Gail Dines: The Shocking Suspension of Dr. Price

by | Apr 19, 2012 | Pornography, Repression at Home

By Gail Dines / Counterpunch

As colleges become more corporate, we are hearing more and more stories of academics being sanctioned for having the audacity to speak out against corporate malfeasance. Not only does this limit the free speech of academics, it also serves to scare teachers into adhering to the hegemonic discourse.

The latest example is quite stunning. Jammie Price, a full professor at Appalachian State University, was suspended last month for showing the documentary The Price of Pleasure: Pornography, Sexuality and Relationships. Distributed by the Media Education Foundation, one of the most respected producers of progressive documentaries in the country, the film sets out to look at how mainstream pornography has not only become more violent and misogynistic, but is actually in bed with major financial institutions such as credit card companies, venture capitalists, cable companies and hotels (they make more money from porn than mini bars).

After showing the film to 120 students, three evidently complained to the university administration that Dr. Price was showing “inappropriate material” in class. Dr. Price was not allowed to learn the names of the students or to meet with them, was denied a hearing, and was immediately suspended and told that she could not enter any offices or classrooms in the Arts and Sciences buildings. Should she want to obtain “materials, computer files, pick up mail …” she needed to make arrangements to be escorted by a member of the faculty.

How interesting that a university decides that an academic analysis of one of the most profitable industries in the world is “inappropriate.” What exactly are we supposed to teach about? Maybe if Jammie Price had been in a business school and taught a case on how to make a killing in porn, she might have been given a pass. Or maybe, to be on the safe side, Dr. Price should have instead invited a pornographer to class to promote their products.  In 2008, the porn press was abuzz with the great news that Joanna Angel, owner of the porn site Burning Angel, had been invited to speak to a human sexuality class at Indiana University. No pretense was made that this was going to be an educational event by the porn news site X Critic, when they wrote, “She will be showing the students clips from her movies, handing out sex toys and enlightening them with a positive view on pornography.”

I wrote a letter of complaint to the president of Indiana University pointing out that the role of a university classroom was to educate the students, not provide a captive audience for capitalists to push their products. The president’s office responded in a rather odd way. They asked the professor to apologize to me for bringing in Joanna Angel, as if this whole case was a personal insult to me. I think we should be speaking about porn in the classroom, but not as a fun industry that sells fantasy, but rather as a global industry that works just like any other industry with business plans, niche markets, venture capitalists and the ever-increasing need to maximize profits.

It seems to me that Price’s crime was to provide a progressive critique of the porn industry, rather than wax lyrically about how porn empowers women sexually. She showed a film that takes an unflinching look at the real porn industry. Instead of claiming that we are all empowered by porn, The Price of Pleasure delves into the underbelly of the industry, illustrating its points with images drawn from some of the most popular porn websites. These are not pretty, nor are they very erotic. We see women being choked with a penis, women smeared in ejaculate, women being slapped and spit upon, and in a particularly horrible scene, a woman retching after she has licked a penis that was just in her anus (called Ass to Mouth in the industry).

I have never before heard of an academic suspended for either talking about or showing porn. This is not really a surprise because the trend in academia is to avoid talking about the actual industry and how it interfaces with mainstream capitalism. At a recent academic conference I attended in London, I found myself surrounded by post-modern academics who could use a good dose of political economy. The plenary session consisted of academics making the argument that there is no “it,” meaning the porn industry, because there are so many producers of porn and just so many types of much porn on the internet, that it is impossible to locate any actual industry.  Interesting that while there is no “it,” there are, in fact, porn trade shows, porn business web sites, porn PR companies, porn lobbying groups, and so on. All these things that would suggest that there is indeed a porn business.

The failure to lose sight of how the industry functions has been noted by the pornographers themselves. Andrew Edmond, President and CEO of Flying Crocodile, a $20-million pornography Internet business, explained to Brandweek that “a lot of people [outside adult entertainment] get distracted from the business model by [the sex]. It is just as sophisticated and multilayered as any other market place. We operate just like any Fortune 500 company (Brandweek, October, 2000, 41, 1Q48). Jammie Price did not get distracted by the sex, and for that she paid dearly.

From Counterpunch: http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/19/the-shocking-suspension-of-dr-price/

Man Beats Wife, Judge Orders Him to Take Her Out to Red Lobster and the Bowling Alley

by | Feb 9, 2012 | Lobbying, Male Violence, Rape Culture

By Melissa McEwan

A judge in Florida has sentenced a man charged with domestic battery to take his wife, and victim, on a date. Or as MSNBC puts it in their disgusting lede: “Just in time for Valentine’s Day, a Florida judge ruled on Tuesday that a man involved in a scuffle with his wife treat her to an evening at a local bowling alley and a romantic meal at Red Lobster.”

Judge John Hurley [who also ordered that Joseph Bray, 47 and his wife Sonja, 39, get marriage counseling] handed down this ruling instead of setting bond or slapping Bray with a prison sentence after he deemed domestic violence charges leveled by Bray’s wife to be “very, very minor.”

According to Bray’s arrest affidavit, Bray and his wife got embroiled in a spat after he failed to wish her a happy birthday. Bray’s wife claims that her husband shoved her against a sofa and grabbed her neck.

The judge, citing Bray’s otherwise clean record and the incident’s apparent lack of serious violence, did not consider Bray’s behavior a major offense. However, Bray must follow the stipulations of Hurley’s ruling very closely if he wants to avoid potential jail time.

“He’s going to stop by somewhere and he’s going to get some flowers,” Hurley said at a hearing, according to Florida newspaper Sun Sentinel. “And then he’s going to go home, pick up his wife, get dressed, take her to Red Lobster. And then after they have Red Lobster, they’re going to go bowling.”

Hurley noted that he would not typically treat a domestic violence charge in a similarly jocular or light-hearted manner.

“The court would not normally [make this ruling] if the court felt there was some violence but this is very, very minor and the court felt that that was a better resolution than the other alternatives,” Hurley said.

And to add to the rib-tickling tone of this whimsical domestic violence sentencing, Daniel Arkin of NBC Miami, who filed the story, amusingly wraps it up with a review of the local Red Lobster: “Fortunately for Bray and his wife, the Plantation Red Lobster receives high marks in Google Maps’ Review section.”

According to this Sun-Sentinel article on the outrageous sentencing, Hurley handed down his sentence after asking Sonja Bray, in front of her violent husband in court for abusing her, if “she was hurt or in any fear of her husband,” to which, in front of her violent husband in court for abusing her, she answered no.

After she said she wasn’t, and Hurley confirmed that Bray had no prior arrests, the judge continued his questioning with a lighter tone.

“Do you have something you like to go to?” he asked. “Is there a restaurant you like to go to?”

The woman answered that she enjoyed bowling and eating at Red Lobster. And so the judge made his decision accordingly.

“Flowers, birthday card, Red Lobster, bowling,” Hurley said.

I was, as a teenager, locked in a room with my rapist by school administrators and told, “Don’t come out until you’ve worked out your differences.” He spent the entire time threatening to kill me, my family, and my dogs, if I ever reported anything he ever did to me again. When the head counselor eventually came back to that room, I was asked if we’d managed to work things out, and I confirmed that we had.

Because I would have said anything to get the fuck out of that room.

He raped me again and again over the next three years.

I desperately hope that Sonja Bray is safe. And I hope that Judge Ha Ha Chuckles is removed from the bench immediately. He literally facilitated what could very well be part of a pattern of escalating abuse: Violence, elaborate display of romance, violence. No one who thinks that sentence is appropriate, no one who fails to recognize how it fits into a recognized abuse cycle, has any fucking business presiding over domestic abuse cases.

From AlterNet: http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/777478/unbelievable:_man_beats_wife,_judge_orders_him_to_take_her_out_to_red_lobster_and_the_bowling_alley/