While pornography addiction currently circulates as a comprehensible, diagnosable, and describable way to make sense of some people’s ostensibly problematic relationship with pornography, such a comprehensive description of this relationship has only recently been made possible. The current analysis makes visible pornography addiction as situated within a varied history of concerns about pornography, masturbation, fantasy, and technology in an effort to bring to bear a conceptual critique of the modern concept of pornography addiction. Such a critique in turn works to (...) offer an alternative to treating the study of pornography addiction as the discovery of a new disease, instead conceiving it as the propagation of old forms of knowledge under a new moniker. (shrink)

This paper compares the phenomenological structure of zoological exhibition to the pattern prevalent in pornography. It examines several disanalogies between the two, finds them lacking or irrelevant, and concludes that the proposed analogy is strong enough to serve as a critical lens through which to view the institution of zoos. The central idea uncovered in this process of interpretation is paradoxical: Zoos are pornographic in that they make the nature of their subjects disappear precisely by overexposing them. The paper asserts (...) that the keep are thus degraded or marginalized through the marketing and consumption of their very visibility and criticizes the pretense of preservation. Furthermore, the paper subjects the related framework of captivity to Foucauldian analysis and critique—we see that the "zoöpticon" deserves designation as an island of power in the carceral archipelago of hegemonic social institutions mapped by Foucault. Hence, this paper suggests that the zoo as we know it be phased out in favor of richer and less oppressive modes of encountering other forms of life; toward this end, the paper explores and assesses alternative approaches to, and practices of, nonhuman animal spectatorship and cross-species conviviality. (shrink)

Pornographic speech harms women by playing a key role in sustaining the social conditions through which women's liberty and equality are undercut. Though there is a principled moral and constitutional basis for pursuing a legal strategy in fighting pornography, we should not overestimate the effectiveness of the law or underestimate its potential dangers. The struggle against pornography must be waged through education, expressive exploration, and protest, not through the law.

Propornography and antipornography literatures have failed to elucidate the complexity of women's consumption of pornography. This article submits that a reconstructed theory of emotional labor, developed from the perspective of the consumer, explains some of women's ambivalence toward pornography. Findings are based on interviews with 30 women who enjoy porn films. The women's ambivalence reflected their perception of emotional labor in pornographic production. Although they found pornography arousing, they faced uncertainty over the authenticity of the porn actresses' pleasure. Furthermore, they (...) perceived emotional authenticity through the lens of their personal biographies. Specifically, their economic backgrounds and experiences with sexual coercion are discussed. This study fills two gaps: By linking the production and consumption of pornography, it enables a deeper exploration of women's ambivalence and the subsequent implications for understanding sexuality, and it features the experiences of working-class and minority women, whose voices have been marginal in the literature. (shrink)

We need a feminist theory of disability, both because 16 percent of women are disabled, and because the oppression of disabled people is closely linked to the cultural oppression of the body. Disability is not a biological given; like gender, it is socially constructed from biologically reality. Our culture idealizes the body and demands that we control it. Thus, although most people will be disabled at some time in their lives, the disabled are made "the other," who symbolize failure of (...) control and the threat of pain, limitation, dependency, and death. If disabled people and their knowledge were fully integrated into society, everyone's relation to her/his real body would be liberated. (shrink)