ARLINGTON, TX – Ron Jeremy is getting laid less and less often in front of a camera these days – but talking about the experience more and more. His latest foray into verbal sex took place at the University of Texas at Arlington, and included a most unlikely companion: Susan Cole, a feminist with strong anti-porn opinions.Although Jeremy tried to keep the mood light by joking about a possible marriage between himself and Cole, once the microphones were live and the audience alert, the only thing marital about the couple was their capacity for disagreement.
Hundreds of college students watched the two antagonists verbally duke out the ethics of pornography in the University Center Bluebonnet Ballroom in one of 10 debates that the two have participated in this year. Cole confessed that actually meeting one another helped remove some of the pre-conceived ideas that they had about each other – but that didn’t keep her from taking cheap shots at Jeremy concerning his physical appearance or his intelligence.
“I thought he was going to be dumb and stupid and sexist,” she explained while expressing surprise that he was allowed to represent the industry given his Everyman looks. “He thought I was going to be a Bible-thumping right-wing freak.”
Unsurprisingly, Cole’s presentation focused on her conviction that pornography has lowered the place of women in society while promoting sexism and sexual violence. Meanwhile, she expressed a desire to change the view that anti-porn activists are sex negative. In order to support her contention, she expressed support for sexual experimentation – so long as no cameras are involved.
“I am particularly in favor of masturbation for women,” she said, “because I believe if women don’t get to know our own bodies, we won’t have two minutes of good sex in our entire lives.”
Although Jeremy pointed out that his own work is remarkably tame and that the American porn industry is nothing compared to that outside of the country, Cole focused on scenes which she felt both represent the adult industry and humiliate, degrade, and endanger women. While willing to admit that women participate willingly in the acts Cole finds offensive, she disagreed with the notion that female performers choose their line of work.
“When you have a choice between no sex, abstinence, and what they call morality, and a type of sex that is the pits to you, you’ll choose the bad sex over no sex at all,” she said, preferring to depict porn actresses as victims.
In what must have felt like a game of ping-pong, Jeremy disagreed with the idea that porn is degrading to women, pointing out the lack of supporting evidence for such a claim. He did acknowledge that since porn is a primarily male-driven market, its content would largely reflect the fantasies of men, which are often far more obvious and easy to depict.
“If you look at women’s magazines, like Playgirl, it’s very subtle. You don’t see a big throbbing schmeckel in her face,” he observed. “It’s impossible to make a film that won’t piss the feminists off.”
