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

the Jews walked willingly into the ovens. She is the woman, thevolunteer for bondage. Women, too, were burned en masse inGermany: the witchcraft persecutions. T he manual character ofthose burnings meant that killing was slower. As described byPennethorne Hughes in Witchcraft: “In almost every province ofGerm any the persecution raged with increasing intensity. Sixhundred were said to have been burned by a single bishopric inBamberg, where the special witch jail was kept fully packed. Ninehundred were destroyed in a single year in the bishopric ofW urzburg, and in Nurem berg and other great cities there were oneor two hundred burnings a year. ” 19 All Western Europe participatedin the witch killings, but the mass slaughters were horriblyfierce in Germany. For the most part, the witches were burned.T he laser promises burning. T he photographs reprinted from theGerm an Playboy, like all pieces of pornography, do not exist in ahistorical vacuum. O n the contrary, they exploit history— especiallyhistorical hatreds and historical suffering. T he witcheswere burned. T he Jews were burned. T he laser burns. Jew andwoman, Playboy's model is captive, bound, in danger of burning.T he sexualization of “the Jewess” in cultures that abhor theJew—subtly or overtly— is the paradigm for the sexualization of allracially or ethnically degraded women. As Sartre wrote in hisclassic Anti-Semite and Jew:There is in the words “a beautiful Jewess” a very specialsexual signification. . . This phrase carries an aura of rape andmassacre. T he “beautiful Jewess” is she whom the Cossacksunder the czars dragged by her hair through the streets of herburning village. And the special works which are given over toaccounts of flagellation reserve a place of honor for the Jewess.But it is not necessary to look into esoteric [pornographic]literature.. . . the Jewess has a well-defined function in eventhe most serious novels. Frequently violated or beaten, shesometimes succeeds in escaping dishonor by means of death,but that is a form of justice. 20Building on Sartre’s insight, Susan Brownmiller, in Against Our