Would you rather be: haggard and old, soaked in semen or a sexy revolutionary artist?
Posted by TheWorstWitch in Uncategorized, tags: art, feminism, pornographyThe Guardian has today highlighted a collection of postcards designed to be auctioned of to raise money for the Feminism in London conference which takes place in a few weeks. The conference is organised by the fairly radical London Feminist Network, and is sounding like it could be quite good, featuring workshops on feminist self defence, feminist parenting, reproductive health, male privilege, an anti-pornography slide show and such speakers as the inspirational Rebecca Mott.
So, why then, are some of the postcards to be auctioned so weird and… misogynist?
Take this postcard, designed by David Rusbatch, whose website doesn’t work so I can’t find out much about him.
Pre-feminism… those blissful days where men could be men, women could be women, and everyone was happy… especially Frida Kahlo. She was totally content as a woman, as you can see in her very cheerful paintings. Never mind her communist beliefs, dissatisfaction in her marriage and and the fact that she was recognised as an artist only secondary to her husband – and her eventual affair with Leon Trotsky.
Next, the artist seems to have chosen the least flattering image of Germaine Greer he could possibly find to represent feminism – in the same way that the Daily Mail uses pictures of feminists looking crazy and/or ugly to try to discredit our politics.
The most striking image of the three is the last one, post-feminism. Featuring a young woman’s face soaked in semen, presumably a still from a porno. Why does this represent post-feminism? Because feminism has made young women sluts who think we’re being liberated by appearing in pornography? Er, no – as proven by the anti-pornography workshops and speakers planned for the conference, and the anti-pornography women’s rights campaigners in the London Feminist Network!
The boundaries have shifted a lot since the beginning of feminism’s second wave in the 50s and 60s. Pornography is a lot more prevalent and accepted in society than it ever has been before. Why is that? It’s not because of feminists and our loose morals and demands for sexual equality – it’s because as men have lost the power that they traditionally held over women in the family and the workplace, misogynist men who feel alienated and less-than because of our fucked up capitalist system have to look elsewhere to exert power over someone. They may not be able to get away with beating their wife for burning the dinner anymore, but they’re more than free to use and abuse the sluts, bitches and cunts in the sex industry.
Not to mention the fact that in the 50s and 60s, if you wanted to get hardcore pornography, you had to go and buy it from a shop or a dodgy guy in an alley – whereas now, everyone and their dog has access to horrific abuse of women for free on the internet, anonymously. Upwards of 90% of children in Scotland have viewed online pornography.
Feminists did not cause the abuse of women through pornography, patriarchy did – and we’re mounting a serious fightback.
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And one more postcard…
Pussy power? No thanks – for reasons already discussed on the alternative Page Three in the most recent Leftfield.
Great article and I agree with you about the so-called ‘feminist’ postcards. I think it’s really important that we resist and fight the values being promoted through porn and which obviously play a huge role in upholding the patriarchal system and influencing how women are viewed and treated in our society. It’s frightening that porn acts as so many young people’s ‘introduction’ to sex and from an early age is able to shape our sexualities in a way that maintains and promotes extremely rigid and conservative gender roles.
The media of course likes to portray porn as ‘liberating’ and an expression of ’sexual freedom’ which of course makes a complete mockery of any true definition of the term. Freedom and liberation will come when people can form their own sexualities outside of the narrow limits set down by capitalism and patriarchy, it will come when noone has to allow themselves to be exploited, abused and sold for money, it will come when women cease to be judged and valued based on the extent to which men find them sexually appealing.
There’s a really valuable, if depressing, feminist documentary people should see called ‘The Price of Pleasure’. It shouldn’t be too hard to get hold of although if you want to support those who made it you can buy the DVD from their site. Trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwMrYpHfQWo
We should complain the Feminism in London!
Amnesty International did an advertising campaign called “cache” about make up and domestic abuse. It evaluated really well in England but Scottish feminists complained about it. Scottish feminists were really angered by it. Amnesty International had to come to Scotland to explain themselves and didn’t understand why we hated it. It was abandoned coming to Scotland.
These postcards are offensive and the post feminist one is disgusting!
I tried to find out more about the artist without much luck online as well. Presumably to have done this he must have some kind of political commitment to feminism (all I could find was this interview: http://www.lomography.com/magazine/lomoamigos/2010/08/16/lomo-amigo-david-rusbatch-shoots-with-the-lomo-lc-a-plus in which he lists one of his creative inspirations as “the female species”). So surely we are supposed to react negatively to the final picture and see it’s horrendousness as the consequence of “post feminism”. I don’t know though, what we are supposed to take away from the images is really unclear. I think it completely fails to communicate a clear idea and is really horrible to see.
Apart from all of which, it’s also a pretty rubbish piece of art, he’s a photographer so he could actually have used a picture he took himself instead of bunging together 3 stills from google image search in paint.
Those postcards are SHIT. I hate them all. It seems that they’ve been made by people who don’t have the first clue about being a feminist. I’m going to try and find the documentary that Stuart mentions, because it looks like it will be very worth watching from the trailer. Everyone knows what porn is and the extensive “categories” of it and shit, but no one knows what goes on behind the scenes. When people watch porn they see it as “a video of people having sex” what they don’t see is take after take of a woman being abused over and over again, the evidence is not overt. She does not scream for help or try to get away, but she knows she’s trapped anyway. Collectively, women know they are trapped.
It looks to me as if the postcard is meant to be a critical comment on the idea of ‘post-feminism’ and it’s association with what gets called ‘raunch culture’ by some folk, and also taking the piss out of simplistic popular ideas of what feminism is (hence greer looking like a scary hectoring madwoman ie. a fairly dominant idea of what a feminist is). I don’t see how you could take from the images that it’s suggesting that feminism is responsible for porn or whatever. To be honest I think you’ve grabbed the wrong end of the stick and run with it here. It’s not that I think it’s particularly brilliant or anything, but it’s certainly open to a variety of interpretations and that the one presented in this article doesn’t really ring true.
It’s shite (the postcard I mean).
I think the artist is being critical of the idea of ‘post feminism. The last picture is meant to ask ‘is this what feminists have fought for?’. I actually thought it was quite a punchy way of making the point that feminists still have lots of work to do.
The postcard is a witty joke! It’s great! And makes a perfect comment on what people think it means to be a feminist!! GREAT!
nick, nuri, woah – i understand your point of view, i just think that if that IS what the artist is trying to say, it’s been done incredibly clumsily. Even just the addition of a question mark at the end of ‘post-feminism’ might have made it a bit clearer.
If the final picture is meant to be a critique of the idea of post-feminism (ie, we’re clearly not in a “post” feminist society, because this still happens) – then what are the first two pictures meant to mean? Are they just filler? Because they don’t seem to be adding a single thing to that message.
If I have grabbed the wrong end of the stick and run with it, that’s because I took the only end of the stick that I could see.
i cant find anything out about this artist, though he does indeed seem to be an “artist”, and to be accepted by the feminist society, there must be some alternative meaning that we’re not getting somewhere?…unless its lost in pretentious art speak somewhere?
@ worst witch, totally agree, been done very clumsily, and straining to find any flattering meaning in the image AT ALL:
MAYBE:
- jenna jameison – ex-porn star, now owns own company?..and rich beyond her dreams?
OR for all the suffering of frida kahlo, and the campaigning of Germaine greer?…there will always be a girl in porn films?
OR stating the unecessary need of feminism?, whereby Germany and Uk have had prime ministers, and councilling exists for “men suffering abuse from women”
im trying to supress my rage here, and be reasonable …or am i just being deluded?
Oh good grief – anyone who thinks that the third image show that feminism still has a lot just makes me mad. Don’t blame feminists for the fact that total equality and complete liberation is still a distant dream. Blame the patriarchy that we’re fighting against! What would have been a fascinating postcard would be to use images of Kahlo’s violent partner, the angry mob Greer is addressing and the group of men directing, filming and participating in the horrid pornographic image. That would have been thought-provoking art.
That said I would urge one and all not to be put off attending the FiL conference, which has been amazing in the past and will be I’m sure again this year.
…”a lot to do” i meant. Too angry for grammar…
I’ve noticed the following comment in the spam section by ‘Ivan Drago’s Wife in Furs’. He asks “How do you explain the fact that countries with greatest level of gender equality also produce the most pornography i.e. Scandinavian countries?”
That is in fact just not true. In Iceland hardcore porn is still banned and in Norway it was banned until a court ruling in 2005. Sweden and Denmark have historically been significantly more liberal although today both countries produce fairly little porn. And in both Sweden and Norway massive anti-porn movements emerged in the 80s and were able to succeed in getting tougher laws introduced. Politically it was largely the left who joined the anti-porn struggle and in Sweden even many of the sex radicals of the RFSU (National Movement for Sexual Education), including its leader Hans Nestius, changed their minds and joined with radical feminists to fight porn. Today the RFSU has a more neutral position on porn but almost everyone in Sweden agrees that the commercial porn industry is damaging and exploitative. In Sweden by the way none of the main newsagents appear to sell any porn at all (apart from perhaps a few lads mags such as Slitz).
Personally I think it is, on the contrary, precisely because Sweden, Norway and Iceland have achieved a high degree of gender equality and sexual liberation that people there are more likely to challenge the commercial sex industry. It is the countries with the least developed feminist movements and lowest level of gender equality where people are more likely to fall for all the crap about porn somehow being positive or a form of liberation.
Here’s a cool anti-porn protest by some feminists and anarchists outside a sex shop in Malmö: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QRv5SxbLE4
(The banner reads: “Stop rape propaganda, smash porn”, They then chant among other things “The fight continues, oppression shall be crushed” and “Smash porn, smash porn”)
Hi Stuart, just so you know, Ivan Drago’s wife in furs got banned from commenting because they were trolling and had actually posted porn in a comment. The way the system works, when someone is banned their comments go automatically to spam so we can still see them and if necessary approve them, but they don’t come on the site itself automatically.
Part of the banning process is that comments that say “Ivan Drago’s Wife in Furs” go to spam, along with his IP, email etc., so that’s why your comment above didn’t come up. If this happens to you again, go to the spam comments and click ‘Not Spam’ on your comment. It will then go to the ‘Pending Comments’ section, where you click ‘Approve’ and it will come up here.
Ivan . . . is a bizarre person with a fixation on us being Trotskyists, which btw I don’t think is accurate. I think many members of SSY have been very influenced by Trotsky’s writing, but we’re just not that kind of group that puts a person’s name as our “ism”, if we’re anyone’s we’re Marxists. The only conclusion you can draw from his obsession is that he’s a porn loving Stalinist troll. How unappealing.
Btw, useful comment, thanks. /\
I wondered why it got blocked. I thought first it was my IP so tried to switch to different countries through a VPN but that didn’t work either. Unfortunately I only seem to be able to moderate comments in my own posts so I couldn’t approve it myself.
I usually don’t like to reply to trolls but in this case it makes way for answering a misconception many seem to have.
Firstly I wouild like to draw facts to you are the people that want to legalise drug freeing people to supposedly express themselves the only way drugs can which would possibly be sexual but you furtherly disagree with porn. As always with middle class protest groups which I deem you to be you treat the people your supposedly protecting like complete idiots. Mainly a woman is forced into fucking a man on a camera and is comletly incapable of saying no to this. I would like to refer to lesbian movies which are directly aimed at women that means filmed by women for women where is the patriachcy there or even as a lesbian you are still hell bent in pleasing the master race which seems to have mind powers which help them make women into idiots. I believe that woman are smarter than that and like many things some people are inadvertenly forced or cajouled into doing it but others want to because they want to. You can not say to women as a feminist I have freed you from the bonds of servitude… oh wait a minute your not supposed to do that i only gave you freedom so you could only agree with my view
Come on, do you really think that the majority of “lesbian” porn is aimed at women?!
You deem us to be a middle class protest group based on what exactly?
The point is that the porn industry is a massive capitalist enterprise perpetrating systematic sexual abuse. This isn’t about stopping people expressing themselves sexually, it’s about stopping rape and abuse.
Thats not what I claimed what I was stating is what is your believe of when a lesbian films a porn for lesbian woman I know you might find this hard to believe but there is a lot of shit on the internet. Obviously I don’t believe that the majority of lesbain films are aimed at woman. Also my point is this porn is not like prostitution in this basis most of the people are half and half why do you constantly go on about the abusement of woman in porn are men not abused in this also what about gay porn were you get more money for gay porn so a lot of men go for that. Also SM also abuses people.
So we agree that porn equals abuse then? So what’s your idea to deal with that abuse?
Can we not agree Paul that all abuse is wrong? Abuse takes place I’m sure in gay porn too and it takes place within all sorts of sexual relationships. But two wrongs never have and never will make a right. I think it is also important that we have a decent power analysis here. That men have more power than women in today’s world is a fact and one which pervades all aspects of our society. The abuse of men in gay porn is just as terrible morally as the abuse of women in heterosexual porn. However heterosexual porn is symptomatic of and serves to reinforce the patriarchal power structure of male dominance and female submission in a way which gay porn obviously does not.
I don’t agree with you that porn is necessarily any different from prostitution. While we could perhaps potentially have a non-exploitative, non-patriarchal porn (as opposed to prostitution which will always be inherently exploitative in my view) it is clear to me that porn in its current commercial form is basically just a form of filmed prostitution. In both cases women are paid money to allow themselves to be used and abused for the gratification of men and deprived of the right to any meaningful bodily autonomy. It is not in any way middle class or bourgeois to point this out and to oppose it.