2)First off, here’s the rules, as sent to me by Renegade Evolution:

1) Solicit an interview through another blogger’s comment section.
2) Said blogger sends you five questions of varying intimacy for you to answer.
3) You answer them in your blog (with proper credit and linkage).
4) You then solicit others if they want to be interviewed.
5) If they do, then you must send them five Q’s for them to answer….and so on.

And now….the Henchwoman’s High Five, along with my responses:

1) Aside from Nina [Hartley], who are your favorite porn stars?

I have to break it down into subcategories, since there are so many women I adore:
Hardcore Pros (besides Nina): Vicky Vette, Avy Scott, Heather Hunter, Shayla LaVeaux, Rebecca Lord, Kylie Irleand, Ava Devine, Desiree Cousteau, Gina Lynn, Vanessa del Rio, Bethany Sweet, Cara Lott, Sativa Rose
Hardcore SemiPro/Amateurs: Bridgett Lee, Naughty Allie, Nikki Jackson, Rebecca Jessop, Jan Burton
Softcore Pros: Shauna O’Brien, Kira Reed, Julie Strain, Monique Parent

2) As a kid, you wanted to grow up to be a….?

First a policeman; then, when I got deep into music, a band director.

3) What is one of your role models?

Nelson Mandela….gotta admire someone willing to suffer so much personally to liberate an entire nation.

4) Favorite band/artist?

I was raised on 70s funk and "The Elements" (Earth, Wind, & Fire)…but my heart and soul gotta stick with Olivia [Newton-John].

5) You seem to love the drumline action…do you play?

Sadly, no….I was actually more of a woodwind specialist in college, and I never quite made it to get my degree for whatever reason. Still, I’m big on marching bands (especially the high-stepping "showbands") and I just like d-lines that can execute and entertain.

——————————————————————————-

All right….who wants to play along?? As Beyonce would say: "To the left, to the left….."

If I could find a way to put this on the sidebar, this would be my new theme photo for the blog….except perhaps with a dog replacing the ferret (Sorry, Paul):

Much love to Susie Bright for granting me permission to repost that effin’ brilliant motto…and by all means, do take a visit over at her kick-ass blog and venture in on the spicy debate she’s having right now on the issue of tagging "suggestive" content as "NFSW" (Not Safe For Work). She sees it as more of the same old sexual censorship; many commenters tend to disagree and defend it under the guise of protecting workers from getting fired for sexual harrassment. Just read and decide for yourself.

It would be so easy and so righteous to get into a frothy rage over Ann Coulter’s latest venture of "Mouse Davis Syndrome"* regarding her CPAC conference "faggot" smack against John Edwards…but other liberals do that so very well.

But, when same basher of gays (and liberals and Democrats assumed to be such) is caught with her hands down the pants of former gay porn stars turned fellow wingnut rightists (figuratively speaking, that is)….well, that catches your eye kinda quick.

Turns out that one of the invitees at the very CPAC (Conservative Political Action Committee) confab where St. Annie got off her blast (and who even happened to score a nice portrait of him with her) just so happens to be a pretty well endowed ex-Marine turned "conservative" columnist…..who managed to star in gay male porn films and even do escorting.

The consolidated version of the complete story, courtesy of Joe.My.God., with an assist from the lovely-but deadly Troll Killa known better as Sabina Becker:

If you are familiar with Cpl. Matt Sanchez, you probably know him as the handsome 36-year old Columbia University junior and USMC reservist who recently made the rounds of right-wing talk shows like O’Reilly Factor and Hannity & Colmes, where he received praise for coming forward and complaining about his treatment at the hands of Columbia’s "radical anti-military students" who called him names and mocked his military service. Sanchez was then feted at the CPAC conference where Ann Coulter made her "faggot" remark. Sanchez wrote an op-ed piece on the Columbia experience for the NY Post and began a blog and MySpace page chronicling his media exposure.

Oh, swell…..another Semper Fi Gung-’Ho of the Jeff Gannon/Jim Guckert school.

Oh, but it gets even better…turns out that Senor Sanchez also, like Gannon/Guckert, did some escortin’ on the side, too. The Joe.My.God. entry includes links to his escort page and his Amazon home page where he reviews several gay porn vids, among other things.

To give him credit, though, Sanchez has been a bit more honest and open about his gay porn sex life than most righties; he has done countless interviews and even blogged about his life as a gay porn stud and the consistency of being a right winger and a gay man.

But this really isn’t as much about Matt Sanchez as it is about ‘Da Coultergeist" slamming Democrats as gay while consorting with gay male porn stars. Question for Annie: Aren’t you being more than a tiny bit hypocritical or cynical about blasting liberals for their "evil acceptance" of the "gay lifestyle" even while you defend the right of ex-gay pornsters and prostitutes?? Is it really the "gayness" of John Edwards that you hate that got you to get off that blast…or is it more of the same Democrat/liberal bashing that you are inevitably known for?? Or….perhaps, you really, really do want to get yourself some of that uncut 11" wood for yourself and "turn" Mr. Sanchez out into a "normal" wingnutter?? (Not that I as a sex rad libertarian would oppose your personal right to lust after him and his dick, mind you, Ms. Annie; but it seems kinda hypocritical that you would deny regular gay folks who don’t share your wingnuttery the same rights of consensual lust-seeking under the guise of "defending Chirstianity".)

And what of the many "conservative" fundie Christians who follow your every word and who may feel more than a bit betrayed and wronged that you are willing to consort with the hated enemy of all things holy and moral…you do know about the latest proposal by the head of the Southern Baptist Convention ruling committee about intervening in the development of preborn fetuses to block the supposed "gay gene", do you??

But, then again, it’s not as if Annie hasn’t been know to run her mouth and shoot from the hip..only this time, the political climate has changed to the point that people are a bit less forgiving of such talk. Enjoy your final descent downward into ignobility, Coultergeist…it seems that your 15 minutes of fame is just about to expire. Maybe you could put all that energy attacking Democrats to better use…..like, say, seeking better dates or a proper hairstyler??

[*"Mouse Davis Syndrome" is in honor of football coach Darrell "Mouse" Davis, who was the founder and inventor of football's high-flying "Run-and-Shoot" offense which thrived and then died in the college and professional ranks during the late 80s and early 90s. The "syndrome" is my tribute to those who tend to let their mouths run a bit more than usual and who occasionally shoot their own feet when doing so. It is no reflection on the actual offense, which I actually tend to favor...being such a radical and all.]

Note #2: Please not that the last post contained no references to Annie’s supposed "mannish" looks or her "gender-bending"; in my view, her noxious right-wing Repub ideology and her reputation as a fascist bomb thrower are more than sufficient for derision. Her gender identity is her own business and nobody elses.

I’m not sure that I can ever do justice to the many kind tributes to Molly Ivins — journalist, progressive populist, humorist, feminist, and all around badassssss who left this mortal world almost a month ago - but rereading this particular essay flambeeing right-wing cultural critic/Ayn Rand wannabe Camille Paglia brought back such great memories that I felt the need to share it with the rest of ‘ya.

A grateful thanks to Avedon Carol of The Sideshow for pointing me to the column, and to Erich Schneider for having the forethought to save the original Mother Jones column and post it on the Internet (via his Caltech home page).

Erich’s original posting was done in 1990s Newsgroup syntax; I have altered it slightly to fit more modern standards.

From _Mother Jones_, September/October 1991, pp 8-10
(Italics are indicated like _this_.)

Impolitic, by Molly Ivins.
I Am the Cosmos

Austin, Texas — “So write about Camille Paglia,” suggested the
editor. Like any normal person, I replied, “And who the hell might
she be?”

Big cheese in New York intellectual circles. The latest rage. Hot
stuff. Controversial.

But I’m not good on New York intellectual controversies, I explained.
Could never bring myself to give a rat’s ass about Jerzy Kosinski.
Never read Andy Warhol’s diaries. Can never remember the name of the
editor of this New Whatsit, the neo-con critical rag. I’m a no-hoper
on this stuff, practically a professional provincial.

Read Paglia, says he, you’ll have an opinion. So I did; and I do.

Christ! Get this woman a Valium!

Hand her a gin. Try meditation. Camille, honey, calm down!

The noise is about her oeuvre, as we always say in Lubbock: Sexual
Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. In
very brief, for those of you who have been playing hooky from the New
York Review of Books, Ms. Paglia’s contention is that “the history
of western civilization has been a constant struggle between … two
impulses, an unending tennis match between cold, Apollonian
categorization and Dionysian lust and chaos.” Jeez, me too. I always
thought the world was divided into only two kinds of people — those
who think the world is divided into only two kinds of people, and
those who don’t.

You think perhaps this is a cheap shot, that I have searched her work
and caught Ms. Paglia in a rare moment of sweeping generalization,
easy to make fun of? Au contraire, as we always say in Amarillo; the
sweeping generalization is her signature. In fact, her work consists
of damn little else. She is the queen of the categorical statement.

Never one to dodge a simple dichotomy when she can set one up, Ms.
Paglia holds that the entire error of western civilization stems from
denying that nature is a kind of nasty, funky, violent, wet dream, and
that Judeo-Christianity has been one long effort to ignore this. She
pegs poor old Rousseau, that fathead, as the initiator of the silly
notion that nature is benign and glorious and that only civilization
corrupts.

Right away, I got a problem. Happens I have spent a lot of my life in
the wilderness, and also a lot of my life in bars. When I want sex and
violence, I go to a Texas honky-tonk. When I want peace and quiet, I
head for the woods. Just as a minor historical correction to Ms.
Paglia, Rousseau did not invent the concept of benign Nature. Among
the first writers to hold that nature was a more salubrious
environment fro man than the corruptions of civilization were the
Roman Stoics — rather a clear-eyed lot, I always thought.

Now why, you naturally ask, would anyone care about whether a reviewer
has ever done any serious camping? Ah, but you do not yet know the
Camille Paglia school of I-am-the-cosmos argument. Ms. Paglia believes
that all her personal experiences are Seminal. Indeed, Definitive.

She credits a large part of her supposed wisdom to having been born
post-World War II and thus having been raised on television. Damn me,
so was I.

In addition to the intrinsic cultural superiority Ms. Paglia
attributes to herself from having grown up watching television (“It’s
Howdy-Doody Time” obviously made us all smarter), she also considers
her own taste in music to be of enormous significance. “From the
moment the feminist movement was born, it descended into dogma,” she
told an interviewer for New York magazine. “They stifled any kind
of debate, any kind of dissent. Okay, it’s Yale, it’s New Haven in
‘69, I am a rock fanatic, okay …. So I was talking about taste to
these female rock musicians, and I said the Rolling Stones were the
greatest rock band, and that just set them off. They said, `The
Rolling Stones are sexist, and it’s bad music because it’s sexist.’ I
said: `Wait a minute. You can’t make a judgements about art on the
basis of whether it fits into some dogma.’ And now they’re yelling,
screaming, saying that nothing that demeans women can be art.

“You see, right from the start it was impossible for me to be taken
into the feminist movement, okay? The only art they will permit is art
that gives a positive image of women. I said, `That’s like the Soviet
Union; that is the demagogic, propagandistic view of art.’ ”

Well, by George, as a First Amendment absolutist, you’ll find me
willing to spring to the defense of Camille Paglia’s right to be a
feminist Rolling Stones fan any hour, day or night. Come to think of
it, who the hell was the Stalin who wouldn’t let her do that? I went
back and researched the ‘69 politburo, and all I could find was Betty
Friedan, Bella Abzug, and Gloria Steinem, none of whom ever seems to
have come out against rock music.

I have myself quite cheerfully been both a country-music fan and a
feminist for years — if Camille Paglia is the cosmos, so am I. When
some fellow feminist doesn’t like my music (How could you not like
“You are just another sticky wheel on the grocery cart of life”?), I
have always felt free to say, in my politically correct feminist
fashion, “Fuck off.”

In a conversation printed in Harper’s magazine, Paglia held forth on
on of her favorite themes — Madonna, the pop singer: “The latest
atavistic discoverer of the pagan heart of Catholicism is Madonna.
This is what she’s up to. She doesn’t completely understand it
herself. When she goes on Nightline and makes speeches about
celebrating the body, as if she’s some sort of Woodstock hippie, she’s
way off. She needs me to tell her.” I doubt that.

Bram Dijkstra, author of a much-praised book, Idols of Perversity,
which is a sort of mirror image of Sexual Personae, said that Paglia
“literally drags the whole nineteenth-century ideological structure
back into the late-eighteenth century, really completely unchanged.
What’s so amazing is that she takes all that nineteenth-century stuff,
Darwinism and social Darwinism, and she re-asserts it and reaffirms it
in this incredibly dualistic fashion. In any situation, she
establishes the lowest common denominator of a point. She says,
`This is the feminist point of view,’ and overturns it by standing it
on its head. She doesn’t go outside what she critiques; she simply
puts out the opposite of it.”

“For example,” Dijkstra continues, “she claims, `Feminism blames
rape on pornography,’ which is truly the reductio ad absurdum of the
feminist point of view. Of course, there are very many feminist points
of view, but then she blows away this extremely simplified opposite,
and we are supposed to consider this erudition. She writes aphorisms
and then throws them out, one after the other, so rapid-fire the
reader is exhausted.”

Tracing Paglia’s intellectual ancestry is a telling exercise; she’s
the lineal descendant of Ayn Rand, who in turn was a student of
William Graham Sumner, one of the early American sociologists and an
enormously successful popularzier of social Darwinism. Sumner was in
turn a disciple of Herbert Spencer, that splendid nineteenth-century
kook. Because Paglia reasserts ideas so ingrained in our thinking, she
has become popular by reaffirming common prejudices.

Paglia’s obsession with de Sade is beyond my competence, although the
glorification of sadomasochism can easily be read as a rationalization
of bondage into imagined power, a characteristic process of
masochistic transfer. Dijkstra suggests that the Sadean notion of the
executioner’s assistant is critical to her thinking, though one
wonders if there is not also some identification with de Sade the
Catholic aristocrat.

Paglia’s view of sex — that it is irrational, violent, immoral, and
wounding — is so glum that one hesitates to suggest that it might be
instead, well, a lot of fun, and maybe even affectionate and loving.

Far less forgivable is Paglia’s consistent confusion of feminism with
yuppies. What does she think she’s doing? Paglia holds feminists
responsible for the bizarre blight created by John T. Molloy, author of
Dress for Success, which caused a blessedly brief crop of young
women, all apparently aspiring to be executive vice-presidents, to
appear in the corporate halls wearing those awful sand-colored baggy
suits with little floppy bow ties around their necks.

Why Paglia lays the blame for this at the feet of feminism is beyond
me. Whatever our other aims may have been, no one in the feminist
movement ever thought you are what you wear. The only coherent fashion
statement I can recall from the entire movement was the suggestion
that Mrs. Cleaver, Beaver’s mom, would on the whole have been a
happier woman had she not persisted in vacuuming while wearing high
heels. This, I still believe.

In an even more hilarious leap, Paglia contends that feminism is
responsible for the aerobics craze and concern over thin thighs.
Speaking as a beer-drinking feminist whose idea of watching her diet
is to choose either the baked potato with sour cream or with butter,
but not with both, I find this loony beyond all hope — and I am the
cosmos, too.

What we have here, fellow citizens, is a crassly egocentric, raving
twit. The Norman Podhoretz of our gender. That this woman is actually
taken seriously as a thinker in New York intellectual circles is a
clear sign of decandence, decay, and hopeless pinheadedness. Has no
one in the nation’s intellectual capital the background and ability to
see through a web of categorical assertions? One fashionable line of
response to Paglia is to claim that even though she may be
fundamentally off-base, she has “flashes of brilliance.” If so, I
missed them in her oceans of swill.

One of her latest efforts at playing enfant terrible in intellectual
circles was a peppy essay for Newsday, claiming that either there is
no such thing as date rape or, if there is, it’s women’s fault because
we dress so provocatively. Thanks, Camille, I’ve got some Texas
fraternity boys I want you to meet.

There is one area in which I think Paglia and I would agree that
politically correct feminism has produced a noticeable inequity.
Nowadays, when a woman behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable
fashion, we say, “Poor dear, it’s probably PMS.” Whereas, if a man
behaves in a hysterical and disagreeable fashion, we say, “What an
asshole.” Let me leap to correct this unfairness by saying of Paglia,
Sheesh, what an asshole.

No one like her; and very few to replace her, too.

[This is in response to the email that she sent to 'Da Queer Bitch this morning, to which QD posted on her site. Since QD is currently occupied and could not reply directly, she asked if some of her allies would counter with a response. One look at the email was enough for me.

Since her private email was not revealed, I will treat this as an open letter.]

Ms. Hoffman:

To say that I was totally whelmed by your attempt to counter Queer Dewd (formerly known as Bitch | Lab) on the issue of pornography and women is an understatement. I do understand and appreciate your passion in defending your views about how porn apparantly is so dangerous to women…even as I totally disagree with your findings. Unfortunately, it seems that in your zeal to publish antiporn agitprop…I mean, state your case, you seem to have missed some basic facts…which I will, at your indulgement, now expound upon.

First off…I totally respect and will not criticize you for stating your previous experiences as a adolescent facing the scrutiny of young boys….teenage years can be such trouble for most girls, especially with the raging hormones and all the open leering that boys often do. However, to target Playboy pictorals as the main source of such attitudes is, to say the least, a stretch beyond imagination. What’s to say that a Sears catalog featuring women in intimate apperal, or a scantily clad (but not naked) pinup of a rock starlet in a bikini or halter top, wasn’t enough to feed into their developing lusts? And while their behavior with you (especially the teacher who boasted about having his turn) was certainly at the least boorish and disrespectful (and, especially in the case of the teacher, crossed the line of ethics into outright sexual harrassment and probable statutory rape), it only proves that some boys will carry their lusts a bit over the line of mutual respect and mutual consent. Attacking and censoring Playboy or even hardcore porn will do nothing to cure that; reporting such behavior to the proper authorities for immediate action would be far more effective.

Also, Ms. Hoffman…what would you say about the many young girls who don’t have as much a problem with consensual groping as you do?? (Note I said “consensual”, meaning that they willingly seek and approve of such activity.) Would you say that those girls who choose to engage in such sexual activity for their own personal pleasures should have the same assumption of protection from nonconsensual acts and autonomy of free will as those who are put off by such activity?? Or are you likely to dismiss these girls in the classic antiporn radicalfeminist ideology as mindless victims of “patriarchy”…or merely, total “sluts” and harlots who feed the worst in men and boys?? One look at your letter reveals the answer to that question pretty quickly.

Next up…you drop names of various antiporn activist spokespersons (Gail Dines, Robert Jensen, et. al) whom you assume that QD needs to read to reveal “the truth” about how porn so degrades and damages women. All fine and good for agitprop…but a bit incomplete for genuine study and analysis, which requires a bit more open and diverse point of view than what you would allow. And it would also be a bit wiser, Ms. Hoffman, if you managed to check your sources a bit more; I’m sure that you do know that Bob Jensen is not only “a former porn user”, but also an self-outed (yet self-hating) gay man whose strategy of humiliating and demonizing men not just for the collective sins of individuals, but merely for having erections and thinking about sex in the unapproved radfem way, has been revealed countless times. (This is especially cogent given the fact that you decided to impose your spam…ahh, I mean, your email…on the owner of a site (Queer Dewd) that openly embraces the type of homoerotic images that Jensen would say causes great harm to women.

Then we come to your vivid and quite explict depictions of what apparantly goes on in “typical pornography”…though, I tend to wonder how you got such experience that you can describe with such pinpoint accuracy what goes on in the making of porn films..but that’s irrelevant for this issue. To wit, this accounting:

Can you explain and defend all of the typical pornography I have seen including now on porn blogs that rate this sick damaging sexist woman hating degrading dehumanizing sh*t like they are rating songs,that describes women as sluts and bi*ches being fu*ked hard,and pounded banged,and slammed by huge monster co*ks,and videos called This Bi*ch Hates Facials? You see she’s a bi*ch that has to be taught a lesson because she feels like most women do that it’s degrading and disgusting to have men ejaculate on her face,and she’s seen as a bitch because all of the women in porn are portrayed as loving it! So they ejaculate on her face to spite her! And another video describes a woman f*cked so hard in the a*s until she screams,another has a stepfather who video taped his stepdaughter f*cking herself,another is a slut getting a facial in public,another is a slut getting slammed by 2 huge c*cks in her own home after she puts her 2 children to bed,other videos are throat f*cking and sluts gagging on huge c*cks,a whore sister getting f*cked hard etc etc.

Great prose, Ms. Hoffman..but probably a bit off. You see, those promos for such porn sites tend to be a bit more hyperbolic in the rhetoric than usual..that’s just a hook to attract potential comsumers; nothing more or less. To take them so seriously as promos for rape is, to say the least, sophistry on your part.

Now, I don’t deny at all that there are attitudes amongst some porn consumers (and a few producers) that women who enjoy facials or anal sex or sex with more than one man (or woman) at once is inherently degraded and humiliated…but that is not so much a byproduct of porn than it is the classical antisexual attitudes put forth by mainstream culture to control and regulate women’s sexuality. Far more likely, however, is the view that a “slut” who likes sex many different ways should be praised, even worshipped, for accepting both her and men’s desires…and that she remains a full human being deserving of respect even after engaging in such “degrading” activity. It may have escaped your mind in your rage, Ms. Hoffman, but there are indeed women who really do like and openly seek the type of sex you decry as “demeaning” and “degrading”, and there are men who truly do enjoy that kind of porn, yet continue to give the full respect and humanity to women. But I guess those views don’t count too well with you, since the only women allowed to appear in your mindset are those who are “prostituted” or victimized by porn.

Finally, Ms. Hoffman, some suggestions for alternative sources of material (since you are so willing to offer sources of your own to educate the unwashed masses…even those who really don’t need it such as QD):

“Caught Looking: Feminism, Pornography, and Censorship” by the Feminist Anti-Censorship Taskforce
“XXX: A Defense of Pornography” by Wendy McElroy
“Defending Pornography” by Nadine Strossen
“Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality” ed. by Carol Vance (in particular, Gayle Rubin’s essay “Thinking Sex”
“Whores and Other Feminists” ed. by Jill Nagle (especially Nina Hartley’s essay “In The Flesh”)

And of course, no real analysis of pro-sex feminism would be complete without a visit to Nina Hartley’s forum..in particular the “Off Topic” and “Porn and Porn Performers” sub-forums, where such issues are discussed with regularity.

Now, perhaps listening and reading perspectives which run contrary to your own antiporn agitprop might hurt your brain initially from previous underuse….but on the whole, it will be all the better for being exposed to the real world, and to engage in actual discussion.

In the meantime, Ms. Hoffman, may I kindly and respectfully request that you use a bit more public and less obtuse method than harrassing emails to opponents of your philosophy to get your point across? It really doesn’t do your side much credit when you call for “open debates”…while simultaneously intimidating the same opponents.

With that, I bide you a great day…and I welcome the discussion.

Anthony Kennerson
Lafayette, LA
[old address to my former SmackChron Blog (now deceased) snipped -- 11-21-07 AK]