“The plural of ‘anecdote’ is not data.” #LadyPornDay

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Sex academic, teacher, SFSI volunteer and sex educator Jessi Fischer beat Gail Dines last week in a room packed with academics at Cambridge.

Cambridge University Union Society decides porn is a ‘good public service’ (deseretnews.com):

A heated debate about whether pornography provides “a good public service” ended late Thursday in the historic hall of the Cambridge University Union Society with Cambridge students voting 231 to 187 in favor of the motion, according to the U.K. Press Association.

The title of this post was Fischer’s crowning blow to Dines: is the line Jessi Fischer bitch-slapped Gail Dines with in the room packed with academics at Cambridge. That line is the new “There can be only one” Highlander-of-ladyporn comeback lines, and it was the smack heard around the world. Huge.

Of course, it was not delivered whole because Gail Dines is such a lady and consummate professional that she actually interrupted Fischer while Fischer was taking her turn speaking.

But we have to give Dines a little pardon because she was already digging into a pie made of 50,000 crows called your statistics are fake and you finally met a woman with balls enough to say so and backed it up with facts. And for religious reasons Dines does not wear a pearl necklace so she could not clutch it in horror at the crude American display, which is the usual (and proven) line of defense that proper English ladies take.

* If you’re not familiar with Dines and Co. take a minute to get up to speed here. Also: all writing on Gail Dines.

It’s Lady Porn Day, and it is being celebrated in a massive way around the Internet and the world. I think that pondering the anti-porn takedown by a pro-porn sex educator is very fitting as we turn a wheel in the revolution.

Women are taking back the right to look at porn, the right to make and enjoy and share porn – but this has not gone unchallenged. Women like Dines (and Shelley Lubben) have built careers (and astonishingly, extra credit classes at universities) to prevent women from doing the single most powerful thing they can do about pornography, wherever they stand on the topic: the right to speak freely about it.

But they can’t stop the internet, and that’s where we’ve been talking about porn and comparing ideas, feelings, notes and questions – and facts – about porn for ten years strong*. I’m not saying Dines and Co. are censoring women’s ability to talk about porn; they can’t.

I am saying that Dines and Co. have purposely created, fostered and maintained an environment that is hostile to challenge, and therefore actively campaigns against discussions of pornography that are not their own.

They shut us up by shaming us and scaring us with threatening displays of sexuality. Pretty basic and effective tactic.

And to this effect, Dines and Co. continually shut out and categorically ignore pro-porn women – the millions of us, and those who identify as feminist. We have all been edited out of the discussion.

But we have a right to figure out what porn is, and what porn means to us, on our own.

Don’t tell a woman what to think about her own sexuality. Just don’t.

And if you still have to make shit up to justify why you think you can tell us what we can and can’t do with sex, our bodies, and porn – just get out of our way.

So last week Fischer brought it, Dines was mean and rude, and Lubben made everyone sad with her crazy. When Cambridge voted that Fisher won the debate, Lubben abjectly Tweeted “Cambridge University made their choice for porn over Jesus Christ.” Indeed. Today Rabbit Write is making Lady Porn Day a huge, cool, and fun reality, and women all over the world are sharing their views on porn and talking about what is great and what is awful in and about porn. Yes, people are arguing about it on Twitter, but that’s great too. Actually, it’s really important.

It’s an open discussion. We deserve that. I mean, I like to look at the inverse proof on things. For instance, last week a same-sex couple were denied entrance to a creationist museum: two men purchased tickets to a tour and dinner, but were told they could not enter as a same-sex couple and were not refunded their money.

The punchline is that they were not “together” but were two men going as a pair. It seems to me that hosting gay couples would be a tremendous opportunity to “save” them in the eyes of god. What better way to show them that being gay is a sin than by bringing them into a prime showcase for conversion?

I apply the same thinking to women like Gail Dines who campaign and attempt to create movements with ideology rather than facts. The most powerful cults (the ones who get people to commit mass suicide) control the sexuality of their followers. It’s the most personal and effective non-violent way to claim power over another person.

You can literally get anyone to do anything if you have their belief and their sexuality in your pocket. Anti-porn crusaders don’t need facts because they have the key cult elements in place. Which is why we’ll never see Dines and Co. do the equivalent of hosting the gay couple in the creationist museum. (The pro-porn feminist in the henhouse, anyone?)

Use porn responsibly, enjoy it to the fullest. And no matter what you do, don’t stop talking about it, and don’t stop questioning anyone who tries to control what you think about it. The power to evaluate what is sexually right and wrong for ourselves, and what is sexually healthy for ourselves and our communities, is not just the final frontier for modern sexual freedom – it is necessary.

* This blog is ten years old this year. We’ve come a long way, don’t you think?