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Policing Desire: Pornography, AIDS, and the Media
Since its initial publication, Policing Desire has proved to be an unparalleled analysis of 'the cacophony of voices which sounds through every institution of our society on the subject of AIDS.' For the third edition Simon Watney has provided a new preface, a compelling new concluding essay, and a resource directory for AIDS information.
159 pages, Paperback
First published September 30, 1986
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 25, 2023
"You have to absolutely never accept second class humanity or second class citizenship for any reason whatsoever, not even for tactical reasons."
"This, then, will be a book about representation, written from the belief that we can only ultimately conceive of ourselves and one another in relation to the circulation of available images in any given society."
"My anger was self-defensive, and I failed to note the call to mobilise, in hope, alongside the outraged anguish."
"The development of a sense of gay identity is a phenomenon peculiar to America, where the tendency to perceive oneself as part of a group rather than a class underlies the whole liberal notion of politics and society. (In this, America differs from a number of European and Latin America societies, in which class and ideology are considered much more significant and where, accordingly, it is less easy to develop the idea of one's sexuality as a basis for social and political identity.) On the other hand, the acceptance of group diversity in America has always existed within very severe limits...to the extent that they are prepared to subscribe to the dominant values of the society; to go outside these values is to be denounced as un-American."
"As so often injournalism, individual writers hawk their wares around, so that the press is in effect endlessly talking to itself in a series of internal correspondences."
"It would seem that the pivot of human values exists on an axis involving parenting to the exclusion of all other factors."
"James Baldwin's sharp observation that "the victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim; he, or she, has become a threat."
"Moral panics do not speak to a "silent majority" which is simply "out there", waiting to listen. Rather, they provide the raw materials, in the form of words and images, of those moral constituencies with which individual subjects are encouraged to identify their deepest interests and their very core of being. But in so far as these categories are primarily defensive, in so far as they work to protect the individual from a partially perceived threat of diversity and conflict, they are also themselves vulnerable."
"The notion of homophobia was initially conceived in the United States in the immediate wake of Gay Liberation, as both a disease and an attitude "held by many non-homosexuals and perhaps by the majority of homosexuals."
"Thus, in the words of Jeffrey Weeks, "the duty of law is to regulate public order and to maintain accetable (though by implication changing) standards of public decency, not to patrol personal life."
"British-ness, on the contrary, is a subject-identity unified in relation to parliament and the monarchy, rather than to the democratic ideal of a constitution."
"Most newspapers depend on adertising revenue for their economic survival. It is thus their business to address an audience of readers as potential consumers for the commodities which they advertise."
"In a professional sense, "good" journalism therefore consists in persuading the newspaper reading audience to recognize itself with pleasure and reassurance as individual members of a white patriarchal "general public", whose values and institutions must at all costs be regarded as threatened rather than threatening."
"The BBC was founded in the 1930s on an assumption "of cultural homogeneity: not that everybody was the same, but that culture was single and undifferentiated."
"Any minority which cannot be easily submerged within the flow of television production values will be seen as a "problem", quite independently of its actual social position and experience."
"Persistent government interference in education has denied generations of children access to adequate information about the world in which they grow up. In the name of "protection", children are forcibly maintained in a state of ignorance, fear, and vulgar prejudice about their own and other people's sexuality."
"We must not collude with the anti-sex lobby all around us, for it is precisely their equation of sex with Aids which stands to construct a new contagion theory of homosexuality which is every bit as tenacious as that which has taken us the better part of a century to successfully dismantle."
"This is our tragedy-the measure of our ethical bankruptcy as a nation, and the moral bankruptcy of our entire political system."
"This, then, will be a book about representation, written from the belief that we can only ultimately conceive of ourselves and one another in relation to the circulation of available images in any given society."
"My anger was self-defensive, and I failed to note the call to mobilise, in hope, alongside the outraged anguish."
"The development of a sense of gay identity is a phenomenon peculiar to America, where the tendency to perceive oneself as part of a group rather than a class underlies the whole liberal notion of politics and society. (In this, America differs from a number of European and Latin America societies, in which class and ideology are considered much more significant and where, accordingly, it is less easy to develop the idea of one's sexuality as a basis for social and political identity.) On the other hand, the acceptance of group diversity in America has always existed within very severe limits...to the extent that they are prepared to subscribe to the dominant values of the society; to go outside these values is to be denounced as un-American."
"As so often injournalism, individual writers hawk their wares around, so that the press is in effect endlessly talking to itself in a series of internal correspondences."
"It would seem that the pivot of human values exists on an axis involving parenting to the exclusion of all other factors."
"James Baldwin's sharp observation that "the victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim; he, or she, has become a threat."
"Moral panics do not speak to a "silent majority" which is simply "out there", waiting to listen. Rather, they provide the raw materials, in the form of words and images, of those moral constituencies with which individual subjects are encouraged to identify their deepest interests and their very core of being. But in so far as these categories are primarily defensive, in so far as they work to protect the individual from a partially perceived threat of diversity and conflict, they are also themselves vulnerable."
"The notion of homophobia was initially conceived in the United States in the immediate wake of Gay Liberation, as both a disease and an attitude "held by many non-homosexuals and perhaps by the majority of homosexuals."
"Thus, in the words of Jeffrey Weeks, "the duty of law is to regulate public order and to maintain accetable (though by implication changing) standards of public decency, not to patrol personal life."
"British-ness, on the contrary, is a subject-identity unified in relation to parliament and the monarchy, rather than to the democratic ideal of a constitution."
"Most newspapers depend on adertising revenue for their economic survival. It is thus their business to address an audience of readers as potential consumers for the commodities which they advertise."
"In a professional sense, "good" journalism therefore consists in persuading the newspaper reading audience to recognize itself with pleasure and reassurance as individual members of a white patriarchal "general public", whose values and institutions must at all costs be regarded as threatened rather than threatening."
"The BBC was founded in the 1930s on an assumption "of cultural homogeneity: not that everybody was the same, but that culture was single and undifferentiated."
"Any minority which cannot be easily submerged within the flow of television production values will be seen as a "problem", quite independently of its actual social position and experience."
"Persistent government interference in education has denied generations of children access to adequate information about the world in which they grow up. In the name of "protection", children are forcibly maintained in a state of ignorance, fear, and vulgar prejudice about their own and other people's sexuality."
"We must not collude with the anti-sex lobby all around us, for it is precisely their equation of sex with Aids which stands to construct a new contagion theory of homosexuality which is every bit as tenacious as that which has taken us the better part of a century to successfully dismantle."
"This is our tragedy-the measure of our ethical bankruptcy as a nation, and the moral bankruptcy of our entire political system."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 5, 2025
A groundbreaking work on the representation of people with HIV/AIDS during the height of the crisis. Gives a very detailed exploration of the differences in media representation e.g. the press, on television etc.
August 2, 2010
This book is a fantastic analysis of the discourse of HIV and AIDS and the mass media's irresponsible control of it. Though it was written in the late 80's during the AIDS epidemic, it accurately describes how mass media continues to treat controversial subjects today.
August 22, 2011
Primarily representation based and argues for the unleashing of radical queer desire as a political project against AIDS. Useful? Yes. For those rigorous dialectic critiques of identity politics and its adherents.
August 31, 2007
Oh Mass Media Ethics, how I loved thee. No, really, between my Comm major and (yet unbeknownst to me)my Philo minor, this book was the best of my worlds junior year.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews