Pornography: Men Possessing Women, by: Andrea ... - Feminish

emember that this rendition of women in private is not women inprivate at all, but women in makeup and costumes under hot lightsin uncomfortable positions posed before a camera behind which is aphotographer behind whom is a publisher behind whom is amultibillion-dollar industry behind which are rich lawyers claimingthat the photographs are constitutionally protected speech essentialto human freedom behind whom are intellectuals who find all ofthis revolutionary behind all of whom — except the models— arewomen who launder their underwear and clean their toilets.Indeed, to be a consumer of pornography one must be adept atsuspending disbelief. Should disbelief prove stubborn and not easyto suspend, the knowledge that the models posed for moneyprovides confirmation that they are whores and then the photographsare a simple expression of a general truth. For the viewerwho remembers that the photographs are artificial constructs, thephotographs prove what the photographs show: that women arewhores, dum b and evil whores at that; that women like to whore;that women choose to whore. T he harlot nature of women isauthenticated by the very existence of the photographs. Harlot as anadjective means “not subject to control. ”4 T he imperative is clear:the harlot nature of women must be controlled or the castratingpotential of these wild women might run amok. T he scissors mightbe pointed in another direction. T he very illusion that these are freewomen doing what they want creates an inevitable necessity: thesefemales, basically cruel, m ust be controlled, and any strategy thateffectively controls them is warranted because they have norecognizable civilized sensibility or intellectual capacity—they arewild. Finally, of course, the male can relax: the photographsthemselves are his proof that male control has fully contained andsubdued any authentic female sexuality.T he photographs also document a rape, a rape first enacted whenthe women were set up and used; a rape repeated each time theviewer consumes the photographs. As described by ElizabethJaneway, “. . . one of the charms of pornography is that it recordssession after session of guiltless rape in which the powerful arelicensed to have their will of the weak because the weak ‘really like