[m2c] When White Males Attack: Larry Flynt, Racism and The Left

[Nikki Craft]

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Hustling the Left: Our Blog
Deconstructing Manufactured Contempt
Entrenched in Larry Flynt's Corporate Sexxxism Empire

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http://www.hustlingtheleft.com/mclune.html
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When White Males Attack:
  Larry Flynt, Racism and The Left
Copyright © 2005, Jennifer McLure, All rights reserved.
  by Jennifer McLune

There are a lot of issues toward which he [Larry 
Flynt] has progressive attitudes (Black women 
were naked and spread-eagled in Hustler long 
before they were in Playboy.)" --"Carly-Sue"

The above quote, taken from the message board of 
a young hip feminist magazine, reveals how 
effective Flynt has been at becoming in the minds 
of many progressive folk an anti-racist. This 
image of him as progressive on race appears in 
spite of Hustler's long history of racist 
caricatures of Black people, people of color, and 
Jews.

One of his most recent viscously racist assaults 
has been on Aura Bogado, a Latina Feminist and 
Free Speech Radio News anchor at KPFK. In her 
article "Hustling the Left", she exposes the war 
declared on her when a personal email ended up in 
the hands of Hustler editors in which she stood 
up to Larry Flynt and challenged The Left to look 
critically at building coalitions with 
pornographers.

Larry Flynt has been quite successful at 
positioning himself as a progressive media mogul 
rebelling through an empire of smut in the 
interests of American Democracy. He takes pride 
in exposing right wingers for the hypocrites they 
are and heralding the righteousness of "healthy 
heterosexual American male sexuality." However, 
the image of Larry Flynt as progressive on issues 
of race in light of Hustler's attacks on Aura 
Bogado, its long history of racist caricatures, 
and the very idea that showing naked black bodies 
for pornographic consumption is a new and 
revolutionary act must be analyzed and uprooted.

When did it become progressive for a white man to 
make money from displaying "black tail?" Isn't 
this what they did to us on the slave auction 
block? Just because Hustler beat Playboy to the 
"black butt" market doesn't make it a magazine 
black women should be proud of. White males, as 
did the European colonial powers, competed for 
black bodies and lands for profit. Whoever got 
there first was the winner but in their game of 
unbridled access we were always the losers. White 
male objectification of black women's bodies for 
profit and pleasure is nothing new but it only 
becomes progressive when we continue to accept 
that a woman's sexuality be defined by her 
ability to cause erections. It only appears 
progressive when we've been effectively convinced 
of the inevitability of the sex industry and 
misogyny owning our sexual imaginations.

The idea that providing images of naked black 
women for a predominantly white male audience is 
revolutionary and anti-racist is historically 
inaccurate and dangerously offensive. As if 
sexual desire has some innately equalizing effect 
on the power relations that exist between the 
consumer of the image and the consumed. As if 
white men haven't proven that they can fuck us 
and hate us at the same time. So, how are white 
men who secretly jerk off to spread eageled black 
women rebelling?

There's a reason why these black women are naked 
and not them. It is about a legacy of brutality 
and exploitation that began before they were born 
but which afforded these white boys privilege and 
power over these women just because they were 
born white and male.

Larry Flynt was quick to label Aura Bogado a 
racist and FemaNazi. Apparently the only position 
he wants to see a brown woman in is naked and 
gagged in silent submission to his misogynistic 
agenda. Larry Flynt, the poster boy for angry 
white males everywhere, eagerly uses "the race 
card" to defend himself when he is called out on 
his gender and race privilege and condemned for 
the hatred he has perpetuated through Hustler 
Magazine. White men like Flynt who belittle a 
person of color for standing up to the systematic 
privilege of whiteness and maleness will at the 
same time cloak themselves as victims of "reverse 
racism." A woman of color becomes the enemy 
disserving of punishment when she refuses to be 
silent or complicit in his devious attempts to 
make himself into a rebel victim that The Left 
should support.

According to the logic of the war declared in 
Hustler against Aura Bogado and other radical 
feminists who fight against porn, historical and 
institutional legacies of white supremacist 
patriarchy are not real but only the figments of 
an overactive imagination. Apparently "reverse 
racism" as defined by white males to be any 
resistance to their sense of absolute entitlement 
to exploit the bodies of women and people of 
color is the real threat to our democracy that 
The Left should rally against. When Flynt attacks 
Bogado as an angry white male against a big brown 
feminist he's declaring that a man's right to 
pornography and "pussy" is as fundamental and 
worth fighting for as the Manifest Destiny of 
white folks claiming all lands, all peoples, and 
all resources for themselves. His racist and 
sexist cartoon caricatures of Bogado expose the 
underlying defense of whiteness and maleness that 
fuels his rage.

Sexual liberation has always meant something 
different for black women. We were never allowed 
the sanctity of our own bodies. We were bought 
and sold, shackled and naked in the street for 
everyone's gaze and consumption. We were property 
for sex and labor. Middle class white women like 
Susie Bright have the privilege and option to 
play bad girl. Just being born black and female 
in a white supremacist patriarchy brands you a 
bad girl. No props needed.

There is a saying in Brazil and its meaning has 
been widely translated throughout the African 
Diaspora wherever white men exploited the bodies 
of black women for pleasure and profit: "A white 
woman to marry, a mulatta to screw, and black 
woman to work." Thus the idea of a liberating 
"sex work" has a precarious implication for black 
women for whom the threat of rape was always a 
part of the job. Enslaved black women were at the 
mercy of their masters and not much changed when 
black women began to earn a wage. While working 
as cooks and nannies which continues to be the 
type of work most associated with black females, 
they were often brutally raped by the fathers and 
sons of the families they worked for.

The links between black women and illicit 
sexuality began in the antebellum south. White 
men justified the sexual terror they inflicted on 
black people by creating the image of the wanton 
black whore who could not be raped or defiled 
because her sexuality was insatiable and impure 
by nature. We had no claim to womanhood, 
motherhood, or humanity. We are the original 
"dirty girls," the first sex radicals without the 
sanctuary of gender. We were used for our wombs 
and still worked like our men. There was no 
sanctuary to be found in the way our bodies were 
branded and exploited. They systematically raped 
black women and branded us whores even as they'd 
lynch a black man for even glancing in the 
direction of a white woman. In the image of the 
black whore and black rapist white men had found 
their authority to terrorize and punish others 
for the very acts only they committed.

Like Flynt, these rapists and lynch mobs of angry 
white males blamed the people they oppressed for 
what they did to them. Black women were whores 
and black men were sexual predators even though 
the raping of resources, lands, and people fell 
solely on one group: White Men. Black people were 
"asking for it" just as women are "asking for 
it." Flynt enjoys expressing his hatred and rage 
at women by calling it "sex" just as the lynch 
mobs who terrorized black communities called it 
"justice." Justice meant maintaining white power 
just as misogyny fuels the woman-hating spectacle 
of porn, defined as sex. White men directed their 
rage at enslaved and subjugated people even as 
those very people were left powerless to defend 
themselves without deadly consequences.

Woman hating as rebellion against a feared 
feminist onslaught on male privilege is nothing 
new. White men like Flynt who blame women for all 
their problems and who punish them are cheered on 
and rewarded as heroes in a woman-hating culture. 
Leftist males who are threatened by feminism or 
female leadership within progressive movements 
can find reassurance in the rhetoric of 
libertarianism used to justify the inevitability 
of the sex industry and that a patriarchal order 
of things is left unchallenged somewhere.

How dare a woman oppose a man's right to porn? 
Didn't we radical feminists get the memo that we 
are now in times when only feminists with "a 
sense of humor" get heard, white males are the 
new victims, and women choose to be objectified? 
It takes courage and clarity to relentlessly name 
and resist misogyny in spite of "The Times." We 
are expected to change our response to misogyny 
even as it reinvents itself with more clever and 
dangerous disguises. Patriarchy has become such 
an elusive neck to snap, such a seductive enemy 
that continuously tries to distort our interests 
until they become its own. Refusing and resisting 
pornography requires that women reject the new 
guises under which misogyny shields itself from 
criticism: free speech, libertarianism, the 
rights of angry white men, "female empowerment." 
In spite of the names we are called to berate us 
into fear and silence we still speak out and 
fight back. We are not the passive pleasing 
"girls" pornography wants us to be.

So Larry Flynt wants our sympathy. So Larry Flynt 
wants our support. In a white supremacist 
capitalist patriarchy a rich white man still has 
the gall to call himself the victim. He's an 
innocent white male being attacked by big bad 
brown feminists. His whiteness is his claim to 
innocence. His maleness is his right to anger. 
Women are not entitled to innocence or anger. Our 
anger is labeled man-hating hysteria, our 
innocence must be proven. A woman who calls Flynt 
a misogynist hates men because as a white male he 
represents the plight of all men. White men are 
the new victims and they'll manipulate the 
visions of progressive movements to uproot their 
power in directions that further their agendas.

The rhetoric of sexual liberalism touted as 
liberation and free speech has effectively 
seduced The Left. The rights of women not be 
objectified, bought and sold in the sex industry 
has been sacrificed in order to court a clientele 
of angry white men convinced that women and 
people of color, the largest segment of the sex 
trade, are at the root of their problems. Angry 
white men want their porn and pussy and anyone 
who stands in their way will feel their wrath. 
Women are guilty, hated, and taught a lesson in 
the pages of Hustler. We are beaten, gagged, 
raped, and tortured. We are made to pay for being 
women.

Jennifer McLune is a Radical Black Feminist 
freelance writer, activist and librarian who 
lives to stop the machine of white supremacy and 
the madness of hip hop male chauvinism.

relevant links to this article
http://www.hustlingtheleft.com
http://www.hustlingtheleft.com/Bogado1.html