The real pornographers are out there

MELİS ALPHAN

Concepts have been tampered to such an extent that there have been immense semantic shifts. A newspaper, for instance, despite its considerable role in a pornographic network of relations, can recklessly put a headline saying: “The porn lobby.”

Actually, there is more to the sexual dimension of pornography. It describes not only the male dominance in sexual intercourse, it also describes unilateralism, dominance in relationships and the person in the lower position not being able to live the way he or she wants to.

Nobody can deny Foucault, who said the history of humanity was the history of people doing other people. When that businessman told the other one on the phone, “We will f… the nation,” he was actually demonstrating a real time example of this.

Because, since the 1700s, capital accumulation, banking, technical and technological developments, access to markets and intelligence, all of them, have confined life all over the world to pornographic relations.

Especially in countries like this one, especially in times such as these, the state that oppresses its people, which forms a dominant relationship over them, is the institution itself that makes pornography real.

The flatterers of the government are accusing the oppressed, in a superficial and manipulative way, of being the pornographer.

This is a joke. Really.

The habit of surrendering to the powerful creates a cultural environment and a mentality. In other words, we, the people oppressed by the authority, have our share of this pornography. The paper that accuses us of being pornographers is actually one of the purest victims of that pornography with its surrender. Sadly, they are not even aware of this.

Victims create new victims, because they see no harm in directing the violence they have suffered to people lower than themselves, or people they see before them. Just like a husband who is oppressed in the outer world and comes home to agonize his wife.

Nobody can openly talk about his/her unemployment, the inadequacy of their income, their unhappiness. Even if they rarely mention them, as they have been kept distant from an impartial education and the information that would make them comprehend the real causes, they blame the virtual enemies created by authority.

These enemies change according to the conjuncture.

We have forgotten our own voices by not hearing them for a long time. We have lost our voices. But those who have forgotten their own voices more than us are the ones that have become the voice of the authority. The magnitude of their fear is based on this.

It was year 2004 when our interview with Professor Ünsal Oskay came out, actress Sibel Kekilli played a remarkable role in the film “Head On” (Duvara Karşı), which won international recognition.
Our media and our people, however, kept emphasizing that she was a porn star.

Professor Oskay said, “In her last film, because she has shown that our life is a pornographic life, Kekilli has proved her virtue to all of us.”

Hey, the suckers…

Because the publication you are making has shown that our lives are pornographic …

We have all won our virtue before all of you…

Melis Alphan is a columnist for daily Hürriyet in which this abridged piece was published on Feb 15. It was translated into English by the Daily News staff.