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. You can write her at .

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

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