I don't see much of interest to comment on in the Deen material. There are some important issues that could be discussed- like the powerful relationship between sex and politics, and the rise of women in Congress. It is high time that progressives took advantage of it rather than shoving it into the closet.

The cynical attitude about women who telegraph sexual messages is that the mode in which it is effectively used are those who behave like Madonna or Ginger (of Gilligan's island). They use appealing attributes of their gender to gain power over the opposite sex. In the case of women, the statistics show that it is not the Gingers but the Mary Ann's that have the power- Dawn Wells for example got 3 times as much mail as Tina Louise.

Sex appeal is a powerful drive, and men with it have used it to their political advantage. Not all men are JFK, and similarly not all women have the right combination to pull it off, but just wondering- is it politically possible for a female candidate to take advantage of her sexual appeal?

I don't mean fluffy non threating personas like Dawn Wells. I mean solid thinkers who are effective hard nosed leaders. Must they be essentially androgenous to win votes? It seems to me that many of the women that guest on UP and MHP have no trouble turning on men and simultaneously displaying first class minds. I don't want to embarrass anyone, but crikies, feminist women must know they have this huge power they are underutilizing. I don't want to embarrass anyone, but I can think of several female progressive pundits who, if they ran for an office could easily deliver detailed arguments on policy while simultaneously delivering a powerful physical reaction amongst her male political supporters. No, I am not talking about low cut outfits. I am not talking about men drooling and embroiled in sex fantasies, I am talking about a strong bonding- the kind of loyalty response where somewhere behind the frontal lobes, the mind is saying- this person would be an excellent mate- someone who will fight hard if the family is threatened.

It seems to me that it is a powerful political cocktail, but I dunno- maybe this is too early for our society- maybe there is too much of a dominance narrative activated among voters when sexuality is introduced. Just too much of an unpredictable factor?

I do wish Gail Dines could have made it onto the show.

Here is a slightly edited copy of an email I sent to the CounterPunch website on the posting of Gail Dines' response to the MHP Show's segments on porn:

I have been a long time reader and fan of CounterPunch for almost 10 years now, and I have been impressed by the depth of investigative journalism that CP has produced. Nevertheless, I am particularly flabberghasted that an otherwise fine website continues to allow the likes of Gail Dines to besmirch their pages with her constant antiporn "feminist" agitprop and juvenile temper tantrums.

Her latest post ("When a Feminist Gets Bumped For A Pornographer", July 10th) is symbolic of the distortions and outright misrepresentations and sheer ridiculousness of her claims about pornography and women, and makes a particularly underhanded and possibly slanderous attack on MSNBC hostess and political analyst Melissa Harris-Perry, feminist sex educator/adult video producer Tristan Taormino, and other participants in the panel discussion on porn, race, and feminism. I find it horrifying that CP finds it OK to reprint Dines' screeds without any means of response or vetting, but cannot be arsed to allow ONE adult performer, producer, or even active feminist in opposition to Dines' radical feminist/sexually reactionary viewpoint to respond to her blatant misassumptions and prejudices about their profession.

First, her claims that MSNBC "dissed" her after initially inviting her to make comments about their upcoming program, and that they only invited Jaclyn Friedman and Tristan Taormino after they "rejected" her, is simply false. Both the MHP Show producers and Friedman have confirmed that Harris-Perry's people had invited Friedman and Taormino to appear in their show before they sent the email to Dines soliciting her comments; it's more likely that their decision to not invite Dines was more based on their knowledge of Dines' stated public policy of not debating pro-porn or sex-positive-identified women or women working within the porn industry In effect, Dines only does public debates where she controls the agenda and gets to speak without any accountability or opposition; and the MHP Show wasn't willing to surrender their show to become an antiporn propaganda piece.

Her juvenile reduction of Tristan Taormino's work to a mere "pornographer" and a porn industry "shill" is a direct slander of Taormino's work as a safer-sex educator who uses explicit adult media as a means of allowing women and men to expand their sexual boundaries safely and consensually. And, it should be mentioned that the guilt-by-association tactic of linking Taormino with porn producer/distributor John Stagliano glosses over the fact that Stagliano has not only not been accused of coercing any performer into making his explicit sex videos, but has actually been acquitted of "obscenity" charges filed against him by right-wing antisex forces....the very same ones that Dines herself has openly embraced and allied with in her antiporn crusade. Indeed, Dines shared the platform with the very director of the then Obscenity Task Force of the Department of Justice, Patrick Trueman, at a Congressional luncheon in 2010 that was sponsored by Trueman's current organization, Pornography Harms. Very interesting for someone who calls herself a "progressive", isn't it?

Now, the many, many misrepresentations that make up her main verbal and written assaults against adult sexual media are simply too numerous to detail here, but I will detail som instances that occur here.

First: her definition of "gonzo" porn is an invention of her own mind intended to satisfy her propagandized reduction of all porn to "mass rape and violence and degradation of women". For the rest of us who rely on actual dictionary definitions, "gonzo" simply refers to an aesthetic style of film making where the viewer is made to look like they are a part of the action, rather than a passive viewer. In porn, "gonzo" can also refer to what is called "POV" "point of view") videos which simulate as if the viewer was engaged in the sex act with the performer. Such films can depict the cacophony of sexual emotions, from the romantic to the more aggressive, but mostly, "gonzo" reflects a filming style, not the sex act in and of itself. Dines deliberately distorts the definition of "gonzo" into her vision of "violent, debasing body-punishing sex" as a means of selling the view that "porn sex" is a reflection of simple male violence and rape, rather than the negotiated agreement between performers, producers, and the viewers. That's not to say that some "gonzo" porn can't be overly aggressive and even, in extreme cases, quite misogynistic, but most porn described as "gonzo" are simply depictions of consensual, enthusiastic sex mutually shared for the viewer's pleasure.

Secondly..Dines' obsession with anal and oral sex would be so laughable were it not so tragic. She makes frequent references to the supposed disastrous affects of such acts, such as "fecal throat infections" due to the prevalence of ATM (ass-to-mouth) sex and "gonorrhea of the throat" due to "deepthroating" and oral sex....and she even quotes cases of "climidia of the eye" (you'd think that an expert on porn such as Professor Dines would spell "chlamydia" correctly), which I assume to be the hazard of sperm getting into the eyes from facial external ejaculations. Problem is, she gives no confirmatory proof that such effects and infections are so widespread, or even exist; and she simply doesn't allow for the fact that performers are given fair warning and prepare their bodies for such acts...most of which they perform freely and safely in their own personal lives off screen. Of course, if you happen to believe that oral and anal sex workers are inherently "degrading" and "debasing" to begin with, then it would follow that they would be the source of such disease and destruction....but that would belay Dines' claim of being a progressive radical feminist, now wouldn't it?

It should also be noted that the very film that Tristan Taormino produced that was bankrolled by Stagliano happened to be an instructional video on introducing women to safe anal sex...which included the proper preparations (douching, edemas, general cleansing) to prevent the very effects that Dines rants about. But. according to Dines, that only makes Taormino a paid "shill" for the industry, thusly disqualifying her from even appearing in a debate on porn. Irony and projection are powerful drugs, I guess.

Of course, there are many progressive feminist sex educators and performers (Nina Hartley being the most famous example) whom could rebuke and refute all of the myopic arguments that Dines makes...but I guess that CP just can't allow pro-porn leftists and progressives to have the same platform they give Dines and Robert Jensen and other antiporn activists, right??

The most ignoble of Dines' assault on Melissa Harris-Perry, though, comes when Dines attempts to mine one of Perry's earlier critiques of a recent movie, "The Help" as a means of blowback against MHP. "The Help" was a movie adaptation of a historical fictional novel depicting the lives of Black domestic maids during the 1960's in Mississippi during the heart of the Civil Rights Movement; Perry had blasted the film adaptation as a "whitewashing" of the suffering, exploitation and violence endured against all African Americans during that period. Dines' attempt to exploit that as a means of comparison with the supposed "slave" treatment of Black female performers as well as the portrayal of Black women as a whole in porn; is at best gross trivialization of the reality of violence...and at worst, outright slander of the social agency of Black performers today. Simply citing isolated movie titles such as "Pimp My Black Teens", "Bad Black Babes". "Ghetto Bangers", and "Oh, No! There's A NEGRO In My Daughter!" to prove the innate racism of porn without even asking a single Black performer (you know, people like Lexington Steele, Mr. Marcus, Richard Mann, Sean Michaels, Justin Long, Vanessa Blue, Misty Stone, Jada Fire...etc., etc.).....well, isn't that as much if not more dehumanizing and indeed, dare I say it, more racist than even the porn she's maligning?? Plus, there is a difference between domestic maids who essentially raised their employer's kids at less than minimum wage and often experienced real life abuse and even rape; and porn performers engaging in consensual sex and getting paid decent money...often more than even the men they have sex with in those scenes.

Finally...Dines claims that not allowing her viewpoint to be engaged without counterpoint or accountability reduces Harris-Perry to the realm of "talk show host", rather than the "academic" that she seemed to be in Dines' eyes before this episode occurred. That's quite hilarious to me, considering that much of Dines' whole "academic" career has been to propagandize her theories about porn as the centerpiece of capitalism and the root of male sexual violence and degradation of women, and that much of her "scholarship" (including her latest tome, Pornland, which you conveniently provided free publicity to) is based on faulty, jerry-rigged, and phony statistics mostly cooked out of her head, and distortions of Marxist and anticapitalist theory alchemized to fit into her narrow antisex/antiporn agenda.

And yet, in spite of Dines' ranting and raving, even the ultimate segments on porn that did appear on MHP's program turned out not to be the "fluffy" promotion of porn as the next great empowerment for women (although, many in porn have actually experienced it as such, and their voices should not be denied or dismissed so quickly), but instead turned out to be a passionate debate on not only the representations of porn as vehicles of sexual agency for women, but also sexual representations of Black people and women in media in general. Everything from the Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction" during her infamous Super Bowl halftime show, to the "Fifty Shades of Grey" phenomenon, to the compared cultural image reflections of Kim Kardashian and Janet Jackson, to the Rush Limbaugh slanders against Sandra Fluke as a "slut" for standing up for her right for health care coverage for birth control...all of that was touched on in the segments. (Even the double entendre of Michael Eric Dyson -- "They want to tap that gas" -- was a reference to the Republicans' economic policies and their relationship to the current neo-Puritanical policies they are attempting to enact.) In short...absolutely NOTHING like the tribute to "fun feminism" or "Yay Porn" that Dines feared.

@Ms. Scheffer....And for the record, I would assume that it was Gail Dines who declined to appear on the show after the MHP Show producers offered her the chance, not the other way around.

Not according to Gail Dines herself. Go Google it.

I also feel disappointed that Gail Dines was bumped from this show. From my perspective an opportunity to have a critical conversation about the impact of pornography on women, men, and our culture at large was missed. While it is, perhaps, interesting to discuss the fringe/'indie' porn that is being produced, the vast majority of porn that is consumed in North America is of the mainstream, misogynist kind - why ignore that? The question of 'who profits' was discussed as though the pornography industry isn't a multi-billion dollar global industry - as though the fact that 'anyone can produce porn now' is some kind of indicator of 'freedom' or progress? That everyone is 'free' to profit off of the objectification of women? I suppose that's the American dream though, isn't it...The point made that female porn actresses are paid more than male actors is merely a diversion from the fact that those who profit are still, for the most part, men/male-run companies. It's not as though most women in porn are getting rich off of it. This was an opportunity to provide a strong capitalist/feminist critique of the pornography industry and instead the truth was simply talked around. It's disappointing.