What would you think if you discovered that your kid’s college professor was also a professional pornographer?
“A proudly erect statement on Asian American male sexuality” — that’s how Darrell Hamamoto, professor of Asian-American studies at UC-Davis, describes the pornographic film he produced. His official academic profile omits any mention of his porn making. But according to the new book Pornland, by Gail Dines, Hamamoto is proudly open about his second career.
Dines quotes Hamamoto complaining about the way Asian-American sexuality has been “warped by White supremacist thought/behavior, the history of anti-Asian exterminationism, colonialism, removal and relocation, deportation, an anti-miscegenation laws.” Asian porn, apparently, is Hamamoto’s way of righting all these tongue-twisting wrongs.
Dines also quotes Hamamoto from another interview. Here he sounds much less lofty about the sociological aims of his porn: “There are tons of Yella womenz who want to appear on camera doing the Wild Thang.”
In her critique, Dines exposes his hypocrisy: “Hamamoto is really only outraged on behalf of Asian American men and demonstrates utter contempt for Asian American women in his willful failure to adopt any critical analysis of how porn negatively affects the lives of Asian American women.”
I think it is amazing that a professor can wrap a smut-filled porn film in pseudo-scientific language and remain safely ensconced in a position of lifetime tenure at a government-funded university. Meanwhile, another professor simply teaching objectively on the subject of Catholic doctrine can be fired instantly. What a world.
For more commentary on the hardcore pornification of our culture, check out my review of Gail Dines’s book over at The American Spectator.