My first visit to this group was last night serving on a jury for a post on a Tosh thread.
It's easy to pile on sometimes; other times, not so much.
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July 10, 2012
Whatever Happened to Melissa Harris-Perry?
When a Feminist Gets Bumped for a Pornographer
by GAIL DINES
Last week, midway through a leisurely Saturday afternoon, I got an email from MSNBC asking me to be on the Melissa Harris Perry Show a week later (July 7th). I was delighted to accept, as MHP is not your usual American journalist. A professor of political science at Tulane University, she is an outspoken African American feminist and a progressive voice in a media landscape dominated by right-wing talking heads. MSNBC is a rare media oasis in the U.S. where one gets to hear some actual critical analysis, so I—mistakenly, it turned out—thought this was going to be one of the few positive experiences I’ve had working with corporate-controlled media. In all honesty, after many years of being on talk shows in the U.S., I have come to expect very little in terms of integrity from the media. Their job is to boost ratings by making stories entertaining and light, and God help anyone who gets in their way.
I spent a long time on the phone with MHP’s producer talking about my research on the harms of porn and the ways women in the industry—especially women of color—are financially exploited and physically and emotionally dehumanized and debased. Given MHP’s feminist politics and her scholarly work on the representation of African American women in U.S. history, I was excited to do a show with an interviewer whom I expected would be engaging and thoughtful, in contrast to the usual adolescent sniggering I get from the male journalist who suddenly finds himself in the awkward position of interviewing a feminist who doesn’t think porn is fun.
But by the middle of the week things started to go very wrong. My last conversation with the producers was on the Sunday before the show, and I was told that I would get a call by Tuesday to confirm my travel details. Wednesday came, and no call. On Thursday, I got an email saying that the “segment is changing,” so they won’t need me. “Changing”… not canceled. To the uninitiated this might seem like splitting hairs, but I am an old hand at dealing with the media, and I have been in this position more times than I can count.
Let me explain how it often plays out: I get a call from a producer to do a show about porn, and in our pre-show discussion the producer is shocked to hear about what really goes on in the porn industry...
= new reply since forum marked as read
has decided she is wacko and what she brings to the table is nutz.... so she is irrelevant and anyone that uses her voice is an extremist. 
thank you for not knowing better.
i like Melissa Harris Perry. and i remember the help interview. i could hear what she was saying was true, and proud and impressed with her ability to see beyond. and i am disappointed she chose this route. thank you for this article. it was informative.
I remember watching an MHP segment on MSNBC after she saw the movie The Help. I use this clip in my classes on racism in media because her passion and eloquence are so deeply felt. She is upset by the movie, and she is almost in tears when she explains how white-produced images of African American women deny the reality of their lives and render invisible the pain and suffering real black domestics endured at the hands of white employers. In another interview, MHP said that her fear was that The Help will become “the historical record because of its popularity, and that people who see the movie will come to believe that that’s really what happened“.
Clearly, MHP understands the power of media images to shape the way people think. If this is true of movies, then it is also true of other media genres, including porn. If MHP is upset at The Help for misrepresenting black women’s lives, then what about popular porn sites such as Bad Black Babes, Pimp My Black Teen, or Ghetto Gaggers, or any of the thousands of websites that show black women “enjoying” sexual degradation at the hands of black and white men? These images, just like the ones in The Help, are part of the media world that creates ideas, attitudes, and beliefs that undermine all women’s rights to full equality, dignity, and justice. I didn’t expect Taormino or the other guests to take this on, but I did expect a political science professor to be a little more savvy and intellectually inquisitive about how individual and collective perceptions are formed by cultural institutions.
worse, in this segment, MHP went from being an academic to a talk show host, and along the way she compromised her integrity as a feminist.
and welcome to HOF
How they spend so much time bashing and lambasting second wave feminists who they simultaneously claim are too far out on the fringe to pay any attention to and are therefore irrelevant.
If they are so irrelevant, why so many threads bashing and tearing them apart? 
Curious.
Very... curious.
...a feminist mindset, if you will, and not so much a specific period in time.
It is also funny to me that "third wave" feminism is all about women making their own choices and being more inclusive. Unless, of course... you are a second wave feminist.
Second wave feminists are the only women NOT WELCOMED by the third wave.
That is freaking HILARIOUS to me.
"We include everybody, whatever you think is OK because you are all empowered and shit. Oh you think like second wavers? Sit down and shut up."
OMG the hypocrisy is breathtaking. Truly.
