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Our Bodies, Ourselves Funds Abusive, Racist Porn
by Richard Leader
“Ohh my goodness…. When u get a chance to dive
into some cute lil argentinian pussy… DO IT! I only knew
jenaveve for like 8 minutes before I started in, and digging her
out!!! I fanangled my way over to her table in the mall, and from
there on, the only thing on my mind, was where on that pretty
face to nut on!” —8thStreetLatinas.com
Feminist organizations such as Our Bodies, Ourselves
and Ms. Magazine are now funding the creation of such pornography.
While they are only indirectly funneling cash into the hands of
companies like Bang Bros., it’s still a shameful situation.
Ironically, it was feminist shame that helped engineer this fiasco
in the first place.
In the summer of 2006, a prominent feminist website was sold to
an unknown party that still remains anonymous. The website was Amptoons.com.
First created and owned by Barry Deutsch of Portland, Oregon, the
site was created to showcase his work as a cartoonist. It later
became a blog that he co-wrote with several female volunteers.
The new owner of the Amptoons required Deutsch to keep things as
they were. According to Deutsch, his only personal obligation was
to remain on as a blogger for a period of one year, working to maintain
the level of internet traffic that the site was accustomed to receiving.
After that he would be free to abandon any association with Amptoons
or its new owner. On August 5th of 2007 Deutsch wrote that he’d
no longer be writing or moderating comments at the Amptoon’s
blog in order to revitalize his career as a cartoonist; most of
his female staff stayed on.
The anonymous owner’s only other addition to the site was
a number of hyperlinks to an innocuous sounding “review software.”
These surreptitious links are designed to redirect visiting search
engines, such as Google, to a “portal” page on Amptoons.
There, yet another series of links invites users to connect to dozens
of pornographic websites.
The goal of the person or group buying Amptoons was to capitalize
on its good name—and keep that good name—in order to
profit from its link popularity. That is, how many other pages on
the internet link to it and continue to link to it on a daily basis.
Those incoming links serve as positive votes of a sort, lending
it more credibility with search engines than sites that receive
less links from outside sources. Rather than just changing the content
over to pornography, it was more cost efficient to put feminists
in charge of freely maintaining the site’s credibility and
future linking opportunities.
By maintaining traffic to Amptoons, the buyer would have the ability
to outcompete others in the porn-shilling business. There’s
a popular myth that pornographers don’t have to compete with
each other, at least not to the extent of other industries (Coke
vs. Pepsi), as male hunger for their product is unlimited and can
be safely distributed into various niches. While porn websites often
cooperated to form “link farms” in the past, the invention
of blogs where people rapidly link to one another has seriously
undercut their earlier advantage with search engines.
Furthermore, as porn users seldom have a reason to go out of their
way to publicly promote the porn sites they frequent, most pornographic
sites do fairly poorly when it comes to generating link popularity
from third-parties. As such, being able to simply buy a slice of
the feminist blogging community and its search engine credibility
from one man must have seemed like it was worth a cool five-figure
sum (likely a minimum of $30K, perhaps much more).
The buyer was banking on Amptoons’ continued popularity.
Even if the sale proved to be controversial, a link is a link and
there’s no bad publicity when it comes to search engines.
The more attention that Amptoons receives, even from critics, the
more likely it is that search engines will refer their users to
its sub-domains, portal pages like review.amptoons.com and bangbros.amptoons.com.
Thus anyone using their own websites to link to Amptoons would be
adding to the link popularity of any of the pornographic websites
it advertised. And yes, Our Bodies, Ourselves and Ms.
Magazine are guilty of that—although this story is even
more complex than even that.
While Barry Deutsch made a brief note of the sale on his blog,
he initially forbid visitors to comment on it. (Comments were enabled
months later, after a critical mass of feminists became vocal about
the website’s new connection to pornography.) His choice to
deny comments on the sale notice had the effect—likely intended—of
allowing the news sink quietly off of the front page.
Only the most frequent readers of the blog would have had time
to view the topic before it was buried under other posts. Even then,
such “heavy users” were also likely to miss the news
of the sale as they frequently navigate through the blog by using
its comments section, focusing on the subjects that allow for comments
and the raucous arguments that ensue. Indeed, many critics of Amptoons
complain of its longstanding tradition of encouraging anti-feminists
to debate with feminists at the blog. As a male host can more safely
tolerate misogyny than his female counterparts, as the attacks aren’t
personal in the same way, this aspect of male privilege was an advantage
that enabled Deutsch and his Amptoons to outcompete other feminist
websites when it came to generating link popularity.
Critics of the sale were horrified that a feminist website was
connected to pornography, especially of the Bang. Bros style where
exploitation is celebrated at every turn. Other complaints focused
on the fact that the entirety of the money went to Deutsch when
it was the female bloggers there who did the bulk of the writing.
It was they who gave the site a feminist legitimacy that he—or
any man—couldn’t have achieved on his own. (Most, but
not all, of the women stayed on after the sale.) Even people who
merely commented on the blog in its margins added to its sale value.
Not only did they add repeated “hits” throughout the
day as they came back to see if anyone had responded to their messages,
the often redundant usage of keywords helped in making the blog
a star with search engines. (Essays and articles have to worry about
word repetition marring the elegance of their prose; internet bickering
has no such concerns and key terms have to be constantly reintroduced
for clarity.)
In many ways it was the online feminist community as a whole that
decided that Amptoons was the place to speak one’s mind. The
female cast of volunteers all had their own blogs, after all, but
participating at Amptoons gave them the ability to speak to a larger
audience and promote their own brands. This feedback loop elevated
the site to the point where it was evidently the first and only
feminist blog that its buyer sought to acquire. Many feminists believed
that the sale was a violation of that community.
Not everyone objected to the sale, of course. Not everyone has
a problem with the sexism of porn—or its racism for that matter.
A few of the libertine men who stalk about Amptoons found themselves
absolutely tickled by news of the sale, knowing that their hated
radical feminists, in particular, were in a row about it. Others
explained away the sale in more practical terms. “We all make
deals with the patriarchy” and other nouveau “glass
houses” appeals were made on behalf of Barry Deutsch. A significant
number suddenly found themselves very much concerned with the absolute
right to property (the site belonged to Deutsch and was his alone
to sell), throwing themselves on the altar of capitalism. It’s
astonishing how skeptical Progressives tend to be about capitalism
until the idea of sex is introduced: then, they’re all about
the joys of the free market.
The most fashionable apologetic was grounded in technology. The
argument stated that the deal would not result in the addition of
any new porn to the internet as the scheme would only result in
“one porn site stealing customers away from other porn sites.”
They argued that the sale of Amptoons to what they called a Search
Engine Optimizer (SEO) wouldn’t have any net impact on porn
in general and would only work to redistribute funds within it.
As such, even if one is politically against pornography, the involvement
of Amptoons in the industry must be regarded as entirely
neutral.
This defense falls flat for a variety of reasons. Some women countered
that teens looking for factual information about sexuality could
be redirected to Bang Bros. due to the leveraging of Amptoon’s
feminist credibility with search engines. That is true enough. There
is a far more basic flaw, however: Amptoons was never sold to an
SEO.
A Search Engine Optimizer is generally a consultant or company
that helps clients to better market their products. This is done
through a variety of fair and legal means—and many unscrupulous
ones as well. In brief, for an agreed upon fee, an SEO works to
push their client’s website to the top of selected key words
that potential customers might use when querying search engines.
In other cases, it tries to improve general traffic or even inspire
accidental visitations through trickery.
People employing the SEO theory to defend Barry Deutsch were under
the mistaken belief that Bang Bros., or a similar company, bought
Amptoons outright (perhaps under the advice of an SEO consultant,
one would have to imagine for the theory to live up to its name)
to use for its own marketing purposes. However, there isn’t
a shred of evidence to back such an assertion.
I would argue that something quite different was going on. Each
link at Amptoons contains a referral code that is used to track
people who navigate through it. Every time someone clicks “through”
one and later subscribes to the pornographic sites, the referrer,
an unrelated third-party, receives a substantial portion of the
subscription fee as their cut. That person needn’t have any
further involvement with the porn websites or the content that they
create. Bang Bros. might have received an eponymous subdomain at
Amptoons, something that presumably led the SEO theorists to believe
that they were the ones behind the purchase, but the portal at the
blog refers visitors to a variety of unrelated websites. Bang Bros.
was merely the most popular—and potentially profitable—company
to encourage male referrals to visit. As such, it received top billing.
While the distinction between an SEO and a referral-partner might
not be meaningful to many people, there is a clear difference that
undermines the “no net-benefit to porn” claim. More
important than that difference, however, is how the simple acronym
SEO supplied masculine power to those who invoked it in the argument
over Amptoons and pornography. As I explained above, those believing
they had insider knowledge of technical jargon had nothing of the
sort: instead, the constant refrain of “SEO this” and
“SEO that” was used as a phallus to silence the voices
of women who objected to the sale.
For his part, Barry Deutsch could safely play a luddite, even to
the point of pretending to be less technologically savvy than he
is. He claims to not know certain basic things that he must have
researched during the transfer of Amptoons to its buyer. Likewise,
the male blogger that Deutsch ultimately chose to respond to (in
lieu of directly addressing female critics), Hugo Schwyzer, was
equally keen on admitting he had very limited knowledge of such
matters.
Women, on the other hand, were terrified of being seen as ignorant.
After the three letters of SEO were first introduced to the argument,
defenders of both Deutsch and pornography (not necessarily one and
the same) were thrilled to have them at their disposal. It was a
marker of difference in the classic feminist sense: women who employed
it did so to differentiate themselves from those who didn’t.
Those who used it were entitled to be seen as more rational, reasonable,
and powerful than those who didn’t: in short, the acronym
made them more “male.”
Those on the opposing side of the argument were unable to use that
same jargon without at least conceding that Amptoons was, in fact,
bought by an SEO. A feminist objecting to the sale or pornography
in general had to admit that she had less knowledge of the situation
than her feminist peers. She could adopt “SEO” for use
in her own statements about the sale—and thus allow others
the power to entirely frame the debate and what direction it might
go—or she could avoid its use entirely.
Women are seen as deficient when it comes to science and technology
without proof to the contrary. Lacking access to that jargon and
its transformative power, a feminist woman would appear as someone
arguing out of emotion, rather than the concrete “facts”
thought to be held by those wielding “SEO” as if it
were a weapon—a penis.
Feminists on both sides of the discussion had severe anxiety about
their competence with technology. It was obvious and palpable. And
it was also no accident that men supplied a solution to that problem
for only those women who would defend male interests, even if that
solution proved to be phony. Indeed, the credentials of the men
who first supplied the idea were never tested: their simple claim
that an SEO was involved was taken at face value and without question.
The masculinity of both the men and the jargon was enough to make
it true.
Conversely, the two most popular male feminist-bloggers on the
internet were able to brag about being computer illiterate. Rather
than undercutting their male privilege, being assumed competent
in such matters by default, such a pose reveled in it by denying
the anxiety that women were experiencing in the debate. Feminist
women had to learn the jargon or shut up. Technophobic grandstanding
was not a choice available to them. For Barry Deutsch and Hugo Schwyzer,
their professed ignorance served to separate them from men in general,
insulating them from class responsibility. In effect, the pose gave
them access to a new gender identity that afforded them both male
power and the ability to be trusted as “one of the girls”
when appealing to feminist solidarity.
It is the very same anxiety on the part of women that directly
links Our Bodies, Ourselves and Ms. Magazine to
Amptoons and its pornography.
Ms. Magazine once hosted a highly influential forum on
the internet. The conversations that took place and the myriad relationships
that arose had far reaching effects. Not only did famous authors,
some feminist and some not, peek in and make an appearance from
time to time, some of its more dramatic moments were discussed on
FOX News. That might not seem all that impressive now with the mainstream
media flocking to Yearly Kos, but this was years before such a thing
had become commonplace.
Although it was often a tinderbox and the limelight was often not
necessarily the sort Ms. Magazine was hoping to attract,
in retrospect, it was a tremendous accomplishment. It set the stage
for some of the most popular feminist blogs, Amptoons and Echidne
of the Snakes. Even my own journal, Adonis Mirror,
has Ms. to directly thank for its creation. Others from
the forums are serving as editors at Rain and Thunder and
Off Our Backs. There are a number of activist groups—some
open, some clandestine—that were formed from the ashes of
the “Ms. Boards.” Amongst our number is even
a candidate for the President of the United States.
Overseeing such a community was undoubtedly a daunting responsibility.
It was likely a thankless one at the time: the Ms. Boards
were unceremoniously closed without notice in mid 2004. An up-swell
was occurring elsewhere on the internet, however, as forums were
being displaced by the more masculine blog format. Blogs, with their
strict hierarchy governing social interaction, even had a name that
was culled out of the most ridiculous depths of male jargon. (Are
we really supposed to believe that someone once found themselves
too winded to say “web log” and the truncated form somehow
stuck?)
Although a “blog” might just be a macho rebranding
of what was once demurely called a “home page,” those
lacking one in this new environment were told that they were no
longer relevant in public discourse. To be without one is to be
impotent. Ms. hired their first professional blogger, Christine
Cupaiuolo, scarcely a month or two after they had shut down their
forums. She was to pen their Ms. Musings.
Ms. Magazine might have bought itself a cock—in
the form of a blog—to parade before their male peers at The
Nation and other Leftist publications, but Ms. Musings was
an abject failure. While they retained Cupaiuolo for nearly three
years to write blurbs about newspaper headlines, it never generated
the sort of acclaim or prestige that the Feminist Majority Federation
(FMF) seemed to hope for: the sort they saw routinely afforded to
men and their blogs.
Not only did Ms. abandon Ms. Musings, but two other blogs
as well. Their second attempt was a short lived effort by radio
comic Carol Ann Leif, while the third was an intermittent series
by Eleanor Smeal herself.
Their rush to the blog bandwagon was informed by the same anxiety
that manifested itself in the debate over the sale of Amptoons.
Women were terrified of being left off of the cutting edge and were
forced, by male sexism, to overcompensate. The FMF’s overcompensation
turned out to be a tremendous waste of resources. This is something
they were too embarrassed to share with the Boston Women’s
Health Book Collective (Our Bodies, Ourselves), who have
recently hired Christine Cupaiuolo to produce a similar project,
a daily “Our Bodies, Our Blog.” Despite her best efforts—and
her talents are ultimately immaterial to its future—it seems
destined to the same fate as Ms. Musings.
When Cupaiuolo started at Ms. Musings is was clearly a challenging
prospect. Although she had the power of the Ms. name behind
her, it was still difficult to integrate with the online feminist
community as a whole. It surely didn’t help that a small but
vocal number of feminists were still upset over the dismissal of
the Ms. Boards: heavily linking to certain members of that
community such as Echidne of the Snakes and Amptoons worked to mitigate
that to some extent. The latter even enjoys two prominent links
on Ms. Musings, the first under a general feminist heading, and
a second one privileged under “Men we Love.” Cupaiuolo
is likewise responsible for a link to Amptoons at Our Bodies, Our
Blog.
It is not my intention to blame Christine Cupaiuolo or the women
at the FMF or the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective for
the sale of Amptoons to pornographers. That is solely the fault
of Barry Deutsch. Instead, I am arguing (and why I saw fit to title
this essay the way I did), that far too many feminists have been
caught up in a system of values that made that sale possible—and
defensible—in the first place.
Many might believe that I’m writing out of jealousy or spite;
or that my intentions aren’t entirely (or even partially)
noble or feminist. In some instances they might be justified in
saying so. Still, if we are to believe that the personal is political,
there has to be meaning in ignoble thoughts. Such ugliness is at
the root of this discussion and it certainly isn’t mine alone.
By ridding itself of the Ms. Boards, the FMF seems to
believe that it put that sort of ugliness behind them: they could
buy their way back into the online feminist community (much as the
buyer of Amptoons did), only they’d no longer have to worry
about the pettiness (or the glory) of human interaction. Ms. Musings
would be a prize to keep safely on their mantle, a way to compare
themselves to the big boys of the publishing world. Whether or not
it currently contains links to pornography is not a thought that
members of the editorial board even have to consider—or could
even possibly begin to consider. The pedestrian infighting, the
tangled relationships, and even the “lil argentinian pussy”
being pimped at Amptoons: all of that is safely beneath them.
Fear has driven feminist organizations to corporate isolationism.
Blogs might be worth buying into for the sake of masculine credibility.
But these purchases have been insincere, with no effort to treat
the feminist online community as equal partners. When the fact that
one of the most popular and celebrated feminist blogs is owned by
someone making money off of the filming of international sex tourism
(and even George W. Bush has the sense to be against that) is reduced
to a “blogosphere” squabble that is too unseemly or
divisive to take notice of, rather than a call for action, one has
to question why the Professional Feminists saw fit to buy into this
realm in the first place.
I believe the answer to that question lies behind the same anxiety
that caused feminists to parrot “SEO” in that same debate
over Amptoons. The so-called Digital Divide isn’t just a problem
for little girls: it’s equally an issue for adult women who
are actually quite comfortable with technology until men start inventing
reasons for women to doubt themselves. The profound and revolutionary
nature attributed to blogs is merely the most recent invention.
And it worked. The FMF might have been far ahead of the curve when
it came to leveraging online community and yet it was more than
willing to abandon that progress, fearful that they were straggling
behind.
I certainly have my own anxiety. In speaking up against the sale
of Amptoons to pornographers I have been accused several times of
acting under my own jealous impulses. These critics offered the
opinion that Barry Deutsch and I were merely competing for the attention
and respect of women—and that neither one of us was any better
than the other in that regard. There is some truth to that. There
is some falsehood, too. After all, if one is just as guilty no matter
what, you’d have to be a complete idiot to be the guy not
making money off of porn.
I think I’m happy to be that idiot. Maybe feminism is the
best form of revenge by a failed patriarch.
I encourage other males reading this to be idiots, too.
There are plenty of smart men around. Men like Richard Jeffery
Newman, a poet and professor at Nassau Community College. His academic
stature has made him a natural to write as a guest blogger at Amptoons.
It’s a smart opportunity. He has moved women to tears there
with an essay on sexuality entitled “My Daughter’s Vagina.”
It would be stupid to give all of that up just because the venue
is being paid for by the body of a girl named Jenaveve.
“Ohh my goodness…. When u get a chance to dive
into some cute lil argentinian pussy… DO IT! I only knew
jenaveve for like 8 minutes before I started in, and digging her
out!!! I fanangled my way over to her table in the mall, and from
there on, the only thing on my mind, was where on that pretty
face to nut on!” —8thStreetLatinas.com
8thStreetLatinas (“See hot young & brown latinas that
will do absolutely anything to get their citizenship”) has
a review of 86 points and “two thumbs up” at Amptoons.com.
http://reviews[dot]amptoons[dot]com/review/8th-street-latinas
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