The AntiPornMen Project says it is anti-porn by still pro-sex.Comstock
A new online project is taking a sharply feminist look at the porn industry - with men as the critical voices.
The AntiPornMen Project was started by Matt McCormack Evans, a 22-year-old Londoner who worried that he might have a porn problem. He started watching porn in university, alone in his dorm room on his computer, he explained to the Guardian this week. The act was separate, he told himself, from how he treated and viewed women. But then he noticed how many of his friends appeared to be "celebrating" their porn habits.
At a time when the Internet is swamped with easily accessed porn, the site is meant to get men talking about their use of it, how that might alter how they see the women in their lives, and the bearing of the industry on violence against women in society. The website says it is anti-porn but pro-sex, explaining that the project is also meant to provide a discussion space "for others who are perhaps only just arriving at anti-porn thoughts." Right now the site has 10 writers, but has put the call out for more.
A current sampling: The lead item is a piece on recently deceased Bob Guccione, the founder of Penthouse, calling him the "Wicked Wretch of the East." It concludes with this cautionary epitaph: "May we never forget the terrible things he did to womankind while he lived."