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The online diary of an ethical pervert.

Friday 12 March 2010

Women, porn and politics

Another snippet from a newspaper, I'm afraid. Still in recovery mode from a cold and waiting on my tattoo healing, so my kinky activities have remained at zero for the past fortnight. Not for lack of trying, but diary and communication issues seem to be getting in the way of firming up any dates which is rather frustrating. Trust me when I say that I am really rather keen to get in some form of kink this weekend.

Anyhow, I spotted this in the Guardian (you may detect a certain flavour to my online news consumption). There's a lot to like about it. A smart, bisexual, sex-positive, feminist woman standing for office. There's also a lot not to like. Such as the almost desperate need to defend her career choice, reminding folk that "it's not illegal" and assuring them that her potential consituents really wouldn't notice. Even her own part are attempting to distance themselves from her work whilst remaining supportive of her as an individual, a hard task, really, smacking a bit of love the sinner. I'm not sure whether this is indicative of outdated attitudes to porn or outdated attitudes to women working in porn. Probably both. Along with a spattering of outdated attitudes to women in politics (we live in a world where female politicians are still considered newsworthy merely by the fact of being female). She's a particularly interesting case because she is a filmaker, who has focused on making porn for women and also on making porn from a femal point of view, often literally, in the case of her trademark filming style.

Good luck to her.

1 comment:

M said...

Has anyone mentioned that she has an MA in philosophy? For me that tops it off more than what kinds of movies made, her sexuality or her gender-sex. That said, her directorial style (according to wikipedia) is quite impressive. It's quite a staunch decision that her professional work seems to underlie a dissertation to justify it.

It's nice to know there are other Magisters about in business and politics.

I've seen various articles on this news story. While some newspapers just say that she has a masters, or that she 'went to university' and did an arts degree; all of the focus is on her past career. No focus is on the real detail of her interesting career and background (your wiki link is more informative than the red tops).

I think it's of much interest that she's a Lib Dem. Lib Dems tend to be very interesting and diverse people, much more so than the other main parties.

Even if she doesn't get voted in, this is a bold statement on the political landscape and more LGBT non-conservative politicians will emerge. I've never felt so apathetic and hopeless about an election as much as I am about this next one coming up.

This is just the thin end of the wedge in terms of what is symptomatically wrong with governance today.

I think I better read my Plato's republic again. At least in the Republic, women no difference in status equal status to be all-powerful guardians (genderblind). How's that for a utopia...