It's not true- he's actually a porn director!Wow- Adele Horin eat your heart out! When it comes to anti-porn extremism, Sheila Jeffreys takes the cake.
Did you know that porn is responsible for Abu Grahib? I feel I should somehow be able to write 'porn' with little horns and a tail, that's how evil it apparently is.
I can't believe that Jeffries has a job as Associate Professor of anything; of course, when her byline in the SMH said she was an associate professor in the "School of Politics, Criminology and Sociology" I just knew she wasn't in a field as credible as politics, criminology or even sociology*- it had to be gender studies. I was right! Amazing how you can get paid to just make shit up, and paint a picture of an entire industry using extreme examples of individual incidents.
I know my particular field of interest (nutrition/community health nutrition) involves a mixture of both quantitative and qualitative methods, and both can be valuable, but when someone uses qualitative methods to seek out only data that confirms their preconceptions, while ignoring the rest, they're not doing research. They have as much credibility as creationists when it comes to a fact based argument, which is why I'm not going to bother pulling Jeffries' article apart piece by piece as I did with Horin's. Adele Horin's article was misguided; Sheila Jeffries strikes me as being a rabid, anti-sex extremist.
There might not be a huge volume of bile in that article, but boy it's potent. The insinuations by Jeffries of an industry based on rape and statutory rape (as if there aren't enough 18 year old girls who are willing to do porn) are practically worthy of a defamation action. Phew. I just can't get over the fact that she is paid to write crap like that when there are religious nutbags who'll do it for free. Somehow the fact that she's employed as an academic gives her more credibility that a religious extremist with the same views, despite the fact that her arguments are grounded in exactly the same kind of fantasy.
*Sorry Patrick, I can't resist a dig at sociology :)
Pic from here.
13 comments:
Yeah when I read that I wondered what you would think.
nina hartley has already taken this line of argument apart. if anyone wants to read the opinion of one of the porn industry's movers and shakers, she's where you need to go.
Reading Jeffries' little rant, I can't help but wonder what she meant by "those who have porn used upon them". That doesn't even make sense.
"Many titles refer to semen, women being covered in it and having to swallow it" - newsflash - many women actually like this.
Bloody gender studies - one of the worst subjects I did in uni (the first time around) came out of that faculty. Shudder.
i love how jeffries can't conceive of women as anything other than passive victims. she gets to tell women what they should enjoy and what is appropriate for them, just like a chauvinist man would.
That's because women can't think for themselves and will always do whatever men demand they do, without question.
Man. No wonder people have such a difficult time calling themselves feminists when there are people like this around whose rantings are given a certain level of legitimacy.
No wonder...
My view exactly.
Hey! Sociology's the shizzle!!
Let the record reflect, however, that I swapped out of my Women's Studies units after I disagreed with a point in class, and the tutor said, "Well you would say that, wouldn't you?" Implying that, as a man, any opinion I had was therefore irrelevant.
The gender units I did in the actual sociology school however, were excellent. Very high quality, and multi-faceted debate.
I had a very different experience of the "Feminisms" unit I took as part of my undergrad in 1996, Patrick.
But I have had the misfortune of witnessing Jeffreys in action at a conference on gender in 2001, at which she was pushing pretty much the same message.
The thing to remember about Jeffreys' article is that it represents only one kind of feminism--the "Dinesh D'Souza"/"Concerned Women for America" kind. We shouldn't fall into the trap of tarring all feminists with the Jeffreys brush.
that's true, but jeffries' and her ilk poison the discourse so much and for better or worse represent a superficial image of feminism. she's a tenured professor remember. a (female) friend of ours ran into the same sort of noxious atmosphere in the gender studies faculty here at uq. she didn't accept a lecturer's orthodoxy and was personally attacked for it in front of an entire class.
it's not so much her message that bothers me, i mean there's probably at least as much quasi-legal exploitation in the porn industry as there is in the movie industry. i just don't understand why some feminists feel the need to viciously attack women who don't agree with them as opposed to tackling the argument.
I did creative writing and the lecturer admitted she hadn't read anything written by a man for 12 months.
Needless to say I felt manly.
Fair cop Arthur, I'm the last person to tar feminists with one brush (you obviously missed the mammoth post Sarah obliquely referenced)!
I wasn't targeting anyone in particular, Patrick. Just pointing out the need to avoid hasty generalisations.
she's a tenured professor remember. a (female) friend of ours ran into the same sort of noxious atmosphere in the gender studies faculty here at uq. she didn't accept a lecturer's orthodoxy and was personally attacked for it in front of an entire class.
That's a shame, but like I said, it's not my experience. Probably because the lecturer running the Feminisms unit had a high school English teaching background before she entered academia.
Obviously I can't comment on Jeffreys' skills as a teacher, but teacher-trained academics are pretty rare.
Post a Comment