Here’s the first paragraph of an essay Aura Bogado published at ZNet in June of 2005:
In August of last year, just days before the Republican National Convention in New York, I received an email from a local (Los Angeles) chapter of Not In Our Name (NION). The group, which I have never been a member of, had been organizing a letter-writing campaign with hopes of pressuring Mayor Michael Bloomberg to grant permits to protest on the streets of New York against the Convention. NION’s email proclaimed enthusiastically how Larry Flynt had endorsed their letter-writing campaign. As a woman of color who opposes the type of violence that Hustler Magazine* *celebrates in their publication, I was dismayed that NION chose to align themselves with Flynt. For that reason, I sent a personal email back to NION, asking to be removed from the list. Los Angeles NION organizer Robert Corsini not only responded to me, but also forwarded his response, along with my original personal email, to both of my bosses at the local community radio station I work with, and to Larry Flynt Publishing. Because he violated my trust and attempted to ridicule me, I responded to Robert Corsini and the entire email list to explain my disgust with Hustler. A flame war quickly erupted, with people on all sides of the issue exchanging emails. What has followed is an interesting example of power politics, the most recent round ending in Hustler publishing several extremely offensive articles and cartoons condemning me as a ‘femi fascist’ for having the courage to speak out against their brand of pornography as a form of institutionalized gender and racial violence. The experience has led me to examine the greater umbrella of the so-called ‘left’, and to scrutinize the conditions under which a Goliath like Flynt is sanctioned by it.
Later in the essay, Bogado describes personal attacks on her by Susie Bright and Amy Alkon that were published by Hustler, and writes:
In another edition of Hustler, the magazine goes far beyond words and uses caricatures of me in a desperate attempt to further speak vilify me. I have not made any public statements regarding Hustler or anyone related to its publication since August 2004, yet after half-a-year of me remaining silent on the issue, Hustler continues to attack me, featuring horrific images of me: in some, I read a poem a Valentine’s Day poem, ‘Roses are red, Violets are blue, If you’re a white male, I’m gonna kill you’; another has me smashing a microphone because, in the cartoon, a caller into the station I work at sends an email suggesting that I like ‘having [my] mouth near a microphone because it reminds [me] of a white male’s cock.’; yet another cartoon includes a line of ‘Aura Bogado Jewelry’- in it, I have a penis pierced through my tongue.
At the bottom of the linked ZNET page, there are links to responses from Susie Bright and Not In Our Name. Bogado’s reply to Bright’s response is here. Larry Flynt’s reaction was to call Bogado’s essay “censorship.” Seriously, here’s his final sentence: “It’s okay for the feminists to express their opinions:no matter how ill-informed:but when they try to censor someone else’s activist efforts, it’s time to dismiss them as counterproductive and a threat to the movement.” So according to Flynt, pornography is free speech, but when a private person criticizes pornography, that is censorship. Here is an earlier excerpt from Flynt’s reply:
Finally, we have to point out that Bogado has apparently gone on to create a new Web site:HustlingTheLeft.com:which seems to have as its main function, the intimidation and bashing of Leftists who have appeared in HUSTLER. While we will have more to say about this in future issues, there’s one question that cannot wait: How long is the Left going to allow one fringe group to terrorize the rest of us?
The actual founder of “Hustling the Left” is Nikki Craft. I’m not taking a position in this particular dispute, which may have other dimensions I am not aware of, now that over a year has passed since Bogado’s piece was published. I knew before reading Bogado’s essay that Hustler favors overtly racist content (click here if you care to see some awful examples), but I didn’t realize Flynt published “Barely Legal.” Now I know that too. I’ve posted the link to Bogado’s essay, however, because I know that Larry Flynt and his minions, and his ilk, are going after anti-porn feminists in the blogosphere much as they did Bogado. If you read feminist blogs regularly, you’ve seen evidence of this too. I’m not sure I know what to do about this, but ignoring it surely won’t help preserve “free speech” if the concept is to have any meaning at all.
–Ann Bartow
