Feminist Pub XXI - The Pub with No Name

[erinaceus]

Welcome, everybody.

Happy Friday.

Ooh!

Tooooooo many books!

Accidentally caught this morning's Woman's Hour - Jenni Murray interviewing Cordelia Fine on 'Testosterone Rex'.

I forgot to note the time, think it started somewhere around 10:30. A preceding segment is well worth avoiding, someone going on about 'pops of gingham' may induce stabbiness.

Thanks, Errol. Will try and catch it later.

Clip of Handmaids Tale. V chilling

www.theguardian.com/film/video/2017/mar/24/the-handmaids-tale-elisabeth-moss-stars-in-disturbing-first-full-trailer-video?CMP=twt_gu

I've never read The Handmaids Tale - I tend not to like dystopia. Should I? (though I've a pile of other fiction I actually want to read and can't focus on at the moment)

THT was used in the 80s to support the pro-porn position. Apparently Atwood was anti-censorship of porn.

I read this when I was in my 20s ad first getting interested in feminism. I dont remember much about it apart from the part about women being used as breeders and being shocked and moved by it. I think i will read it again now Im a radical and so not pro porn! I like Atwood as a writer anyway though. Film looks good

Didn't know that Yet, that's interesting.

I think it's a good read and there are some chilling parallels with the erosion of women's reproductive and maternity rights in the US

twitter.com/RepMcGovern/status/844991898850877443

I think "pro porn" in the 80s when all but the softest porn was banned and when expression of female sexuality was frowned on is a different thing than pro-porn in an era when misogynistic hard core porn is accessible to everyone at the click of a button and women and girls are increasingly pressured not to be "vanilla".
Would be interesting to see what Margaret Astwood thinks about porn now.

Ooooh, that looks good! Will definitely be watching.

How was the book leveraged into a pro porn position? I'm not aware of what Atwood's position was. I suppose there's always an uneasy convergence of feminism and right-wing patriarchal views on porn, though they come from such different directions, I've never understood how it's really possible to mix them up.

On another literature note, I finished reading "The Power", which was a recommendation from here and...I did not love it.

I thought it never really hit its stride, to be honest, and the religious bits just irritated me.

What am I missing?

I think "pro porn" in the 80s when all but the softest porn was banned and when expression of female sexuality was frowned on is a different thing than pro-porn in an era when misogynistic hard core porn is accessible to everyone at the click of a button and women and girls are increasingly pressured not to be "vanilla"

I think we must have lived through a different decade ... ??? Certainly there was no internet but porn was readily available and some was pretty hard core. I also don't recall the expression of female sexuality being frowned upon???

Maybe it's my age - I was a young teens at the end of the 80s and the porn the boys had access to was basically magazines of top less women they picked up off the side of the road

By female sexuality being frowned on I mean if you did ONS you'd be called a slut (90s now) and the idea of women enjoying sex was all quite risqué. Maybe I have a sheltered life though

Recent interview with Atwood

digg.com/video/margaret-atwood-porn-twitter

She is blase about porn.

I was all groan up at the end of the 80s and porn was very available. Plus, Atwood is Canadian - no idea what was available thre, but I know that Not A Love Story was a Canadian production.

My understanding is that THT was Atwood's commentary on what might happen if the religious right joined forces with (radical) anti-porn feminism. She was anti rad fem.

I don't agree, but one reason I refused to be part of rad fem then was that there was a joining of forces. There still is. I am deeply uncomfortable with a number of alliances the anti-prostitution feminists have made of late and I'm suspicious about the way that sexual politics dominate the RF agenda to the exclusion of fighting for abortion rights (at least in groups I dip my toe in).

There's also some chilling parallels with Afghanistan and the Taliban. I think she said that everything that happened in the book had happened somewhere one time or another.

By female sexuality being frowned on I mean if you did ONS you'd be called a slut (90s now) and the idea of women enjoying sex was all quite risqué. Maybe I have a sheltered life though

I think there have been shifts ... certainly (I think) the average age of first experience has got younger. I think 'slut' is still a common insult. But the idea of us enjoying sex was not risqué. That went out in the 60s.

You think so, Yet? I think there's still a lot of "sex isn't really for women to enjoy" messages out there - women are still the gatekeepers of sex and of course a lot of porn disregards (and worse) female enjoyment

I think it is more complex now, Helen. There is never one discourse and multiple discourses can have multiple meanings. I think the conversation between Quentin and I was about a time when women were supposed to 'put up' with sex as a duty - then along came Masters and Johnson and the Myth of Vaginal Orgasm and Our Bodies Ourselves and a whole range of input from the feminist movement and I think that changed. I'm referring to an era when women's pleasure wasn't even on the table and the clitoris was just a nub with no sexual function. I think sex still happens through men's eyes and women are supposed to be 'always ready' and 'enjoy everything' (which is what I think you are saying), but this is not about women's enjoyment being risque.

Ah, thanks for explaining further.

Well actually I didn't mean women were meant to put up with sex. But when I was a teenager women's enjoyment of sex was seen almost as a performance (think of the term "lipstick lesbian" which was popular then) and women did regularly get labelled as sluts for enjoying sex or having sex with a new partner too quickly. Now it seems female sex is still a performance and women are expected to do acts for men not their own enjoyment as illustrated in a lot of porn.
I just wondered whether the changes in attitudes to sex and the type of porn out there would have altered Margaret Atwoods opinion.
Just my opinion though.

Is noone drinking these days? [Wine] [beer]

What's happened to the alcohol??!!

Maybe I thread killed the pub

Can I get served in this pub without being asked for ID?