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The Pornography of Information

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Necroculture

Abstract

In her groundbreaking study, The Pornography of Representation (1986), Susanne Kappeler argued that pornography is a structure of representation in which women are rendered objects for the gaze of the male subject. Man-as-subject and woman-as-object are constructed in opposition to one another within this structure: “The objectification of woman is a result of the subjectification of man.” This simultaneously subjectifying and objectifying structure of representation, inherently violent in its reduction of a human being to an object of the gaze, action, and power of another, encodes and solidifies the social structures of hierarchy and domination in which it is embedded.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Susanne Kappeler, The Pornography of Representation (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1986), 50.

  2. 2.

    Kappeler, Pornography of Representation, 5–6, 8.

  3. 3.

    Photographs in Mark Danner, Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror (New York: New York Review Books, 2004), 217–224; Graham, Duncan and Paul Cruickshank, 2009. “Abu Ghraib Abuse Photos ‘Show Rape’” The Daily Telegraph (May 27), http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5395830/Abu-Ghraib-abuse-photos-show-rape.html; Seymour Hersch, “The General’s Report,” The New Yorker, June 25, 2007, http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/06/25/070625fa_fact_hersh?currentPage=all; Michael Sherer and Mark Benjamin, “Mentally Deranged,” Salon.com , March 14, 2006, http://www.salon.com/2006/03/14/chapter_9_2/; Steven H. Miles, Oath Betrayed: America’s Torture Doctors (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 104; Mark Danner, “Abu Ghraib: The Hidden Story,” The New York Review of Books, October 7, 2004, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2004/oct/07/abu-ghraib-the-hidden-story/; Richard A. Serrano, “Abused Iraqi Detainees Said to Hold No Intelligence Value,” Los Angeles Times, August 4, 2004, http://articles.latimes.com/2004/aug/04/nation/na-lynndie4; Scott Higham and Joe Stephens, “New Details of Prison Abuse Emerge,” The Washington Post, May 21, 2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43783-2004May20.html

  4. 4.

    Translation of statement provided by Kasim Mehaddi Hilas, Detainee #151108, reprinted in Danner, Torture and Truth, 242–243.

  5. 5.

    Translation of statement provided by Abdou Hussain Saad Faleh, Detainee #18470, reprinted in Danner, Torture and Truth, 230.

  6. 6.

    Anonymous detainee statement, reprinted in Danner, Torture and Truth, 248.

  7. 7.

    Danner, Torture and Truth, 18.

  8. 8.

    Danner, Torture and Truth, 19.

  9. 9.

    Kappeler, Pornography of Representation, 154.

  10. 10.

    George W. Bush, “President Bush Addresses the Nation,” September 20, 2001, reprinted in The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/specials/attacked/transcripts/bushaddress_092001.html

  11. 11.

    Joanna Bourke, “Torture as Pornography,” The Guardian, May 6, 2004, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/may/07/gender.uk. See also De Clarke, “Prostitution for Everyone: Feminism, Globalization and the ‘Sex’ Industry,” in Not For Sale: Feminists Resisting Prostitution and Pornography ed. Christine Starke and Rebecca Whisnant (Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 2004), 149–205, on 205.

  12. 12.

    Bourke, “Torture as Pornography”; Danner, Torture and Truth, 45.

  13. 13.

    Al Jazeera, “Storm over Israeli ‘Abuse’ Photos,” Al Jazeera, August 17, 2010, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2010/08/2010816164542801123.html; Diaa Hadid, “Eden Abergil Facebook Pictures: Israeli Soldier’s Photos Cause Outrage,” The Huffington Post, May 25, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/16/eden-abergil-facebook-pic_n_683816.html; Jean Shaoul, “Facebook Postings of Abuse of Palestinians Highlight Polarisation of Israeli Society,” World Socialist Web Site, August 25, 2010, http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2010/08/isra-a25.html

  14. 14.

    Hadid, “Eden Abergil.”

  15. 15.

    Hadid, “Eden Abergil.”

  16. 16.

    Simon McGregor-Wood, “Israeli Soldier Belly Dances Around Palestinian Woman,” ABC News, October 6, 2010, http://www.abcnews.go.com/international/israeli-soldier-belly-dances-palestinian-woman/story?id=11802427

  17. 17.

    Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century (London: Pimlico, 2001), 341.

  18. 18.

    Glover, Humanity, 37.

  19. 19.

    Khatib, quoted in Hadid, “Eden Abergil.”

  20. 20.

    Kappeler, Pornography of Representation, 50–51.

  21. 21.

    Christoph Dreier, “‘Abu-Ghraib-like’ Torture of Refugees Exposed in Germany,” World Socialist Web Site, October 1, 2014, http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/10/01/mist-o01.html; Jenny Hill, “German Police Probe Abuse at Burbach Asylum Center,” BBC News, September 29, 2014, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29408172; “Criminals are at Work in Refugee Homes,” The Local, September 30, 2014, http://www.thelocal.de/20140930/germany-shocked-and-ashamed-over-refugee-photo

  22. 22.

    Giorgio Agamben, State of Exception (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2004), 50–100.

  23. 23.

    This continues under the Obama administration. See Glenn Greenwald, “Another Guantánamo prisoner death highlights Democrats’ hypocrisy,” The Guardian, September 11, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/11/guantanamo-prisoner-death-democrats

  24. 24.

    Wendy Brown, Walled States, Waning Sovereignty (New York: Zone Books, 2010).

  25. 25.

    Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: Its Human Consequences (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), 93. See also Maggy Lee, Trafficking and Global Crime Control (London: Sage, 2011), 152.

  26. 26.

    Zygmunt Bauman, Wasted Lives: Modernity and its Outcasts (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004); Lee, Trafficking and Global Crime Control, 152.

  27. 27.

    S.P. Glinkina, quoted in Nikos Passas, “Global Anomie, Dysnomie and Economic Change: Hidden Consequences of Neoliberalism and Globalization in Russia and Around the World,” Social Justice 27(2): 16–44, on 29.

  28. 28.

    Saltanat Sulaimanova, “Trafficking in Women from the Former Soviet Union for the Purpose of Sexual Exploitation,” in Karen Beeks and Delila Amib eds., Trafficking and the Global Sex Industry (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), 61–75.

  29. 29.

    Dennis Altman, Global Sex (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 108. Trafficking of women from Tajikistan to the Gulf States and Russia is discussed in Gustavo Capdevila, “Globalization Leads to Slavery,” Asia Times, August 23, 2001, http://www.asiatimes/com/c-asia/CH23Ag03.html

  30. 30.

    Sulaimanova, “Trafficking in Women,” 61.

  31. 31.

    Elina Pentinnen, Globalization, Prostitution and Sex-Trafficking: Corporeal Politics (London: Routledge, 2008), 25–26.

  32. 32.

    Lee, Trafficking and Global Crime Control, 48.

  33. 33.

    Gail Kligman and Stephanie Limoncelli, “Trafficking Women after Socialism: From, To, and Through, Eastern Europe,” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society 12(1) (Spring 2005): 118–140, on 122.

  34. 34.

    Quotation from Nisha Lilio Piu, “Welcome to Paradise: Inside the World of Legalized Prostitution,” The Telegraph, March 5, 2014, http://s.telegraph.co.uk/graphics/projects/welcome-to-paradise/. See also “Unprotected: How Legalizing Prostitution has Failed,” Spiegel Online, May 30, 2013, http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/human-trafficking-persists-despite-legality-of-prostitution-in-germany-a-902533.html

  35. 35.

    Lee, Trafficking and Global Crime Control, 51.

  36. 36.

    Sulaimanova, “Trafficking in Women,” 63.

  37. 37.

    Sulaimanova, “Trafficking in Women,” 62, 64–65.

  38. 38.

    Sulaimanova, “Trafficking in Women,” 69. See also Phil Williams, “Trafficking in Women: the Role of Transnational Organized Crime,” in Sally Cameron and Edward Newman eds, Trafficking in Humans: Social, Cultural and Political Dimensions (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2008), 126–157, on 142–145.

  39. 39.

    Sally Cameron, “Trafficking of Women for Prostitution,” in Cameron and Newman, Trafficking in Humans, 80–110, on 87.

  40. 40.

    ILO 2012 Global Estimate of Forced Labour: Executive Summary (International Labor Organization, Geneva, Switzerland: 2012), http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/@ed_norm/@declaration/documents/publication/wcms_181953.pdf. See also ILO Global Estimate of Forced Labor: Results and Methodology (International Labor Organization, Geneva, Switzerland: 2012), 16, http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—ed_norm/—declaration/documents/publication/wcms_182004.pdf

  41. 41.

    United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2012 (Vienna: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2012), 10, 25–26, 36, http://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/glotip/Trafficking_in_Persons_2012_web.pdf

  42. 42.

    Williams, “Trafficking in Women,” 145.

  43. 43.

    Lee, Trafficking and Global Crime Control, 4.

  44. 44.

    Richard Poulin, “Globalization and the Sex Trade: Trafficking and the Commodification of Women and Children,” Canadian Woman Studies 22 (3/4) (2004): 38–47, quoting 38.

  45. 45.

    Saskia Sassen, “Two Stops in Today’s New Global Geographies: Shaping Novel Labor Supplies and Employment Regimes,” American Behavioral Scientist 52 (3) (November 2008): 457–496, on 459. See also Saskia Sassen, “Women’s Burden: Counter-Geographies of Globalization and the Feminization of Survival,” Nordic Journal of International Law 71 (2002): 255–274, 255; Lee, Trafficking and Global Crime Control, 50; Rey Koslowski, “Economic Globalization, Human Smuggling, and Global Governance,” in David Kyle and Rey Koslowski eds., Global Human Smuggling: Comparative Perspectives (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 337–358, esp. 338–339; Alfred E. Eckes, The Contemporary Global Economy: a History Since 1980 (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 220–223, esp. 220.

  46. 46.

    L. Shelley and J. Picarelli, quoted in Lee, Trafficking and Global Crime Control, 23.

  47. 47.

    Lee, Trafficking and Global Crime Control, 23–24, quoting 23; Cameron and Newman, “Structural Factors,” 28; Amelia Hill, “Girls of Six Sold into Sex Slavery,” The Observer, December 17, 2000, http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/dec/17/childprotection.society

  48. 48.

    Sally Cameron and Edward Newman, “Structural Factors in Human Trafficking,” in Cameron and Newman eds, Trafficking in Humans, on 26.

  49. 49.

    Williams, “Trafficking in Women,” 126.

  50. 50.

    Lee, Trafficking and Global Crime Control, 6.

  51. 51.

    Williams, “Trafficking in Women,” 127. See also Phil Williams ed., Illegal Immigration and Commercial Sex: The New Slave Trade (London: Frank Cass, 1999).

  52. 52.

    Williams, “Trafficking in Women,” 130.

  53. 53.

    Williams, “Trafficking in Women,” 155.

  54. 54.

    Ronaldo Munk, Globalization and Social Exclusion: A Transformationalist Perspective (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarion Press, 2005), 90–91. See also Kevin Bales, Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).

  55. 55.

    United States Department of State, Trafficking in Persons Report 2008 (June 2008), 34, http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/105501.pdf

  56. 56.

    Pentinnen, Globalization, Prostitution and Sex Trafficking, 20–21, see also 56–57.

  57. 57.

    Munk, Globalization and Social Exclusion, 94; see also Ursula Biemann, “Remotely Sensed: A Topography of the Global Sex Trade,” Feminist Review 70 (2000): 75–88.

  58. 58.

    Langdon Winner, “Cyberlibertarian Myths and the Prospects for Community,” ACM SIGCAS Computers and Society 27 (3) (September 1997): 14–19; PJ Rey, “The Myth of Cyberspace,” The New Inquiry, April 13, 2012, http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/the-myth-of-cyberspace/; Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, “The Californian Ideology,” Science as Culture 6 (1) (1996): 44–72.

  59. 59.

    Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 37–38. Cf. Sadie Plant, Zeroes and Ones: Digital Women and the New Technoculture (New York: Doubleday, 1997).

  60. 60.

    Pentinnen, Globalization, Prostitution and Sex-Trafficking, 45–46.

  61. 61.

    Pentinnen, Globalization, Prostitution and Sex-Trafficking, 73.

  62. 62.

    Amanda Kloer, “Craigslist Makes $36 million from illegal sex ads,” Change.org , April 26, 2010, http://humantrafficking.change.org/blog/view/craigslist_makes_36_million_from_illegal_sex_ads; Liz Goodwin, “Craigslist Founder Rendered Speechless by CNN’s Sex Trafficking Questions,” Yahoo! News, http://news.yahoo.com/craigslist-founder-rendered-speechless-cnn-sex-trafficking-questions-155002984.html; Steve Turnham and Amber Lyon, “Sold on Craigslist: Critics Say Sex Ad Crackdown Inadequate,” August 4, 2010, http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/08/03/craigslist.sex.ads/; Amir Attaran, “Sex Slaves in Canada,” Literary Review of Canada (December 2010), http://reviewcanada.ca/magazine/2010/12/sex-slaves-in-canada/

  63. 63.

    Ian O’Donnell and Claire Milner, 2007. Child Pornography: Crime, Computers and Society (Cullompton, Devon, UK: Willan Publishing), 28–29.

  64. 64.

    O’Donnell and Milner, Child Pornography, 55–56.

  65. 65.

    “The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) Identified Twice as Many Child Sexual Abuse Webpages This Year Compared to Last Year,” Internet Watch Foundation, December 11, 2014, https://www.iwf.org.uk/about-iwf/news/post/399-the-internet-watch-foundation-iwf-has-identified-twice-as-many-child-sexual-abuse-webpages-this-year-compared-to-last-year. Accessed January 5, 2015.

  66. 66.

    O’Donnell and Milner, Child Pornography, 54.

  67. 67.

    O’Donnell and Milner, Child Pornography, 54.

  68. 68.

    O’Donnell and Milner, Child Pornography, 28.

  69. 69.

    Oliver Burkeman, “Parents Charged in Paedophile Ring,” The Guardian, August 9, 2002, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/aug/10/childprotection.usa?INTCMP=SRCHMc

  70. 70.

    David Batty, “100 Arrests Hit World Paedophile Ring,” The Guardian, November 5, 2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/nov/05/ukcrime.internationalcrime?INTCMP=SRCH;

    Williams, Rachel, “Police Act over ‘Made-to-Order’ Child Videos,” The Guardian, November 6, 2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/nov/06/ukcrime.children?INTCMP=SRCH.

  71. 71.

    Karen McVeigh, “Police Shut Down Global Paedophile Network in Operation Rescue” The Guardian, May 11 (2011), http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/mar/16/global-paedophile-ring-smashed?INTCMP=SRCH

  72. 72.

    “Police Swoop on International Paedophile Ring,” The Guardian, July 2, 2002, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2002/jul/02/internetnews.childprotection?INTCMP=SRCH

  73. 73.

    David Wilson, “Missing the Real Danger to Children,” The Guardian, August 22, 2003, http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2003/aug/22/childrensservices.comment?INTCMP=SRCH. See also S.A. Mathieson, “Image Control,” The Guardian, September 7, 2005, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/sep/08/onlinesupplement.insideit?INTCMP=SRCH; Rosie Cowan, “100 Children Saved from Paedophiles,” The Guardian, April 14, 2004, http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2004/apr/15/childrensservices.childprotection1

  74. 74.

    Audrey Gillan, “Race to Save New Victims of Child Porn,” The Guardian, November 4, 2003, http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2003/nov/04/childrensservices.childprotection?INTCMP=SRCH

  75. 75.

    Bobbie Johnson, “Worst Child Abuse Images Quadruple Online in Three Years, Says Watchdog,” The Guardian, April 17, 2007, http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2007/apr/17/news.frontpagenews

  76. 76.

    Denise Lavoie (Associated Press), “Vast International Child-Porn Network Uncovered,” ABC News, August 4, 2012, http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/vast-international-child-porn-network-uncovered-16928881

  77. 77.

    Gail Dines, Pornland: How Porn has Hijacked our Sexuality (Boston: Beacon Press, 2010), xviii-xix; see also Robert Jensen, Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2007), 57.

  78. 78.

    Dines, Pornland, xxiv–xxv.

  79. 79.

    Dines, Pornland, xxv–xxvi.

  80. 80.

    Jensen, Getting Off, 101.

  81. 81.

    Jensen, Getting Off, 76.

  82. 82.

    Dines, Pornland, 93–94; see also Pamela Paul, Pornified: How Pornography is Damaging our Lives, our Relationships, and our Families (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2005), 88, 227–229; Norman Doidge, “Brain Scans of Porn Addicts: What’s Wrong with this Picture?” The Guardian, September 26, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/26/brain-scans-porn-addicts-sexual-tastes

  83. 83.

    Paul, Pornified, 228.

  84. 84.

    Dines, Pornland, 142–143. See also “Children are the Pornography Industry’s Next Goal” (interview with Gail Dines, March 2008), CitizenLink, June 14, 2010, http://www.citizenlink.com/2010/06/14/children-are-the-pornography-industry%E2%80%99s-goal/. Accessed August 13, 2012.

  85. 85.

    Dines, Pornland, 94.

  86. 86.

    “At a XXX-roads,” The Economist, October 1, 2011, 64.

  87. 87.

    Stephen Maddison, “Online Obscenity and Myths of Freedom: Dangerous Images, Child Porn, and Neoliberalism,” in Feona Attwood, Porn.com : Making Sense of Online Pornography (New York: Peter Lang, 2010), 17–33, on 26–27.

  88. 88.

    Chun, Control and Freedom, 12–13.

  89. 89.

    Porn user, quoted in Paul, Pornified, 76.

  90. 90.

    Pamela Paul, Pornified, 83–84.

  91. 91.

    Rae Langton, Sexual Solipsism: Philosophical Essays on Pornography and Objectification (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

  92. 92.

    Hubert Dreyfus, On the Internet (London: Routledge, 2009), 78–79. See also Søren Kierkegaard, “The Present Age” in idem, The Present Age and Of the Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle, trans. Alexander Dru (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 33–86, esp. 39.

  93. 93.

    Joan Walsh, “Men who Hate Women on the Web,” Salon.com , March 31, 2007, http://www.salon.com/2007/03/31/sierra/; See also Tim Adams, “How the Internet Created an Age of Rage,” The Guardian, July 23, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jul/24/internet-anonymity-trolling-tim-adams; Vanessa Thorpe and Richard Rogers, “Women Bloggers Call for a Stop to ‘Hateful’ Trolling by Misogynist Men,” The Observer, November 6, 2011, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/05/women-bloggers-hateful-trolling;

    “Creepy Crawlies: The Internet allows the Malicious to Menace their Victims,” The Economist, April 20, 2011, http://www.economist.com/node/18584386; Jaron Lanier, You are Not a Gadget (New York: Vintage Books, 2011), 60–61.

  94. 94.

    Martha C. Nussbaum, “Objectification and Internet Misogyny,” in Saul Levmore and Martha C. Nussbaum eds, The Offensive Internet: Pivacy, Speech, and Reputation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 68–87.

  95. 95.

    Kappeler, Pornography of Representation, 57–58.

  96. 96.

    Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973), 240–241.

  97. 97.

    Fromm, Anatomy, 239.

  98. 98.

    Fromm, Anatomy, 242–245.

  99. 99.

    Fromm, Anatomy, 248.

  100. 100.

    O’Donnell and Milner, Child Pornography, 54.

  101. 101.

    For curiosity as an explanation for mainstream heterosexual pornography use, see Paul, Pornified, 30.

  102. 102.

    O’Donnell and Milner, Child Pornography, 54.

  103. 103.

    O’Donnell and Milner, Child Pornography, 87–88. On collecting practices in child pornography use, see also Max Taylor and Ethel Quayle, Child Pornography: an Internet Crime (Hove, East Sussex, UK: Routledge, 2003), 148–170.

  104. 104.

    Marisol Bello and Yamiche Alcindor, “Police Chief, Rabbi Among 71 Nabbed in Porn Bust,” USA Today, May 22, 2014, 1; Joseph Berger, “71 Are Accused in a Child Pornography Case, Officials Say,” The New York Times, May 22, 2014, A22.

  105. 105.

    O’Donnell and Milner, Child Pornography, 87.

  106. 106.

    Fromm, Anatomy, 291, 293. See also Erich Fromm, The Escape from Freedom (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1969), 155–158.

  107. 107.

    Philip Jenkins, Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography on the Internet (New York: New York University Press, 2003), 103.

  108. 108.

    Jensen, Getting Off, 115.

  109. 109.

    Quoted in Paul, Pornified, 35.

  110. 110.

    Quoted in Jensen, Getting Off, 115. Capital letters in original.

  111. 111.

    Chun, Control and Freedom, 106–107.

  112. 112.

    Roger T. Pipe, “Something for Everyone: Busty Latin Anal Nurses in Leather and Glasses,” in Monroe ed., Porn, 193–203, on 200.

  113. 113.

    Maddison, “Online Obscenity,” 27.

  114. 114.

    Theodore Bach, “Pornography as Simulation,” in Dave Monroe ed., Porn – Philosophy for Everyone: How to Think with Kink (Malden, MA: John Wiley and Sons, 2010), 52–65, on 62. Emphasis in original.

  115. 115.

    Alan Soble, Pornography: Marxism, Feminism and the Future of Sexuality (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 56, see also 61.

  116. 116.

    Soble, Pornography, 57.

  117. 117.

    Quoting and giving examples from Killing Us Softly 4: Advertising’s Image of Women (Northhampton, MA: Media Education Foundation, 2010).

  118. 118.

    Dines, Pornland, xviii.

  119. 119.

    Dines, Pornland, 152.

  120. 120.

    Jensen, Getting Off, 59; Dines, Pornland, xxi.

  121. 121.

    Quoted in Dines, Pornland, 71.

  122. 122.

    Dines, Pornland, xxv–xxvi.

  123. 123.

    Jensen, Getting Off, 121, 125–126.

  124. 124.

    Quoted in Dines, Pornland, 69. See also Jensen, Getting Off, 59–60.

  125. 125.

    Jensen, Getting Off, 126.

  126. 126.

    Dines, Pornland, xvii.

  127. 127.

    Kira Cochrane, “For Your Entertainment,” The Guardian (G2), May 1, 2007, 4–7, quoting 5–7.

  128. 128.

    See Fromm, Anatomy, 288–290.

  129. 129.

    Fromm, Anatomy, 348.

  130. 130.

    Dines, Pornland, 75.

  131. 131.

    Dines, Pornland, 77.

  132. 132.

    Vicki Larson, “Can Loving a Robot Lead to Divorce?,” The Huffington Post, December 20, 2011, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vicki-larson/robots_1_b_1150679.html

  133. 133.

    David Levy, Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships (New York: Harper Collins, 2007), 22, 215, 242–253.

  134. 134.

    Levy, Love and Sex, 310.

  135. 135.

    Quoted in Patricia Pulham, “The Eroticism of Artificial Flesh in Villiers de L’Isle Adam’s L’Eve Future,” Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century 7 (2008) 12. Available online at: http://www.19.bbk.ac.uk/index.php/19/article/viewFile/486/346

  136. 136.

    Levy, Love and Sex, 127–128.

  137. 137.

    Fromm, Anatomy, 350.

  138. 138.

    Fromm, The Heart of Man, 58–59. See also Philip Slater, The Pursuit of Loneliness: American Culture at the Breaking Point (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990), 37.

  139. 139.

    See also Mark Dery, Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century (New York: Grove Press, 1996), 225.

  140. 140.

    Catherine Mackinnon, Only Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 109; quoted in Langton, Sexual Solipsism, 315.

  141. 141.

    Melinda Vadas, “The Manufacture-for-use of Pornography and Women’s Inequality,” Journal of Political Philosophy 13 (2005): 174–193, on 186; quoted also in Langton, Sexual Solipsism, 352.

  142. 142.

    Langton, Sexual Solipsism, 352–353.

  143. 143.

    Quoted in Langton, Sexual Solipsism, 23. See also Jensen, Getting Off, 111.

  144. 144.

    Cf. Langton, Sexual Solipsism, 354.

  145. 145.

    Quoted in Paul, Pornified, 105.

  146. 146.

    Dines, Pornland, xxiv.

  147. 147.

    Dines, Pornland, xxiv. See also Laurie Penny, Meat Market: Female Flesh Under Capitalism (Winchester, UK: Zero Books, 2011), 12.

  148. 148.

    Levy, Love and Sex, 257; Mimi Marinucci, “What’s Wrong with Porn?” in Monroe ed., Porn, 130–139, on 136.

  149. 149.

    e.g. http://www.fuckingmachines.com. See Marinucci, “What’s Wrong,” 136. See also Katharine Mieszkowskie, “Battlebots in the Bedroom,” Salon.com , February 12, 2002, http://www.salon.com/2002/02/12/sexbots/

  150. 150.

    Jensen, Getting Off, 113.

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    Jane Caputi, The Age of Sex Crime (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1987), 142; Chris Hables Gray, “Man Plus: Enhanced Cyborgs and the Construction of the Future Masculine,” Science as Culture 9 (3): 277–299.

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    Slater, Pursuit of Loneliness, 87–88.

  153. 153.

    Soble, Pornography, 60.

  154. 154.

    O’Donnell and Milner, Child Pornography, 34–35.

  155. 155.

    Penny, Meat Market, 9–10.

  156. 156.

    See, for example, Phil Taylor and Peter Bain, “‘An Assembly Line in the Head’: Work and Employee Relations in the Call Centre,” Industrial Relations Journal 30(2) (1999): 101–117.

  157. 157.

    Paul, Pornified, 29–30; Stephanie Armour, “Technology Makes Porn Easier to Access at Work,” USA Today, October 18, 2007, http://www.usatoday.com/money/workplace/2007-10-17-porn-at-work_N.htm

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    Paul, Pornified, 35.

  159. 159.

    Daniel Wagner, “SEC Porn Probe: Staffers Watched as Economy Porn as Economy Crashed,” Huffington Post, April 23, 2010, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/23/sec-porn-probe-staffers-w_n_548931.html; Dino Grandoni, “Missile Defense Agency: Porn Watching Employees Called out by Boss,” Huffington Post, August 2, 2012, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/02/missile-defense-agency-porn_n_1733572.html

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    Philip Landau, “Pornography at Work: Grounds for Dismissal?” The Guardian, September 4, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/money/work-blog/2013/sep/04/pornography-work-dismissal-workplace-rights; “Parliamentary Attempts to Access Online Pornography Revealed by FOI Request,” The Guardian, September 3, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/sep/03/parliamentary-network-pornography-websites-figures

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    Landau, “Grounds for Dismissal”; “Government Staff Disciplined for Accessing Pornography,” Workplace Law, January 14, 2013, http://www.workplacelaw.net/human-resources/news/45616/government-staff-disciplined-for-accessing-pornography

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    Maggie O’Kane, Chavala Madlena, and Guy Grandjean, “Bradley Manning: The Bullied Outsider Who Knew US Military’s Inner Secrets,” The Guardian, May 27, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/27/bradley-manning-us-military-outsider

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    Quoted in O’Kane, Madlena, and Grandjean, “Bradley Manning.”

  164. 164.

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  165. 165.

    Karl Marx, Capital, Volume One (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), 477.

  166. 166.

    See also Londa Singer, Erotic Welfare: Sexual Theory and Politics in the Age of Epidemic (New York: Routledge, 1993), 35–37.

  167. 167.

    Margot Weiss, Techniques of Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), 14, 107, 121. See also Singer, Erotic Welfare, 36–37.

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    Mac McClelland, “I was a Warehouse Wage Slave,” Mother Jones (March/April 2012), http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/mac-mcclelland-free-online-shipping-warehouses-labor. Emphasis added.

  169. 169.

    McClelland, “Wage Slave.”

  170. 170.

    Advice given by a warehouse worker, quoted in McClelland, “Wage Slave.”

  171. 171.

    cf. Weiss, Techniques of Pleasure, 148–149.

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    Weiss, Techniques of Pleasure, 20–21; Walter Pincus, “Iraq Tactics have a Long History with U.S. Interrogators,” Washington Post, June 13, 2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37340-2004Jun12.html;

    Laura Melendez-Pallitto and Robert Pallitto “Psychologists and Torture: Then and Now,” Foreign Policy in Focus, March 1, 2012, http://www.fpif.org/articles/psychologists_and_torture_then_and_now

  173. 173.

    Weiss, Techniques of Pleasure, 178; Deborah Cameron and Elizabeth Frazer, The Lust to Kill: Feminist Investigation of Sexual Murder (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987), 175–176.

  174. 174.

    Weiss, Techniques of Pleasure, 17–19.

  175. 175.

    Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (New York: International Publishers, 1964), 111.

  176. 176.

    Quoted in Paul, Pornified, 98.

  177. 177.

    Quoted in Paul, Pornified, 105.

  178. 178.

    On the subordination of the body of the worker, see Michael Perelman, The Invisible Handcuffs of Capitalism: How Market Tyranny Stifles the Economy by Stunting Workers (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2011), 93.

  179. 179.

    See also Zygmunt Bauman on the “‘bodylessness’ of power in its mainly financial form”: Zygmunt Bauman, Globalization: The Human Consequences (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 18–26, quoting 19.

  180. 180.

    Charles Derber, William A. Schwartz, and Yale Magrass, Power in the Highest Degree: Professionals and the Rise of a New Mandarin Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 103; quoted also in Annalee Newitz, Pretend We’re Dead: Capitalist Monsters in American Pop Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 82.

  181. 181.

    Of course, information flows are not “immaterial”: Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller, Greening the Media (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); David Naguib Pellow and Lisa Sun-Hee Park, The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental Injustice, Immigrant Workers, and the High-Tech Global Economy (New York: New York University Press, 2002).

  182. 182.

    Margaret Wertheim, The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1999); David F. Noble, The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention (New York: Penguin, 1999), 158–159; Bauman, Globalization, 19.

  183. 183.

    “Getting ‘the special equipment’!” APC, February 20, 2008, http://apcmag.com/the_special_equipment.htm; see also Tim Guest, Second Lives: a Journey Through Virtual Worlds (New York: Random House, 2007), 182–183.

  184. 184.

    Perelman, Invisible Handcuffs of Capitalism, 274.

  185. 185.

    Debord, Society of the Spectacle, 69.

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    Charles Thorpe

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Thorpe, C. (2016). The Pornography of Information. In: Necroculture. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58303-1_4

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