‘Letters from a War Zone’ deals with the controversy between men and women banning pornography. In this essay there are many strong personal views on pornography and the brutality of women in porn. Men and women have been at war for many years because of this. I agree with banning pornography because pornography lures men into disrespecting women. This essay makes me angry because it shows another part of life that is really not acknowledged.
It seems realistic to me because many women in life are confronted with sex at an early age and become vulnerable. The unique thing that reaches me is how women do not have choice, especially when it comes down to sex. Vulnerability is one of a woman’s weaknesses. Pornography is degrading to women when it is forced upon them.
If sex were done for pleasure or because the women wanted to, it would not be as bad. That is how many women are raped, killed or lose their confidence. Women in pornography were typically prostitutes at one-point. Due to statistics, more than half the women in a sex-related professions have been sexually abused, molested or raped at one time during their lies.
The quote stated in this essay that really hits home is ” Made in South America where life is cheap.’ I, as a Hispanic, am terribly offended by this statement. This statement basically says that South America has ‘, and that anything can happen to them because life there is worth very little. For example the women of South America are used in Snuff films and in explicit photographs. Snuff is a film that consists of a woman being sexually harassed, raped, and killed. In many of these films / photos the women are brutalized to the point where their breasts are dismantled and their bodies are urinated on after they are raped and killed.
There are photographs in which women’s breasts are slammed in rat traps, their vaginas are stuffed with knives, guns, and even glass, and then they are gang-banged, beaten, and tortured. Snuff films are usually made in South America because, as said in the statement above, life is not worth much there. ‘If you are going to hurt a women in the United States be sure to photograph it’ is a controversial statement used in this essay. Its means that if you have slain, hurt, or abused a woman it is all right, as long you have taken a picture. The photograph expresses a point of view, sacrosanct in a free society.
When these picture / films are being taken the woman is forced to smile. This will make the picture / films protected by the constitution, which makes it legal speech, or free speech. In the essay it is argued that men are pigs and love seeing women in pornography. Some women enjoy it too but men love to see picture / films even if it is a disrespectful film of women. This becomes a greater issue because almost all of the politicians are men, which means that it would be even harder to convict a man for maltreating a woman in porn, or even to ban pornography.
The reason that pornography has not been banned is because the men refuse to ban it. It is unjust to see a woman being brutalized while a man sits and actually enjoys every part of the picture / films. ‘The war is against men and women,’ this quote is true because in this society men are dominant over women. Women have been trying for many years to go beyond the men in this chauvinistic society. Men have always been considered as superior while women are considered powerless and inferior. It is unacceptable to know that a man is able to getaway with many things such as the snuff films / photography of women being tortured and killed.
Women are treated as sex objects. Women are brutalized every hour, every minute. Women in the sex industry are treated like meat. ‘I can almost say categorically never have I had a client who has not been exposed to prostitution through pornography. For some young women that means that they are shown pornography, either films, video-tapes, or pictures as this is how you do it, almost as a training manual in how to perform acts of prostitution. In addition, out on the street when a young woman is [working], many of her tricks or customers will come up to her with little pieces of paper, pictures that were torn from magazines and say, I want this.
it is like a mail order catalogue of sex acts, and that is what she is expected to perform. Another aspect that plays a bit part in my work. is that on many occasions my clients are multi, many rape victims. These rapes are often either taped or photographed. The young woman when she tries to escape [is blackmailed],’ this is a testimony from a social worker who works exclusively with adolescent female prostitutes. Inal most every case of adolescent prostitution a girl has been introduced to it through pornography.
Everything done to a woman in pornography has been done to a woman in prostitution. There are not only films or pictures that introduce sex, but there are even games where a women of particular race is being dealt with in an inappropriate manner. For example, the pornographic video game ” Custer’s Revenge’ generated many gang rapes of Native American women. In the game, the ‘squaw’ is captured by an American boy and are tied to a tree and raped. The game is sexually explicit, for example, the penis goes in and out, in and out.
The feminist, Andrea Dworkin, wrote this essay to send an urgent dispatch from the frontlines of a national battle over pornography. Andrea Dworkin raised in New Jersey attended Bennington College. She was a free-lance writer and began her career in activism against pornography. Her first feminist book was Women Hating. Dworkin participated in the first ‘Take Back the Night’ march to protest urban districts that harbor prostitution and pornography. It was a march held by feminists who believe pornography should be banned and that prostitution should be stopped.
Dworkin says ‘feminism is magnificent and militant here because the most powerless women are putting their lives on the line to confront the most powerful men for the sake of all women.’ Men and women have been at war for many years, especially when it comes to sex.