Dworkin’s nightmare
Porngrind as the sound of feminist fears
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v6i1.68Keywords:
Andrea Dworkin, death metal, heavy metal, porngrind, pornographyAbstract
This article examines the relationship between extreme metal and gender, specifically the sexual representation of women in a relatively obscure ‘underground’ metal subgenre that developed in the 1990s dubbed porngrind. This is a subgenre of metal that fuses the lyrical content and sound of death metal with a sustained focus on sexual explicitness, sexual violence and misogyny, and it is best represented by underground American and European bands such as: Soldered Poon, Anal Penetration, Anal Whore, Waco Jesus, Lividity, and Meatshits. The article explores the relationship between porngrind and feminist positions on pornography, most significantly the anti-pornography approach of Andrea Dworkin. The article argues that porngrind centrally reflects the salient perceptions Dworkin levels at pornography within her seminal text, Pornography: Men Possessing Women: that it expresses patriarchal oppression and sexual violence against women. However, the article contends that the subject-matter of porngrind actually identifies a degree of proximity between it and Dworkin in that they both perceive pornography to be reducible to, and representative of, sex as an act of domination, brutality and the aggressive possession of female bodies.
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Thompson, Bill. 1994. Soft Core: Moral Crusades against Pornography in Britain and America. London: Cassell.
Vance, Carole. S. 1984. Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality. London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Walser, Robert. 1993. ‘Forging Masculinity: Heavy Metal Sounds and Images of Gender’. In Sound and Vision: The Music Video Reader, ed. Simon Frith, Andrew Goodwin and Lawrence Grossberg, 153–85. London and New York: Routledge.
Weinstein, Deena. 2000. Heavy Metal: The Music and its Culture. New York: Da Capo Press.
Williams, Linda. 1990. Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the “Frenzy of the Visible”. London: Pandora.
—2004. ‘Second Thoughts on Hard Core: American Obscenity Law and the Scapegoating of Deviance’. In More Dirty Looks: Gender, Pornography and Power, ed. Pamela Church Gibson, 165–76. London: BFI.
Wilson, Scott. 2008. Great Satan’s Rage: American Negativity and Rap/Metal in the Age of Supercapitalism. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Wilson, Elizabeth. 1991. Pornography and Feminism: The Case against Censorship. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Wright, Robert. 2000. ‘“I’d Sell You Suicide”: Pop Music and Moral Panic in the Age of Marilyn Manson’. Popular Music 9(3): 365?385. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0261143000 000222
Young, Cathy. 2005. ‘Women’s Hating: The Misdirected Passion of Andrea Dworkin’. Reason Magazine. http://reason.com/archives/2005/04/19/womans-hating.
Arnett, Jeffrey Jensen. 1992. ‘Soundtrack of Recklessness: Musical Preferences and Reckless Behaviour among Adolescents’. Journal of Adolescent Research 7(3): 313–31. http://dx. doi.org/10.1177/074355489273003
—1996. Metalheads: Heavy Metal Music and Adolescent Alienation. Boulder, CO: Westview.
Assiter, Alison. 1989. Pornography, Feminism and the Individual. London: Pluto.
Attwood, Feona. 2002. ‘Reading Porn: The Paradigm Shift in Pornography Research’. Sexualities 5(1): 91–105. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1363460702005001005
—2004. ‘Pornography and Objectification: Re-reading “The Picture that Divided Britain”’. Feminist Media Studies 4(1): 7–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14680770410001674 617
—2007. ‘“Other” or “One of Us?” The Porn User in Public and Academic Discourse’. Particip@ tions 4(1): 1–23.
Attwood, Feona, and Clarissa Smith. 2010. ‘Extreme Concern: Regulating “Dangerous Pictures” in the United Kingdom’. Journal of Law and Society 37(1): 171–88. http://dx.doi. org/10.1111/j.1467-6478.2010.00500.x
Baddeley, Gavin. 1999. Lucifer Rising: Sin, Devil Worship and Rock’n’Roll. London: Plexus.
Bangs, Lester. 1992. ‘Heavy Metal’. In The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, ed. Anthony De Curtis and James Henke, 459–63. New York: Random House.
Barron, Lee, and Ian Inglis. 2009. ‘Scary Movies, Scary Music: Uses and Unities of Heavy Metal’. In Terror Tracks: Music, Sound and Horror Cinema, ed. Philip Hayward, 186–98. London: Equinox.
Binder, Amy. 1993. ‘Constructing Racial Rhetoric: Media Depictions of Harm in Heavy Metal and Rap Music’. American Sociological Review 58: 753–67. http://dx.doi.org/ 10.2307/2095949
Brown, Wendy. 2006. ‘American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservativism and DeDemocratization’. Political Theory 34(6): 690–714. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00905 91706293016
Brutalism.com. 2003. ‘Waco Jesus and the Numerous Fuck Yous’. http://brutalism.com/ content/waco-jesus-0.
Dines, Gail, Robert Jensen and Ann Russo. 1998. Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality. New York and London: Routledge.
Dworkin, Andrea. 1981. Pornography: Men Possessing Women. London: The Women’s Press.
Heartney, Eleanor. 1991. ‘Pornography’. Art Journal 50(4): 16–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.23 07/777318
Judges, Donald. P. 1995. ‘When Silence Speaks Louder than Words: Authoritarianism and the Feminist Antipornography Movement’. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law 3: 643– 13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1076-8971.1.3.643
Kahn-Harris, Keith. 2003. ‘Death Metal and the Limits of Musical Expression’. In Policing Pop, ed. Martin Cloonan and Reebee Garofalo, 81–100. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
—2007. Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge. Oxford and New York: Berg.
Kendrick, Walter. 1996. The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modern Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kipnis, Laura. 1996. Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America. New York: Grove Press.
Krenshe, Leigh, and Jim McKay. 2000. ‘“Hard and Heavy”: Gender and Power in a Heavy Metal Music Subculture’. Gender, Place and Culture 7(3): 287–304.
Marinucci, Mimi. 2005. ‘Television, Generation X, and Third Wave Feminism: A Contextual Analysis of The Brady Bunch’. Journal of Popular Culture 38(3): 505–524. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.0022-3840.2005.00126.x
McNair, Brian. 2002. Striptease Culture: Sex, Media and the Democratization of Desire. London: Routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203469378
Miyakawa, Felicia. M. 2005. Five Percenter Rap: God Hop’s Music, Message, and Black Muslim Mission. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Moynihan, Michael, and Didrik Söderlind. 2003. Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground. Washington: Feral House.
Mudrian, Albert. 2004. Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore. Los Angeles: Feral House.
O’Toole, Laurence. 1999. Pornocopia: Porn, Sex, Technology and Desire. London: Serpent’s Tail.
Paul, Pamela. 2006. Pornified: How Pornography is Damaging our Lives, our Relationships, and our Families. London: Times Books.
Purcell, Natalie. J. 2003. Death Metal Music: The Passion and Politics of a Subculture. Jefferson, MI and London: McFarland & Company, Inc.
Ramos, Norma. 2000. ‘Pornography is a Social Justice Issue’. In Feminism and Pornography, ed. Drucilla Cornwell, 45–48. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Russell, Diana. E. H. 1998. Dangerous Relationships: Pornography, Misogyny, and Rape. London: Sage.
Segal, Lynne. 1993. ‘Does Pornography Cause Violence? The Search for Evidence’. In Dirty Looks: Women, Pornography and Power, ed. Pamela Church Gibson and Roma Gibson, 5–22. London: BFI.
—2004. ‘Only the Literal: The Contradictions of Anti-Pornography Feminism’. In More Dirty Looks: Gender, Pornography and Power, ed. Pamela Church Gibson, 59–71. London: BFI.
Selfhout, Maarten H. W., Marc J. M. H. Delsing and Tom F. M. ter Bogt. 2008. ‘Heavy Metal and Hip-Hop Style Preferences and Externalizing Problem Behavior: A Two-Wave Longitudinal Study’. Youth & Society 39(4): 435–52. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0044 118X07308069
Shellrude, Kathleen. 2001. ‘Coming Between the Lines: A Fresh Look at the Writings of AntiPorn and Whore Feminists’. Canadian Woman Studies 20(4): 41–45.
Smith, Clarissa. 2010. ‘Pornographication: A Discourse for All Seasons’. International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 6(1): 103–108. http://dx.doi.org/10.1386/macp. 6.1.103/3
Snyder-Hall, Claire, R. 2010. ‘Third Wave Feminism and the Defense of “Choice”’. Perspectives on Politics 8(1): 255–61. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1537592709992842
Strossen, Nadine. 1994. Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women’s Rights. New York: New York University Press.
Thompson, Bill. 1994. Soft Core: Moral Crusades against Pornography in Britain and America. London: Cassell.
Vance, Carole. S. 1984. Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality. London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Walser, Robert. 1993. ‘Forging Masculinity: Heavy Metal Sounds and Images of Gender’. In Sound and Vision: The Music Video Reader, ed. Simon Frith, Andrew Goodwin and Lawrence Grossberg, 153–85. London and New York: Routledge.
Weinstein, Deena. 2000. Heavy Metal: The Music and its Culture. New York: Da Capo Press.
Williams, Linda. 1990. Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the “Frenzy of the Visible”. London: Pandora.
—2004. ‘Second Thoughts on Hard Core: American Obscenity Law and the Scapegoating of Deviance’. In More Dirty Looks: Gender, Pornography and Power, ed. Pamela Church Gibson, 165–76. London: BFI.
Wilson, Scott. 2008. Great Satan’s Rage: American Negativity and Rap/Metal in the Age of Supercapitalism. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Wilson, Elizabeth. 1991. Pornography and Feminism: The Case against Censorship. London: Lawrence & Wishart.
Wright, Robert. 2000. ‘“I’d Sell You Suicide”: Pop Music and Moral Panic in the Age of Marilyn Manson’. Popular Music 9(3): 365?385. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0261143000 000222
Young, Cathy. 2005. ‘Women’s Hating: The Misdirected Passion of Andrea Dworkin’. Reason Magazine. http://reason.com/archives/2005/04/19/womans-hating.
Published
2012-05-14
Issue
Section
Controversies
How to Cite
Barron, L. (2012). Dworkin’s nightmare: Porngrind as the sound of feminist fears. Popular Music History, 6(1-2), 68-84. https://doi.org/10.1558/pomh.v6i1.68
