Anti-porn activists often face this accusation: You’re right-wing prudes. You just hate sex. But what many fail to realize is that there have been many left-wing thinkers—even far left-wing thinkers—who saw porn for precisely what it is: Exploitation, dehumanization, and victimization. They are intellectuals who, regardless of how much and how often I disagree with them on other issues, are at least consistent when they say that they oppose the exploitation of women and girls.

“Pornography is the humiliation and degradation of women. It’s a disgraceful activity. I don’t want to be associated with it," said Noam Chomsky.

Let me give you a few prominent examples.

Of the feminists who did speak out against pornography, writer and intellectual Andrea Dworkin was by far the most vehement. Having read some of the same research that she did, and spoken to many people whose lives have been torn apart, like she did, I can understand some of the full-throated fury that comes through in her lectures, her writings, and her books. In Pornography: Men Possessing Women, she eviscerated her comrades on the Left for their acceptance of pornography:

“Poverty is not wicked or cruel when it is the poverty of dispossessed women who have only themselves to sell; violence by the powerful against the powerless is not wicked or cruel when it is called sex; slavery is not wicked or cruel when it is sexual slavery; torture is not wicked or cruel when the tormented are women, whores…The new pornography is left-wing; and the new pornography is a vast graveyard where the Left has gone to die. The Left cannot have its whores and its politics too.”

Her work is chilling to read, because she uses crude and graphic language to create a horror in her audience as she describes pornography for what it really is. Knowing the state of our porn-soaked university campuses, I wonder what the audience at a lecture she gave at the University of Chicago Law School felt:

“Dehumanization is real. It happens in real life; it happens to stigmatized people. It has happened to us, to women. We say that women are objectified. We hope that people will think that we are very smart when we use a long word. But being turned into an object is a real event; and the pornographic object is a particular kind of object. It is a target. You are turned into a target. And red or purple marks the spot where he's supposed to get you.”

And I wonder what all of the pseudo-Marxist fanboys I went to university with would think if they knew what Noam Chomsky had to say about pornography:

“Pornography is the humiliation and degradation of women. It’s a disgraceful activity. I don’t want to be associated with it. Just take a look at the pictures. Women are degraded as vulgar sex objects. That’s not what human beings are. I don’t see anything to discuss.”

He went further when asked the most common question porn defenders like to bandy about: Didn’t these women choose to be in the porn industry?

“The fact that people agree to it and are paid,” Chomsky replied, “is about as convincing as the fact that we should be in favor of sweat-shops in China where women are locked into a factory and work fifteen hours a day and the factory burns down and they all die. Yeah, they were paid and they consented, but that doesn’t make me in favor of it. So that argument we can’t even talk about. As to the fact that it’s some people’s erotica, well, that’s their problem. Doesn’t mean I have to contribute to it. If they get enjoyment out of humiliation of women then they have a problem.”

Radical feminist Naomi Wolf takes it a step further—she says that pornography not only degrades and humiliates women, but seeks to replace them entirely. Men don’t need real women anymore, since they can type the specific woman, specific sex act, specific anything into a Google search bar and the depraved depths of the Internet will vomit up their preferred perversity.

In Wolf’s words:

“The onslaught of porn is responsible for deadening male libido in relation to real women, and leading men to see fewer and fewer women as ‘porn-worthy’…Here is what young women tell me on college campuses when the subject comes up: They can’t compete, and they know it. For how can a real woman—with pores and her own breasts and even sexual needs of her own (let alone with speech that goes beyond “More, more, you big stud!”)—possibly compete with a cybervision of perfection, downloadable and extinguishable at will, who comes, so to speak, utterly submissive and tailored to the consumer’s least specification?... Today, real naked women are just bad porn…

The young women who talk to me on campuses about the effect of pornography on their intimate lives speak of feeling that they can never measure up, that they can never ask for what they want; and that if they do not offer what porn offers, they cannot expect to hold a guy. The young men talk about what it is like to grow up learning about sex from porn, and how it is not helpful to them in trying to figure out how to be with a real woman. Mostly, when I ask about loneliness, a deep, sad silence descends on audiences of young men and young women alike. They know they are lonely together, even when conjoined, and that this imagery is a big part of that loneliness. What they don’t know is how to get out, how to find each other again…”

One of the most devastating takedowns of porn in the world of left-wing literature has to be Chris Hedges’ 2009 masterpiece Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. I disagree with him on why things are the way they are, but his diagnoses of cultural decadence are masterful, and his descriptions feel like punches. In Chapter II: The Illusion of Love, Hedges spends nearly 33 pages dismantling the porn industry and exposing the sexual violence with the precision of a surgeon:

“The porn films are not about sex. Sex is airbrushed and digitally washed out of the films. There is no acting because none of the women are permitted to have what amounts to a personality. The only emotion they are allowed to display is an unquenchable desire to satisfy men, especially if that desire involves the women’s physical and emotional degradation. The lighting in the films is harsh and clinical…Porn, which advertises itself as sex, is a bizarre, bleached pantomime of sex. The acts onscreen are beyond human endurance. The scenarios are absurd…Those in the films are puppets, packaged female commodities. They have no honest emotions, are devoid of authentic human beauty, and resemble plastic. Pornography does not promote sex, if one defines sex as a shared act between two partners. It promotes masturbation. It promotes auto-arousal that precludes intimacy and love. Pornography is about getting yourself off at someone else’s expense.”

The reason that much of our society refuses to recognize pornography as glamorized, recreational cyber-rape is simply because too many people are consuming it. Pornography is normalized and joked about on nearly every comedy sitcom on TV. Many porn stars make cross-over appearances in music videos and Hollywood films. Porn conventions are packed with sad, pathetic men trailing about to get fan-selfies with porn girls half their age. It’s no wonder that some of the more intelligent culture warriors of the Left look at their revolutions of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s with a dispirited and downcast gaze—they didn’t manage to liberate sex, after all. All they did was hand it to the corporations and capitalist carpetbaggers that always follow revolutions to mangle and mass-market.

And then, if many intellectuals of the Left and Right are to be believed, they all but destroyed it. As Christopher Buckley, the left-leaning son of the great right-wing icon William F. Buckley noted: “As anyone who’s had even a fleeting experience of porn knows: porn is to Eros what crack is to joy: an industrial-quality stimulant, an attaching of jumper cables to the libido.”

On porn, Noam Chomsky has it right. We should want no part in it… (By Jonathon van Maren).

 https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/fancy-that.-noam-chomsky-was-right-about-porn

“Look at me!” she shouted. “Take a picture! Look!” Her voice screeched with annoying enthusiasm as she flailed her arms in the air. She was a toothy English girl with a smile the size of a quartered honeydew. Straddling the elephant’s spine, she widened her eyes, beamed a smile, threw her arms above her head and cast two peace signs into the air. I think, at this moment, she had reached the very pinnacle of her life… I tried to contain myself.

On one hand, this girl was traveling to new places, learning exciting things about the world, experiencing the globe and, hopefully, a new culture. On the other hand, she was contributing to a very cruel facet of tourism in Thailand.

In her defense, she probably didn’t know any better. Not that ignorance is an excuse, but it’s allowable.

I ask myself, where are the ethics in tourism anymore? Where are the real travelers? Is the world nothing more than everybody’s personal amusement park?

Southeast Asia is rife with beer-guzzling 18 year-olds who love to party, party, party. Thailand, in particular, has become a hotspot for gap year tourists on holiday who drink cheap beer, lay on beaches and, often without realizing, rub their riches in the faces of the locals. Sometimes the culprits are cultural differences and sometimes it comes down to booze-fueled loud mouthery. But, either way, the current state of tourism in Southeast Asia is not a responsible one.

The impact this type of tourism has on the local communities can be devastating. It breeds greed and violence among locals. If you travel, I guarantee you’ve heard at least one story about someone getting ripped off by a local. Do you think this happens because so many people travel to their destinations, acting polite and respectful, responsibly spending their money within the community? Think again.

I’m frustrated. Can you tell?

                                           Tourists riding chained elephants in Thailand.

Responsible Travel.

The idea of responsible travel or tourism is not one to glaze over. If you travel, it’s something you really need to think about. What are your dollars going towards? What do they support?

Do you give money to homeless people on the street? Probably not. Why? Most people would say, “because they’re just going to buy drugs and alcohol.” But, I’m willing to bet you’d buy them a meal because I believe that, inherently, people are good.

In Cambodia I visited a shelter which teaches underprivileged children the skills necessary to work in the hospitality industry. In being a part of this program, they acquire a fundamental skillset with which they can improve their lives. By eating a meal here, and paying a couple dollars extra ($7 instead of the $4 it probably would have been), visitors are voting in direct support of helping disadvantaged children from a third-world country to improve their lives.

Vote with your dollar.

If you are against animal cruelty, can you really travel and, with that very same moral compass, pay money to ride an elephant?

Did you know that elephants who perform tricks and offer rides on their back have been domesticated through a breaking process? This process is called ‘phajaan’ and it, quite literally, breaks their spirit. They are chained and beaten within inches of their life. It depletes their soul to the point that they will do anything their master tells them, for fear of abuse.

This is not a sometimes thing. This is how it works. Elephants are wild animals who roam in jungles and forests. In order to take the wild out of the animal, they must be broken. Baby elephants are taken from their mothers, who are often killed, and beaten almost to death. Then, they are brought back to life as domesticated animals.

Elephants belong in the pages of National Geographic, not in chains giving rides to tourists. This disparity alone should be testament enough.

                              A happy elephant who was rescued from the tourism industry!

How Asian Elephants are Getting Help.

In Chiang Mai, Thailand, the Save Elephant Foundation operates the Elephant Nature Park, a shelter for abused elephants who have been rescued from the tourism industry. They are offered a safe home where they are shown love, not abuse, and are allowed to roam free, as wild elephants are meant to. Lek Chailert, the founder of the organization, has been rescuing elephants since 1992, and oversees all operations of the park. Today, the park houses 36 Asian elephants. Three are babies and four have gone blind from abuse (captors often go for their eyes as punishment).

I visited the Elephant Nature Park in November, and I saw the effects of irresponsible tourism first-hand. I saw elephants with broken backs (too many years of giving elephant rides), broken legs, punctured skin and blindness. I had a hard time there, knowing that so many of my friends had ridden elephants and have contributed to this abuse.

But I also found relief, knowing that a cause and a reserve park like this exists. It acts as a springboard for awareness about the cruelty to animals, and as a safe haven for more than 1000 different animals who have been in need of rescuing (namely elephants, but also dogs, cats, water buffalo, pigs, and more). The Save Elephant Foundation does more than just rescue elephants—they rescue every animal who needs help.

Unfortunately, there is no more room left at ENP. The Elephant Nature Park has reached capacity and Lek is no longer able to rescue any more elephants. They need more land.

More than 20 travel bloggers banded together in a grassroots charity project to support the Save Elephant Foundation. Last year we supported an orphanage in Nepal and a community in Bohol through a global organization that fights poverty through volunteerism. We’re using our blogs to leverage awareness about responsible tourism and to raise donations for the Elephant Nature Park.

We want Lek to be able to rescue more elephants, and she couldn’t do it without us.

Hanging with Lek, talking elephants and responsible tourism!

 http://www.travelfreak.net/responsible-travel-asian-elephants-thailand/

Make Peace with Your Past.

“I understand the temptation to draw an angry X through a whole season or a whole town or a whole relationship, to crumple it up and throw it away, to get it as far away as possible from a new life, a new future. … These days I’m walking over and retrieving those years from the trash, erasing the X, unlocking the door. It’s the only way that darkness turns to light.” – Shauna Niequist.

Sometimes the memories of our past continue to haunt us in the present and interfere with our life.

When this happens, the only thing you can do is to stop running and face up to the truth. It’s not always pretty, but when we can stop trying to avoid our pain and instead look inside ourselves and examine our past in the light, we will finally feel better.

I have a past. You have a past. Everyone has a past. But it doesn’t have to be your future.

At any moment, you can choose to say, “This is not how I want my life to continue.” And make the choice to change things right then and there.

I read once that “used to believe” can refer to things that you believed just a few minutes ago and are now changing your mind about. What you believed in the past doesn’t have to be what you always believe.

Maybe you’ve been carrying around a story for years about yourself. And whether or not it’s true, you can choose at any moment to say, “This is not what I believe anymore.” And you can choose new beliefs to go into the future with, like being the hero of your story.

Maybe you made a mistake in the past that you now regret. Or maybe something happened to you instead. Let yourself process your emotions for as long as it takes (it can be helpful if you talk to someone during this process), and when you’re ready, you might want to try some forgiveness work.

Oftentimes the person we most need to forgive is our own self.

Just remember that in the past you were doing the best you could in your life with the knowledge you had at the time. And you’re doing the best you can now. Believe it.

http://blog.resilientapp.com/recovery/make-peace-with-your-past/

"The rights of children as individuals begin while yet they remain the foetus." So wrote the most radical of the early American feminists, (and the first woman to run for President of the United States), Victoria Woodhull, one hundred and forty-five years ago in Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly on December 1870.