Now they're whining that I'm being mean to Katha Pollitt. I will admit that I was mis-remembering the phrase she used that I remembered while writing that piece this morning, she didn't say "religion infested," she said "Christian-inflected." Here is the piece that came from:
Yeah, It Makes All The Sense In The World To Blame People Who Disapprove of Sadistic Sex and Porn for S&M Porn
I knew before I read Katha Pollitt's review of the movie 50 Shades of Grey that she'd find some way to blame it on Christians and, of course, she does.
Let’s say you’re a woman who wants to have a handsome man worship your body, desire you intensely, focus on you sexually with incredible skill, and bring you to earthshaking orgasm in about thirty seconds. You never have to exert yourself on his behalf—his satisfaction happens automatically as a byproduct of yours. If porn for women mirrored porn for men, that’s what it would look like. But let’s say, in addition, that you are marinated in a Christianity-inflected culture that inculcates women with sexual shame, insecurity about their looks and lovability and self-worth in general, and tells them in a thousand ways that men are superior, male power is sexy, and suffering is redemptive. Then you might end up with porn for women that looks a lot like Fifty Shades of Grey.
Actually, if you lived in a "Christianity-inflected culture" you'd be more likely to have the Songs of Solomon (not exactly a book informed by Christianity, by the way) as being the raciest thing you're likely to encounter as approved literature. You could be expected to not have BDSM porn because every single thing about it violates every single thing about how to treat other people that is taught by Jesus. Somehow, I don't think a book in which the guy only did to the gal what he'd want done to him would sell as S&M. You do realize they weren't married in the story, don't you?
I don't know of a widely accepted Christian theologian who taught that bondage and sado-masochism are good or, in fact, anything but deeply immoral.
I can, though, think of lots and lots and lots of atheists, free speech industry hacks and the such who have advocated and supported such books, including Simone de Beauvoir and lots of totally anti-Christian writers and political theorists who have probably not been on Pollitt's to-crap-on list.
At the very least, Katha, old chum, the authors of such stuff share more responsibility for its presence than Christianity does. I doubt any of them were pious and strictly observant Christians, though I'd like to know of any you can list who can be convincingly accepted as such.
Oh, wait, don't I seem to recall reading her talking about her job as a porn proof-reader in that collection of essays a dozen or more years ago? I wonder if she ever assisted in the publication of S&M porn. And I wonder what a review of the archive of the magazines she has worked for would reveal about support for the publication of that genre of junk.
And there was that weird essay about her Marxist study group full of her boyfriend's lovers. I wonder if they ever went into the rape murders of Comrade Lavrentiy Beria or the young girls forced into training as sex slaves in The Peoples Republic of North Korea or the widespread sex slavery in The Peoples' Republic of China. Apparently none of that is inconsistent with Marxism as practiced in the real world, though I can tell you no main-line Church would ever be reasonably accused of advocating it.
Pollitt is hooked up with the Freedom From Religion gang and probably any number of other venues of that part time employment for those who are finding that the paid scribbling gig isn't what it used to be back in the age of ink on paper. She can now be counted on to slam Christianity in just about anything she can fit it into. Perhaps she gets paid for a kind of product placement when she puts something like that in a piece.
And, by the way, I haven't encountered a single man who has either admitted to having read the thing or who I've seen carrying the book in public. You're way, way off base on this one Katha.
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