Didn't realize that Joanna Russ had died of a stroke last year until I googled her work

[eridani]

I was looking for her essay on how the Susie Brights and Andrea Dworkins of the world keep talking past each other.

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Joanna_Russ

Speculations on the Subjunctivity of Science Fiction (1973)
Somebody's Trying to Kill Me and I Think It's My Husband: The Modern Gothic (1973)
How to Suppress Women's Writing (1983)
Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans and Perverts: Feminist Essays (1985)
To Write Like a Woman (1995)
What Are We Fighting For?: Sex, Race, Class, and the Future of Feminism (1997)
The Country You Have Never Seen: Essays and Reviews (2007)

[Hatchling]

1. How sad.

Feminist science fiction formed my early ideas of gender equality especially Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Left Hand Of Darkness" and Marge Peircy's "Woman on the Edge of Forever".

[iverglas]

2. I was young enough

that I was actually stuck with Heinlein and the boys all through high school (although on the fantasy end there were women like Madeleine L'Engle). The Left Hand of Darkness came out just before I started university. Of Russ, I did read The Female Man a few years later, but I had pretty much lost my science fiction / fantasy interest by then, and gone through French existentialist novels and on to British mysteries.

I actually wasn't aware of Russ's essay writing, or possibly had forgotten -- eridani, if you find that essay, would you be sure to post it?

[iverglas]

3. here's a link

to part of the essay you highlighted

http://www.feminist-reprise.org/
http://www.feminist-reprise.org/docs/russmm.htm

Power and Helplessness in the Women's Movement
Joanna Russ
From Magic Mommas, Trembling Sisters, Puritans & Perverts (The Crossing Press, 1985)

[eridani]

4. I was actually thinking of "Pornography and the Doubleness of Sex for Women"

--which I finally found online.

Pornography and the Doubleness of Sex for Womenhttp://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC32folder/JoannaRussDoubSex.html

I think this doubleness of experience may explain the bitterness of the fight against pornography (to which I've contributed as much as anyone, I'm afraid) and the phenomenon of the sides being so very horrified by each other because they are perpetually talking past each other. When A attacks violence and B hears her attacking sexual freedom, B will defend sexual freedom — and A will hear her defending violence. You see how it goes, round and round and louder each time, though A doesn't intend to attack sexual freedom per se, and B doesn't mean to defend violence.

I think a woman's position on this continuum (which can change even from week to week) will determine on which side of the pornography issue she finds herself. The more your life has had to do with the violence and cruelty of (male) sexuality, the more salient these are to you, the more you will attack (male) sexuality as violent, callous, and cruel. And you will be perfectly correct. The more your life has had to do with the autonomy and joy of sexual expression, whether you have had to work your way through to this joy or not, the more sensitive you will be to issues of sexual suppression, and the more you will tend to defend sexuality per se as a valuable good. And you will be perfectly correct.

<snip>

The best cure for pornography is sex — I mean autonomously chosen activity, freely engaged in for the sake of real pleasure, intense, and unmistakably the real thing. The more we have experiences like this, the less we will be taken in by the confusions and lies and messes all around us.

Sexuality is a personal issue for everyone, and an extremely painful one for many of us. Let me stress again that the early c.r. groups did not deal with the kinds of things that made us feel strong and free. In fact, the strength and freedom came directly from expressing the things that made us feel hopeless and crazy.

[seabeyond]

6. interesting. and i think there are other angles, too

that is why i asked in a thread, .... tell me my views on porn. cause i know none of these people making accusation has a clear view. their is not simple or linear or straight forward for me.

what i am learning, having been very lucky in life over the whole, is having good, respectful men, and having a fun sex life for an adult lifetime, and raising two boys in a word of inundation of porn and violent, degrading porn at that. my thoughts on it is more the effects that it has on the men, boys, women, girls, relationship and society as a whole. it isnt about me. and it isnt about my relationship... i say, but now typing, it is. the healthy, balanced, grounded experience of sex without the effect of the outside influencing and contaminating the experience. i want my boys to walk their own journey in their sexuality without outside influences fuckin up their experience. i am seeing too many people being hurt, and taken control of, and no longer having ownership of their own sexual experience.

actually, i think why i posted from this position, is some things i read from men in the meta threads. thinking them through.

now that i have typed it out.

[iverglas]

7. I shall read that for sure

once I wake up.

When A attacks violence and B hears her attacking sexual freedom

The problem with that for me is ... all sane people deplore violence; no sane people deplore sex. And no people who are not prima facie fundie right-wingers deplore sexual freedom. And feminists since generations ago have argued for sexual freedom (even if USAmerican feminists of a particular stripe before and around the turn of the last century favoured chastity etc.).

So "hearing" someone attack sexual freedom is still just evidence of bad faith, to me.

The libertarian right wing does not acknowledge the concept/existence of exploitation (or if it does, it doesn't acknowledge that it does or give a shit). It opposes limitations on sexual exploitation just as it opposes limitations on labour exploitation, for instance.

Pro-pornography/prostution "feminists" and their male sponsors are really just right-wing libertarians, and that's the extent of it, for me. The total dishonesty of their claims to "hear" attacks on sexual freedom are just evidence of that.

[BlueIris]

5. Thanks for that list.

Looks interesting.