From: shannon stoney (sstoney@pdq.net)
Date: 08/27/02-02:57:53 PM Z
Here is an article I found on the internet, for people who might
still be thinking about these issues. I looked for it because I got
something from Harper's magazine that mentioned "the feminist case
for pornography." Apparently this was alluding to an article by
Sallie Tisdale that appeared in 1992. Did anybody read that article
or still have it? I couldn't find it at the Harper's web site.
Anyway, now it is part of a book that might be worth reading for
those interested in the issue of women and porn and erotica.
This article even addresses one of our favorite subjects on this
list, sexy fruits and vegetables!
Sorry the text is so pale. It was one of those kind of web pages.
--shannon
>Keywords: Sexuality
>Title: Talk Dirty To Me
>Author/Artist: Sallie Tisdale
>Publisher: Doubleday
>Media: Book
>Reviewer: Maria Mitchell
>About three years ago, I came across an article in Harper's by
>Sallie Tisdale. It was only a couple of pages long, but it sparked a
>significant change in my behavior. Tisdale's article discussed
>pornography, which she recommended. Intrigued by her confessional
>yet thought provoking piece, I became for the first time an
>occasional patron of the X-rated section of the local video store.
>Shyly, I asked certain close friends if they had read the article,
>and what their reaction was. I learned with interest that Tisdale
>was writing a book on the philosophy of sex.
>Talk Dirty to Me received more media attention than any of Sallie
>Tisdale's earlier books. (She had previously written about the
>geography and culture of the Pacific Northwest, life in a nursing
>home, and salt.) As soon as I found out the title, I requested that
>the public library buy the book, and placed a hold on it. That was
>in November. Checking the online catalog soon after the book's
>publication, I found there were nine holds on three copies. My turn
>came around the first of March.
>Meanwhile, I stopped in at our neighborhood bookstore, and judged
>the price too steep for my budget. Some of that cost must have gone
>into the book's beautiful design and black dustjacket. I opted for
>delayed gratification. Only when I finally checked out a library
>copy did I discover the arresting front cover photograph, an
>unusually seductive fruit or vegetable held tenderly in someone's
>fingers. Is it an unripe peach? a weird tomato? a mutant apple?
>Whatever it is, it looks startlingly like...someone's bare bottom? a
>hairless vulva? Whatever it looks like, it is
>definitely...disturbing? exciting? illusory?
>And this cover is a perfect introduction to what is perhaps the main
>theme of Talk Dirty to Me. Tisdale reports on some of her own sexual
>experiences, and explores what sex means to quite an array of other
>people, in light of her steadfast belief in the idiosyncratic
>uniqueness of each individual's sexual response. In the name of
>freedom, she defends the right of any person to pursue his or her
>path to sexual fulfillment. In answer to "conservative feminists"
>who argue that pornography is inherently sexist and violent towards
>women, Tisdale posits her own assumption about the limits to morally
>acceptable sexual activity: no harm to others, no harm to oneself,
>physically or emotionally.
>Within these limits, which make sense to me, there is room for both
>freedom and tolerance. "The main reason I resist censoring any form
>of speech or expression is a selfish one," Tisdale writes. "I know
>that sooner or later something I write or something I want to read
>or see or talk about is going to be forbidden." In Talk Dirty to Me,
>Tisdale names the unnameable, going behind the scenes of the ongoing
>sex movies explicit or covert that bombard us every day on
>television, on the street, in the workplace, in recreational
>settings and yes, at home. Whatever Catherine MacKinnon or Andrea
>Dworkin might say about it, this is a liberating book. It's also a
>good read. Ask your library to buy a copy.
>This review first appeared in Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed #44
>(Fall/Winter 9'7-98, C.A.L. Press, POB 1446, Columbia, MO 65205
>1446, USA)
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