cole. Sounds controversial. Yet students were far from outraged that a porn star had been elevated to an expert panellist at a university event, even on a moderately conservative southern campus. Nor were any feminist activists on campus rallying to Cole’s side. Instead Jeremy was greeted with cheers from students dressed in t-shirts boasting “I love porn,” while Cole was booed and jeered at by the audience. Despite Cole’s careful insistence that she was not opposed to sex and wasn’t a member of the “sex police,” she was mocked for arguing that pornography exploits women. During the panel debate, which was mostly a forum for Jeremy to boast about the benefits of porn and “having a party,” students took the opportunity to ask Cole questions like, “what’s your fucking problem?”
- Pamela Paul, Pornified p.113
[Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families. 2007. https://www.amazon.com/Pornified-Pornography-Transforming-Relationships-Families-ebook/dp/B003J5UIWI]
Last section:
16. Pornodialectics demands that we challenge the means of production, the exploitation of the capitalist system and even capitalism itself. It opposes the oppressive and exploitative nature of the free-market to fairer and more participatory economics. It encourages the equality, health and self-determination of all those who work on it. It does not value any individual over another and encourages the economic equality of each of its members. We may say that the telos of pornodialectics is inherently communistic, we look forward to the genuinely universal emancipatory society, where the fruits of life and love are shared in common. We, therefore, follow in the footsteps of the great gay communists of the 70s. As Mario Mieli writes, “The struggle for communism today must find expression, among other things, in the negation of the heterosexual Norm that is based on the repression of Eros and is essential for maintaining the rule of capital over the species. The ‘perversions’, and homosexuality in particular, are a rebellion against the subjugation of sexuality by the established order, against the almost total enslavement of eroticism (repressed or repressively desublimated) to the ‘performance principle’, to production and reproduction (of labour-power).” 4 We must embark upon a two pronged process. A cultural challenge of the conservative, libertarian and heteronormative expectations and conventions through the creation of new values and practices, but integrated within newly arising economic and political demands. The opposition to subjugation, labour and exploitation must be conjoined with a new aspiration towards pleasure beyond the capitalistic dichotomy of work and leisure (consumerism). Pornodialectics challenges the means of production and the normative curtailment of man’s potential to re-open the process of man’s continual becoming.
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My comments: Why Bradley thinks he is so transgressive, dynamic, and post-modern? He says "The ‘perversions’, and homosexuality in particular, are a rebellion," but he doesn't have the courage to mention gay paederasty, which is more rebellious and confronts more directly "heterosexual Norm."
Bradley, you are ducking the big questions, the big fights, the great sexual traditions.
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