Posted on March 12, 2014 by Anthony
Reading the response of Sex and Censorship’s Jerry Barrett to Gail Dines’ assault on his group for daring to oppose Dines’ and Stop Porn Culture’s scheduled London conference on pornography is quite illuminating, to say the least. It isn’t just that Barrett has the courage to rebute and rebuke all of Dines’ prattle about how porn is capitalism’s means of suppressing, raping, and torturing women, and how the “porn industry” is the equivalency of the Tea Party in defending corporate plunder…never mind that Dines has never said or typed one letter of one word regarding corporate abuse in any other profession other than porn. It’s really more about how Barrett responds to the attempt by Professor Dines to shame him and his organization as right-wingers. Here’s how he responded to one of her slanders:

As for Dines comparing my small campaign group with the Tea Party: my own politics are left-of-centre. I am no anti-government militant. Yes, I am an ardent campaigner for free speech, but an equally strong supporter of Britain’s National Health Service (which, incidentally, gives free, regular STI checks to pornstars), a strong welfare safety net, and other tax-funded government services. I believe that government belongs in health, education, welfare, social services, environmental protection and transport; but I do not believe – unlike Dines – that it belongs in our bedrooms.

As a working-class Black man, a Lefty who believes in pretty much the same economic political agenda as Mr. Barrett (of course, adjusted to the political spectrum of the US, I would be well to the Left of even his positions), and a long time defender of free consensual adult sexual expression and adult sexual media, I can pretty much feel for his frustration and anguish at always having to apologize for linking his sexual/social libertarianism with his economic radicalism. As someone who has for the past 10 years or so battled with the socially regressive policies of antiporn “feminist” activism in regards to sex work (including the pornography/erotic dance and prostitution/escort/outcall services), I share with him the belief that sex work can be, even in an egalitarian or even socialist society, a legitimate and socially acceptable means of work for women and men which should be treated and reformed like all other forms of work done in exchange for compensation.