Q: How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
\nA: That’s not funny.<\/p>\n
– Popular antifeminist “humor”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
During the time I was at UC Berkeley, Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin drafted their Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance. One scenario in which work would be defined as pornographic was “the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women… presented as sexual objects for domination, conquest, violation, exploitation, possession, or use, or through postures or positions of servility or submission or display.”1<\/sup> Another source included instances in which “women’s body parts-including but not limited to vaginas, breasts, or buttocks-are exhibited such that women are reduced to those parts.”2<\/sup> To me these images clearly meet the letter of the ordinance, and represent a violation of the women’s civil rights. Do they meet the “spirit” as well? Does it matter?<\/p>\n “What’s your definition of dirty baby? Edward Weston, Nude, 1936<\/p><\/div>\n – George Michaels<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I have long looked forward to the challenge of working with models–specifically female models–to stretch myself creatively and personally. I have no particular desire to take portraits per se, but rather to focus on the beautiful lines, angles, and curves of the human body. I also have no particular desire to photograph nudes. What then would I photograph? A leg, an arm, a turned head?<\/p>\n According to one source, Dworkin and MacKinnon worded the “body parts” test as “Women are presented as sexual objects tied up or cut up or mutilated or bruised or physically hurt, or as dismembered or truncated or fragmented<\/strong> or severed into body parts<\/strong>.”3<\/sup> Although my photographs would not be sexual, and there is no gruesome dismemberment involved, would my “fragmenting” the model into body parts be–if not pornographic–then at least objectifying? Is this treating the woman who is modelling for me as an object, or at least presenting her as such?<\/p>\n As Betty Friedan said, “Feminism is about choices.” I’d like to think that any photo of a woman taken by a man is not inherently objectifying. That she and I both have choices. I’d like to think that intent has at least some part in this. If I treat the model with respect, in the “postures or positions” selected, and in the overall presentation of the work, doesn’t that make all the difference in the world? Would she then not be the object of my work, but the subject?<\/p>\n Michael Singman-Aste —————————– While working on my Women’s Studies degree at UC Berkeley in the 80s, sustained on a steady diet of pizza and Andrea Dworkin, I wrote a paper in which I argued that any so-called erotic art that depicted a woman was by its very nature pornographic. It was primarily an intellectual exercise; “radical” though I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pPxQO-9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":143,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9\/revisions\/143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.postdiluvianphoto.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWhat do you consider pornography?”<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.edward-weston.com\/images\/Edward_Weston_Nude\/Nude_1936_(227N)_large.jpg\")
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\nPostdiluvian Photo<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n
\n1<\/sup> CATHARINE MACKINNON\u2019S AND ANDREA DWORKIN\u2019S STATUTORY DEFINITION OF PORNOGRAPHY, http:\/\/www.uoregon.edu\/~novkov\/outjur\/porndef.htm<\/a>
\n2<\/sup> Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance, http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Antipornography_Civil_Rights_Ordinance<\/a>
\n3<\/sup> CATHARINE MACKINNON\u2019S AND ANDREA DWORKIN\u2019S STATUTORY DEFINITION OF PORNOGRAPHY, http:\/\/www.uoregon.edu\/~novkov\/outjur\/porndef.htm<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"