Since the discussion below was veering off into the “mainstream/majority porn: hateful to women or not?” direction, I thought I’d point everyone to this sobering article by Don Hazen about Robert Jensen’s book Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity. I tend to have an opinion on this subject that makes no one happy. I agree with the pro-porn people that erotic expression can’t be defined so easily as to separate that which is genuinely erotic expression from that which is peddling in sexualized violence against women, but I also agree with the anti-porn people who say there’s a lot of hand-waving and distraction from the fact that for a lot of people, especially now, “porn” is in fact the expression of a certain view of masculinity where sex is all about hate and power and rejecting soft, feminine things like respect for other people or the belief that women are human. And that the evidence for this view is that many, possibly most, pornographers have it of themselves—when they describe the process of making porn “harder”, that is, escalating the quality that the audience is seeking out, they escalate the amount of degradation of women, which more than implies that the axis by which to judge a porn’s quality is not the sexiness of it, but the amount of hate expressed towards women—or that the two qualities are one in the same in the eyes of the crowd that pays the money and drives the industry.
The article is hard to read, because Jensen doesn’t really pussyfoot around his opinions on the subject, doesn’t mess around with the assumption that people who are sickened by the routine cruelty to women in porn are just “anti-sex” in order to make sure the toes of men who get off to images of women being fucked painfully and humiliated are not stepped on too hard.
People routinely assume that pornography is such a difficult and divisive issue because it’s about sex. In fact, this culture struggles unsuccessfully with pornography because it is about men’s cruelty to women, and the pleasure men sometimes take in that cruelty. And that is much more difficult for people — men and women — to face.
Ouch. And boy, the desire to say that he’s being unfair is at the tip of my defensive tongue, because of that exact reason—it’s hard to swallow that so many men out there actively enjoy watching women suffer. Or the defensiveness of saying it’s not that many men is hard to stick to when the mainstream of porn is spitting, face shots, making women gag on cocks, calling women names and other mandatory degradations. Or softcore stuff like “Girls Gone Wild” is a rape threat on wheels that’s based around laughing at drunk bitches who’ve humiliated themselves trying to be pleasing to men. Or even “softer” stuff like lad mags are laden with all sorts of misogynist snickering to put the bitches in their places—or contests like the boob comparison one to entice women to tap-dance around and humiliate themselves to win a contest that’s the equivalent of Least Repulsive Female. Even the porn out there that strives to be non-misogynist gets called “alt” porn, which is basically a label indicating that porn that’s about getting off to sex instead of getting off to hurting women is something out of the mainstream.
I am the person (well, one of the many) that Jensen describes, afraid to face up to the obvious, but the intellectual dishonesty of the hand-wavers who try to shut down this discussion or accuse anyone who is worried about misogyny of being prudish and anti-sex continues to give me pause. Like the very first commenter out of the gate on Hazen’s article:
“Male attitudes are potentially being shaped by ugly and sometimes disgusting abuse toward women.”
The key word being potentially. The author doesn’t provide any information about just how many men (1) purchase and watch porn, (2) how frequently, or (3) purchase and watch the more extreme forms.
“It hurts to know that no matter who you are as a woman you can be reduced to a thing to be penetrated, and that men will buy movies about that, and that in many of those movies your humiliation will be the central theme. It hurts to know that so much of the pornography that men are buying fuses sexual desire with cruelty.
It hurts women, and men like it, and it hurts just to know that.”
A huge generalization. “Men buy movies like that.” “Men like it.” Again no data indicating just how many do.
There’s a rhetorical contradiction he’s working that gives the distinct impression he’s throwing a bunch of defenses against a wall and hopes one is enough to satisfy you until you shut the fuck up and leave him alone about this. He’s working two major excuses: 1) It doesn’t affect men and 2) Men don’t look at it as much as you’re saying. These aren’t technically contradictory in the strictest sense, but they are in the sense that if #2 is true, then #1 is irrelevant. If only a tiny a fraction of fucked-up men are the ones who get off on misogyny, then it’s not that big a deal if there’s something poisonous there, is it? But the issue is that this is the mainstream of porn, and I’ll bet that this guy, at any other time when he’s not hand-waving, would laughingly accept the assertion that all guys do it. Which is why he brought up #1 in the first place: There’s nothing to worry about if it’s widespread and it’s not widespread, anyway, so don’t worry about the poisonous effects I’m denying exist anyway.
There’s a lot of bullshitting in that comment.
I’ve got no answers. I’d like to think there’s a real and growing demand for “alt” porn out there, and maybe there is. Austin has a bunch of billboards around for adult bookstores that are clearly targeting women and couples, and it occurs to me that they’ve lost a lot of business to the “how much more can we torture the sluts” porn on the internet and are hoping to reinvigorate business by highlighting the relatively non-misogynist nature of the giggly Vivid Video porn that Shalom Auslander and I remember.* But you know, I toss this out there—I think, and I’ve said before, that people are unhappy with a certain intellectual dishonesty from pro- and anti-porn people, with the pro-porn side engaging in a lot of hand-waving and the anti-porn people too quick to dismiss images that aren’t hateful at all, just a lot of fucking. But surely there’s a way to acknowledge both that misogyny seems to be driving the industry while accepting that even in a feminist world, there’s room for a certain amount of lustful picture-viewing.
*I will say that he overstates the innocence of older porn to make his case. John Holmes made some famously hateful movies, to the point that the movie Boogie Nights had a whole subplot mocking them for thinking that the key to making porn movies more regular movie like was to turn the sex into rape-as-a-weapon-in-a-gangster-plot. Still, I got his point. Even when I was in college, people still made jokes about corny porn plots about pizza boys and naughty nurses.
190 Responses to “Once more into the breech”
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I just want to drop something to make you think:
Don’t forget that all through human history, sexuality has been defined strictly in MALE terms. And it still is. Therefore, people just ASSUME that “sex imagery” and “sex” go together as if naturally. And, as a result of this “badly applied feminism”, meaning just aiming at equality, women are discovering their sexuality in terms of the only one out there: the male one. Which leads to this whole boy’s strip clubs and pictures of “naked” guys in Cosmo. Women are adopting the male default, instead of RE VALUING THEIR vision of sexuality.
Put simply, who said that sexy pictures are a part of sex? MEN. Who said that sexy pictures are MORE important in sex than, say, narrative? MEN. What if sex imagery WASN’T all that linked to sex after all? Who can say?
I just want to drop something to make you think:
Don’t forget that all through human history, sexuality has been defined strictly in MALE terms. And it still is. Therefore, people just ASSUME that “sex imagery” and “sex” go together as if naturally. And, as a result of this “badly applied feminism”, meaning just aiming at equality, women are discovering their sexuality in terms of the only one out there: the male one. Which leads to this whole boy’s strip clubs and pictures of “naked” guys in Cosmo. Women are adopting the male default, instead of RE VALUING THEIR vision of sexuality.
Put simply, who said that sexy pictures are a part of sex? MEN. Who said that sexy pictures are MORE important in sex than, say, narrative? MEN. What if sex imagery WASN’T all that linked to sex after all? Who can say?
***not*** to be too much of a Pollyanna about what you are saying, but isn’t it possible that part of the increase in “hardness” in porn is just that while all men look at porn sometimes, only a few men look at porn all the time? And the men who look at porn all the time probably drive the market a bit more? And that those men maybe get off on images of women being hurt/humiliated more than the majority of men do?
Cause the category of men who look at porn a lot, a lot, a lot, are probably like — very young men who don’t feel confident around women at all, men who are consistently unsuccessful with women (this category includes men who are in relationships with women they dislike and resent), men who have a fetish.
The men who look at porn sometimes are, I am guessing, just looking for barenekkid ladies and pictures of hetsex — but the stuff that is out there is continually “pushed” toward the harder direction by the constant market.
The depressing part is that I also believe all human beings’ sexuality is sort of Pavlovian: like, if you played the itsy-bitsy spider in someone’s ear every time they had an orgasm eventually they’d get horny at the first few lines: “the itsy-bitsy…” (oooh, baby)
So, the “hard” porn probably does condition all men’s sexual response in a negative way. But I don’t know if it is driven by the majority of men really having a fundamental interest in hurting and humiliating women, or I hope not anyway.
Your thoughts about this are exactly in with what mine have always been… It’s silly to claim that there’s something inherently degrading about erotic imagery, but it’s irresponsible to act like the majority of porn out there isn’t degrading on purpose.
But surely there’s a way to acknowledge both that misogyny seems to be driving the industry while accepting that even in a feminist world, there’s room for a certain amount of lustful picture-viewing.
Agreed. What really frustrates me about the whole “pro-porn” and “anbti-porn” dichotomy is the black-and-white nature of the whole debate–ie, if you are against porn or certain kinds of it, you are “anti-sex,” and if you are not, you hate women. Is there a way to make “better” porn that isn’t degrading to either sex?
I’ve read Jensen’s new book, and while I agree with much of what he has to say, part of me is reserved about telling people what to watch and what not to watch, or the possibility that my views on porn will be taken in the “you’re against the First Amendment” context, which is sort of a red herring anyway. That’s another problem with how the debate is framed–you can’t be somewhere in the middle. I’m disturbed by porn as it is, as much of what I’ve seen of it seems to give both genders the short end of the stick (so to speak) in terms of representation. No one is presented as fully human. (Cue the “OMG IT’S JUST PORN and is just for me to masturbate to” comments.) I’m not against the First Amendment. What I am against, however, is the inhuman portrayal of the “performers”–both male and female alike.
And don’t even get me started on issues of race…
I think the issue of cruelty in pornography is related towards a general culture of deriving pleasure (sexual or otherwise) from cruelty.
All forms of media are pushing more and more extreme violence (towards both women and men). News viewers derive constant pleasure from stories of gruesome tragedy and celebrity fall-from-grace. These are all examples by which forms of cruelty are being mixed with other forms of pleasure.
While pornography is clearly its own distinct case and deserves its own treatment, I feel that it is helpful to think of it as part of a larger culture of violence and degradation.
***not*** to be too much of a Pollyanna about what you are saying, but isn’t it possible that part of the increase in “hardness” in porn is just that while all men look at porn sometimes, only a few men look at porn all the time? And the men who look at porn all the time probably drive the market a bit more? And that those men maybe get off on images of women being hurt/humiliated more than the majority of men do?
I think that’s a distinct possibility. That leaves a big gaping hole of knowledge of what men who don’t spend a lot of money on porn think about this stuff—are they indifferent? angry? It’s hard to get a grasp on the situation when there’s so much hand-waving to distract from ugly truths about the current situation. A lot of people will bust out the contradictory “whatever you need to hear to shut up” arguments, so there’s a depth of bullshit here that makes trusting a lot of people on this issue difficult.
Good point, Tom. It’s worth noting that if you take the actual sex out of a movie and ramp up the violence so that it’s just one scene after another of gruesome torture of a woman, you get to open in the mainstream theaters as one of these new “torture porn” movies like Captivity.
I think the point is that porn is a product and that product is meant to sell - that porn is “about sex” really has nothing to do with its goal, and that, I think, is where Americans get tangled up - like the drug trade, we seem to ignore what’s done to sell the product as if it’s a detail, and it’s not: that’s the whole point of its existence.
As I said on the previous, i think there’s a lot more porn with the advent of the internets, a lot of it is “harder”, and a lot of that has found an audience that’s interested. I think the hard part, as everyone notes, is that it doesn’t provide an answer to how to stop it. What worries me about the porn being produced is how much of it, thanks to the web, is now internationally produced, or part of some sort of shadowy distribution that makes it harder to police. That can’t be good, nor can the casual ways (though I wouldn’t go as far as Amanda, the casual sexual objectification of GGW and the lad mags is disturbing to me, too) that porn-y product seems to drift over more and more into mainstream culture (even the “pop success” such as it is of a Jenna Jameson gives me pause).
All of this is a little different for me as a gay man - that hetero stuff on display is very much, in many ways, not about me. I’m not the guy in that picture, and I have no interest in being him. So the notion that porn “defines masculinity,” and to what extent, still strikes me as debatable. But that’s also a bit beside the point. The point is what sells in porn, and what sells, and sells best, is a certain sort of cruelty associated with the person on top. That is indeed disturbing, and what worries me most is I don’t think most people see the danger of its appeal.
I think the point is that porn is a product and that product is meant to sell - that porn is “about sex” really has nothing to do with its goal, and that, I think, is where Americans get tangled up - like the drug trade, we seem to ignore what’s done to sell the product as if it’s a detail, and it’s not: that’s the whole point of its existence.
As I said on the previous, i think there’s a lot more porn with the advent of the internets, a lot of it is “harder”, and a lot of that has found an audience that’s interested. I think the hard part, as everyone notes, is that it doesn’t provide an answer to how to stop it. What worries me about the porn being produced is how much of it, thanks to the web, is now internationally produced, or part of some sort of shadowy distribution that makes it harder to police. That can’t be good, nor can the casual ways (though I wouldn’t go as far as Amanda, the casual sexual objectification of GGW and the lad mags is disturbing to me, too) that porn-y product seems to drift over more and more into mainstream culture (even the “pop success” such as it is of a Jenna Jameson gives me pause).
All of this is a little different for me as a gay man - that hetero stuff on display is very much, in many ways, not about me. I’m not the guy in that picture, and I have no interest in being him. So the notion that porn “defines masculinity,” and to what extent, still strikes me as debatable. But that’s also a bit beside the point. The point is what sells in porn, and what sells, and sells best, is a certain sort of cruelty associated with the person on top. That is indeed disturbing, and what worries me most is I don’t think most people see the danger of its appeal.
Here’s my thing. I don’t mind, as you said, “lustful picture-viewing.” I would do it myself if it wasn’t so damn hard to find ethical porn (btw, has no one yet mentioned the porn/erotica distinction idea?) as to make it not worth the effort.
But it’s like the recent report on how legalized prostitution is just as bad as illegal, and in some cases worse. I would also support prostitution if we were some how transported to a magical fairy land of gender equality (and other equalities), where going into that line of work were actually a choice and didn’t come with a cocktail of abuses, and where the use of it did not both reflect and encourage misogynistic behavior.
But it does. There are reasons why statistical outliers are excluded, and in the case of porn, us lustful picture-viewers are the outliers.
And I would also wonder, if even among the gentle porn and the alt porn, if the actresses in it are still under duress and would rather be doing other things, or if, as I termed it above, it actually is ethical porn.
Originally feminists (women’s liberation types, as they were called at the time) objected to the “classic” porn (pool boy, etc.) the “happy fucking “porn, not only because women were objectified, but because it was an open secret that porn actresses had a such a soul-sucking job that usually, only those who had been raped as children could bring themselves to it.
Or, as young adults felt their only worth came in reinacting that debasing act.
No matter the thousands of phony “I love sex” interviews porn starlets have given since, statistically speaking, the majority of sex workers are still those who were abused as children, sexually, or at the very least battered. (And those porn actresses who become famous enough to “write” a bio, finally, and invariably, admit to that abuse, and/or that porn sets aren’t Disneyland fun.)
There’s no other profession with those built-in qualifications, and so “happy” porn or not, porn starts out debasing at least those actresses.
So, it’s become a matter of degree, and apparently which is now tilted 99.9 degrees to sadistic, violent and debasement of women.
Does this reflect men’s anger toward women, will it affect how an entire generation of men view sexuality?
Those are the questions: has any sociologist studied the issue? Can we answer them here?
Obviously, all men aren’t angry at women — or at least to the degree of toilet seats and choke-fucking — and not all young men will believe that this is realistic sexuality.
Again, I think the trend reflects a reaction to less shaming of women who are sexually independent (and yet, still not fucking you, bub!) and also women having a bigger place in the modern western world, which is threatening to some men.
Watch AMC’s series Mad Men set in 1960 to see the more open shaming of women, and daily and routinely “putting them in their place.”
Which is one of the reasons the Religious Right want to knock women back to the patriarchy.
The sexual objectification issue is where I think a lot of people get hung up, weboy—they think (and sadly, some anti-porn feminists reinforce this notion) that looking is in itself objectification. Objectification is the process of reducing someone to an object. I don’t think looking at a picture lustfully really does that.
Plus, I think it’s a red herring. It’s not some weird notion of the male gaze or objectification that bothers me about GGW; I don’t think they see these women as “objects” anyway. No, what disturbs me is they see them as people, people to be dominated, humiliated, and crushed. Extreme air-brushing puts out this notion that the only women worth not spitting on are women who don’t actually exist, but were made by a Pygmalion of the Photoshop. GGW and the misogyny of the lad mags partition all non-airbrushed women into the category of hateful beings who need to have everything hateful about them thrown in their faces. Want to be respected like a human being? We’ll show you that we can get women to compete for who’s considered the hottest of the stupid sluts who deserve to be left in a gutter. GGW seems to get a lot of its energy from the idea that the women in it are being humiliated, like the things are things they wouldn’t do because they want to, but because they are drunk and usually because the only way to escape the mean, drunk, misogynist crowd their in without getting groped and assaulted is to show some tits to the camera. And then, as the various criminal actions against Joe Francis and GGW shows, a lot of the women get raped and assaulted anyway. Francis himself made comments to a reporter bemoaning that nowadays women volunteer to be on camera—it seems to him that the fun is out of it if the women actually want to be there and are enjoying the sheninigans. Only women who are acting against their actual desires need apply, it turns out.
Oh, by the way, I’ve read that the new genre of mainstream horror movie torture porn is no longer doing well at the box office.
Apparently there was a major market for the first couple, but as they’ve gotten increasingly “harder” the movie theater audience has dropped off.
So that may indicate the either the audience isn’t scary large, or that it takes the context of sex and debasing women alone to make it sell to men.
My guess is that the initial audience was fans of horror movies and that, when they realized these movies aren’t genuinely scary but just about feeding misogynist fantasies, they dropped off. But that’s very good news.
See, the reason I can buy Kathleen’s view on this is horror movies—a lot of fans of them like them for reasons that aren’t misogynist at all and they tend to swallow the misogyny as part of the genre, but they’d be happy to let it go. Being scared by a movie has its own pleasures, but the brutal misogyny tends to draw the eye and it’s assumed that’s the selling point. It’s good to have evidence that it’s not, Judy. Puts me in a bit more optimistic frame of mind.
To paraphrase Winston Churchill, we shape our porn, and thereafter it shapes us. (Yeah, you need to slide around a little on the referents of we, our and us to make that work, but no more than the original.)
Along with the celebrity fall-from-grace and gruesome-crime genres in recent nonsexual porn, you can add the whole list of “reality” shows whre the audience gets off on underpaid non-actors humiliating themselves and backstabbing each other for a chance at a prize. (Essentially the psychosocial version of Jackass)
Thing is, you can’t argue that attitudes in the mainstream aren’t being shaped by porn to some extent. Brazilian waxes, men demanding anal sex, fucking labia reduction surgery… these are all porn-driven trends. And I don’t think you can plausibly argue that these trends aren’t about hurting women, at least to the extent to which they are fuelled by male entitlement. (yeah, I know some women are doing anal sex because they like it, with a partner who is respectful. Others… aren’t, and they feel an obligation. Similar caveat for the waxing. I don’t think you can make any excuse for the surgery.)
And so there is in fact a huge amount of evidence out there showing that the content of porn influences the attitudes and expectations of the people who watch it. But some people want to think the woman hating is magically non-sticky?
I’m so allergic to the pornification of the male brain that I pretty much avoid sex with men altogether. This is an extreme reaction, I know, but it prevents me ever getting those little shivers of disgust when I think back and I can tell a guy was thinking porn thoughts. Ew. I wish there was a better solution, though. I guess some guys haven’t had their brains colonised but how can you spot them?
That leaves a big gaping hole of knowledge of what men who don’t spend a lot of money on porn think about this stuff—are they indifferent? angry?
I may be able to speak to this, though I doubt I’m all that typical. Most of the guys I know, in real life and online, don’t pay for porn at all. It’s too easy to get for free. The closest they come to paying for it is maybe a subscription to Playboy. But I’ve noticed in the last couple of years that even the free stuff is getting harder, way harder than I’m comfortable with. I haven’t seen the stuff you describe, Amanda, though I’ve no doubt it exists and may even be the predominant form being made today, and it bothers me terribly because even if there’s not a direct causal link between porn consumption and violence toward women, there is the danger that people get a really skewed idea of what “normal” sex is (though that’s a definition I can’t even begin to get into here).
Also, re: that dipshit commenter. Does it seem like some cyberspace oddities react to any kind of feminist opinion by reaching for “data” and “hard science” and other concepts that are basically just buzzwords to the commenters in question? Presumably because they’ve absorbed the idea in their heads that women/feminists can’t do science and only the mighty commenter himself is possessed of Objectivity(TM). The absurdity of someone with a functioning internet connection demanding “data” to prove that men purchase porn is very striking; it seems kind of kneejerkish.
I’ve been on a tear reading through Denise Mina’s novels. She is a feminist Scottish mystery writer, writing about women trapped in the intersection of poverty and misogyny. Highly recommended if you are thinking of doing a novel for the reading group. She was working on her PhD thesis on women, prison and mental illness when she started writing her first novel. She says she did it because she was tired of male detectives who never had to deal with anyone shouting ‘Show me your tits’ at them whenever they were in a rough neighborhood. She also points out that serial killer novels are largely a right-wing fantasy serving to dehumanize criminals and the mentally ill.
This bit from RESOLUTION popped to mind while reading this thread (Maureen is questioning some street prostitutes about a powerful local man who may be running a brothel where customers are allowed to beat the women.)
“Suddenly, a fast car full of young men screeched past, crossing the grid, bravely defying the give-way sign. The windows were down and they hung out screaming “Cunt,” and ‘Bitch’ and ‘Slit,’ at the women, whooping and laughing uproariously as they passed. Maureen had a sense that in a few years’ time one of the boys in the car would be back here, harassing the women, raising a hammer to someone’s head in a dark alley. And no one in the car would connect the two incidents because it was just a bit of fun.”
She has two series of books, the GARNETHILL trilogy about an abuse victim who is framed for a murder because of her institutionalization and memory issues. Her current series is about Paddy Meehan, a woman from a deeply poor and proud Catholic family in Glasgow, who is trying to work her way up to a reporter’s job. (Set in the early 80s, when you could work your way up from the copy desk.)
I’ll restate what I put in the other thread (and please note that in no way am I defending the awful stuff), that taking porn out of the context of the wider society does nobody any good.
Is it the cause? Or is it just another symptom? And if it is a symptom, what IS the cause? I think those are the questions that need to be asked, and not just a good porn/bad porn debate.
As I put in the other thread, in my opinion this is linked to a greater dehumanization of our fellow man. Where people stop being people and start being resources to be exploited, consumed and eventually tossed away..well quite frankly that smells an awful lot like what we’re talking about, doesn’t it?
In short, this is going on culture wide. men and women alike, the patriarchy (and make no mistake, this attitude is the evolutionary direct descendant), consumes all it can.
Love this discussion. rowmyboat said a lot of what I wanted to say (two peas).
I do firmly believe erotica has a place in human society, and I do like “lusty pictures” and get off on them–but have found that gay male porn is the way to go, for me. As a woman, I’m freed (at least on a direct, superficial level–arguments could be made, of course) from any overt misogyny/forced identification with any of the participants. Dishonest cop-out? Maybe. Cliche? It’s beoming one, from what I’ve read online lately. All I know is that my level of comfort in the face of porn shot up exponentially the moment women were removed from the camera’s gaze. That might make me as bad as the male consumers of het porn…and gives me an idea of its allure, perhaps. Not sure.
What I am sure about is that I find it nearly impossible, personally, to have a discussion about porn and degradation that is purely heterocentric, even though I do recognize that het porn is, yes, “mainstream” porn. Maybe because, like I said, the only porn I do look at is (free) online guy-on-guy, so that variety figures as large in my mind as het porn. But can it be left out of these kinds of universal statements we’re making here?
It’s a shame most anime porn out there, gay or straight, is rape-centric (count me among the legion of women who don’t have rape fantasies… ever…), because at least there isn’t any exploitation of players involved in animation (even if there yet remains problems of perception/ attitudes transference). Erotica or porn or however we choose to define it can play a healthy role in sexual expression–but like so many commentators above have said, its powers by and large aren’t exactly being used for good.
Thanks, Amanda, for pointing out the dishonesty that accompanies a lot of “pro-porn” feminist discourse, which I pick up on with disgust even as someone who wants to side with them. I haven’t personally been able to arrive at a fixed position on the issue, even as I continue to be unable to throw out that goddamned baby with the bathwater–so I welcome this discussion.
I had written a tangentially related article for Feminist Gamers a week ago and I think that the message was sort of lost. Even if he makes a good point about society’s acceptance of violence before sex, I’m not about to buy Larry Flynt a drink.
My philosophy against Porn has always been a series of simple points:
1) There’s nothing wrong with using external stimuli (books, magazines, or movies) to get off.
2) Rape is a hate crime against women.
3) 99.9% of pornography (the external stimuli) celebrates objectification and rape of women, and as a result, is hate speech.
I suppose if you don’t agree with the points, that’s your business, but I’m not exactly interested in listening to people justify hate speech when all I want to do is get off.
To get through all the smoke and mirrors just ask: what is the effect? Sexual arousal does not cancel it so by constantly reframing it as a “sexual” matter only serves to distract from the blatant degradation and brutality: visceral hate. If you choke and mutilate women in porn (quite popular search items) it doesn’t matter whether the consumer is aroused or not, in terms of justification, since the effect is clear (As if aggressive violence is ever justifiable or coercion is remotely natural). Besides, it’s not as if sexuality is immune to manipulation (One need not look any further than pedophiles, who themselves were raped as boys or, at least, watched such abuse).
And why are people bringing the First Amendment into this? No one is claiming pornographers shouldn’t have a legal right to spew their hatred via sex. But just as any form of hate speech, legal tolerance does not depend upon the silencing of the opposition.
And this is not about telling people what they can and cannot watch as much as it is fighting for the rights of human beings. Again we must reframe our thinking to include the basic humanity of women and girls as a serious issue rather than a damn technicality.
Would any of you be so unsure if we were talking about minstrel shows or a film such as “Birth of a Nation?” Obviously those two forms of “entertainment” glorify racism, even violence (although not as cruelly as mainstream porn). When people protested against such racist acts, it was them fighting for the basic rights of blacks against an oppressive culture that legitimized terrorism and if that meant a few people are made to *feel bad* about getting their kicks at the expense of others then so be it.
At the end of the day that is the greatest risk pornographers face: cultural disapproval. That’s what so odd about the pro-porn types: they consider the casual ultra-violent hatred towards women (and girls) in porn to be a trivial issue (”personal” taste) and yet when they have to endure hurt feelings as a result of no longer being accepted it’s an outrage.
Originally feminists (women’s liberation types, as they were called at the time) objected to the “classic” porn (pool boy, etc.) the “happy fucking “porn, not only because women were objectified, but because it was an open secret that porn actresses had a such a soul-sucking job that usually, only those who had been raped as children could bring themselves to it.
Or, as young adults felt their only worth came in reinacting that debasing act.
No matter the thousands of phony “I love sex” interviews porn starlets have given since, statistically speaking, the majority of sex workers are still those who were abused as children, sexually, or at the very least battered. (And those porn actresses who become famous enough to “write” a bio, finally, and invariably, admit to that abuse, and/or that porn sets aren’t Disneyland fun.)
Thank you. I’ve been reading some feminist forums where there are discussions about sex workers and no one brought this up. I certainly didn’t because I was afraid it was un-PC and would get blasted for it.
That’s the problem I have with porn. Knowing that these women didn’t make a legitimate choice. A person’s sexuality is formed quite young, and if you molest someone at a tender age, you’re going to do some psychological damage. (Not that they can’t get better, mind you). So, someone who has a damaged idea of sexuality is not really free to make an adult decision the same way a person who was raised with a healthy sexuality does.
I don’t like the mainstream nature of porn. You have porn actresses going on shows giving sex advice. They have no business giving sex advice.
And believe me, I can tell when a person I am with watches a lot of porn. They tend to give direction and critique my performance. I was once told I needed to arch my back! I was in a position that was comfortable to me. They also tend to raise themselves up on their hands more so they can watch their dicks going in and out. As soon as that shit starts, I’m outta there.
One thing I’ve noticed is even if the imagery is normal sex, no overt misogyny, the title still contains at least one reference to a “slut” or a “whore” or some inference that the sex is forced–that she’s “taking” it” instead of doing it. And I’ve wondered if that doesn’t have something to do with the whole virgin/whore problem–that as porn becomes more commonplace, in order for guys to feel comfortable watching it they have to know they’re watching a “whore” instead of just a woman.
It seems to me that with the advances in CGI, ethical porn should be around the corner! If there’s nothing wrong with lust-inspiring pictures as long as A) no actual human beings were forced/coerced/abused into being sex workers, and B) the images/storylines are not violent and degrading, then bring on the cyber-fun. Of course, you have to address the whole “impossible physique” problem, but if the goal of the creator was to create the illusion of reality, that is to say, real people having real sex, then why not? It would probably look more real than 95% of what is out there.
I think this is true for porn fans as well. It’s just that, for a lot of them, the easy options are to swallow the misogyny or go without, and because we’re in a culture that’s pretty misogynist to begin with, they choose the latter.
That’s the other problem that skews things - it’s much, *much* easier to find the misogynist stuff (or, often, potentially neutral stuff advertised in a misogynistic way) in “free” form than it is for the “ethical” stuff, because the ethical producers don’t do stuff like sell their content to anyone who’ll pay for it.
Commercial porn is really really boring. Most of it features the guy’s dick, which is not an erotic focus for me. The money shot is a stupid porn convention (he came, he really came!) because it feels so much better to come inside. But mostly, just watching a guy pistoning away is not stimulating.
But there is tons of homemade porn on the internet, with people with imperfect bodies, different ages, people that are lovers in real life, etc. This porn is actually erotic and will get me off.
I agree with Kathleen, Amanda and Incertus that maybe a hard core of misogynist users are driving up the “hardness” of the porn. Since I first got access to the internet I have been horrified at how nasty internet porn has got - this whole face-fucking gag-on-my-cock thing never used to happen at all, for example.
I think most men who watch porn want to see things done in porn that aren’t done in real life - it’s a fantasy that we look for when we watch things right? - so things like anal sex, deep-throating, dp-ing and acrobatics, along with role-playing (including rape) are an essential part of the stories. But there is something about the abused/tricked amateur in modern porn (especially internet porn, I suspect) that goes outside these boundaries. I think before it “hardened up”, a lot of porn portrayed itself as a fantasy. Now a lot of that internet porn doesn’t - it portrays itself as real sex, and I think in some cases it is. This is nasty and in my opinion it has crossed a line.
Interestingly, on a slight tangent, I live in Japan now and the porn I see in shops here - that involving real women as opposed to animations - uses women who look much more real than in the West. Even though Japanese are much skinnier than westerners, their porn stars are much more like real Japanese women than are western porn stars. And they aren’t airbrushed. And the porn seems to involve a lot less name-calling and abuse. I wonder then if the “hardening” of porn is not actually universal…
Now forgive me if I set off a can of worms, but I’ve been wondering lately. How does Yaoi/Shonen Ai (boy on boy action) affect the way porn is viewed? For those that don’t know Yaoi is a term one may run across when discussing anime/manga. Yaoi is generally taken to be more soft-core, more storyline to explain the sex and so forth, whereas Shonen Ai is taken to be hard core, and may include acts of aggression like rape and torture. Whereas what Americans think of as “normal” porn is aimed squarely at guys Yaoi/Shonen Ai is most popular among girls who get off on watching 2 cute guys doing it (or even an orgy of cute guys all doing each other).
On the same end of the spectrum but opposite gender is Yuri/Shoujo Ai, which features two girls doing it. Since this isn’t unheard of in the US porn industry I’m sure there’s opinion on it.
Finally, there’s loli-con, in which the Loli stands for Lolita, and yes this is the totally unredeemable kiddy porn. It should be noted however that in the context I’m talking about this is comics/manga, not live action porn. At its best it shows young children (or childlike individuals of indeterminent age) doing it with the protagonist because they want to. Although some argue that this is perfectly healthy because a) no children were actually used in the production and b) it’s consensual sex so it must be OK. However I dislike it as I believe it reinforces the stereotypes that pedophiles have that some kids like to do it with guys that could be their dads. The other kind, in which children are actually hurt within the context of the story, are harder to defend, and the defenders usually put it down to “But they’re just drawings on a piece of paper, no children were actually hurt in the production of this piece so it should be protected by freedom of speech.”
The counterargument, that the only people who would buy kiddy porn are those tempted to actually go out and rape kids, is too strong to ignore in this case. I would say that’s the case for all violent porn, that people who secretly desire to commit such violence are the only ones that won’t be turned off by this.
I realize not all Japanese porn falls into these categories, and really these are just the things that make people talk.
The Japanese porn I’ve seen features women who look really young, often wearing school uniforms, who make piteous cries. Plus the genitalia are blurred, more often than not.
But if a teacher/schoolgirl fantasy turns you on, or if you’re into female submission (not bdsm, just meek/mildness) you’re in good shape.
Amanda: ““porn” is in fact the expression of a certain view of masculinity where sex is all about hate and power and rejecting soft, feminine things like respect for other people or the belief that women are human”
The soft, feminine things are not rejected, per se. They are essential. You can’t have victimization without the victim.
re: Girls Gone Wild. I’ve long wondered why it’s “sexy” to stick out your tongue, or waggle your breasts. It’s clearly not related to female pleasure for most women.
Mary Tracy9: I respond to visual stimulation, but it’s not images that are often found in porn. Porn is cock-centric, as Hector B. says. Things that feel good to me don’t get shown often. The whole emotional relationship-based stuff usually does nothing for me. It’s a pretext for saying that women don’t enjoy sex, they just want relationships. I call bullshit.
The counterargument, that the only people who would buy kiddy porn are those tempted to actually go out and rape kids, is too strong to ignore in this case.
I agree. But I was also against the Supreme Court overturning the virtual child porn prohibition, because virtual kiddie porn, like regular, can be used to convince children that what the predator is doing is acceptable. Why else would it be depicted, right? Kids don’t know anything about the world, so by normalizing it, the sicko gradually breaks down the child’s reservations and defenses until the kid thinks it’s okay for what is happening to happen.
I don’t think it should be legal for someone with a mental illness to buy a weapon, whether it be a gun or child pornography.
“That leaves a big gaping hole of knowledge of what men who don’t spend a lot of money on porn think about this stuff—are they indifferent? angry?”
I’ll also comment on this, of course I don’t know how typical I am. First of all, I’ve never paid for any porn, just the free stuff.
My preference is for porn with very aggressive/dominant (though not BDSM level) women who look like they’re enjoying it (oh, and the guy has to be reasonably good looking). I also prefer homemade stuff.
This is my ideal. But I will admit that the nature of the majority of the stuff has led me to compromise - not to blatantly misogynistic stuff, but stuff that *is* more questionable than the ideal.
Cat as far as I understand it yaoi is not softcore - one guy is always raping the other one at some point. They don’t show genitals though.
I agree though that a lot of the material which appears overtly misogynist in hetero porn -e.g. bukkake - is also available in gay porn. Which I think just proves that a lot of porn of all sorts is about humiliation fantasies. This is why I am more disturbed by things like the Bangbus than I am by bukkake. Because the Bangbus seems to be aiming at people who want their porn to seem as much like a real scenario as possible. It’s really aggressive, and it’s really difficult to tell if the women involved are actors. While the stars of porn are superhuman-looking, engaged in acts of superhuman sexual prowess, acting it all out in a movie-like scenario, it is fantasy. But when two fat gross guys pick up a really ordinary looking girl, and then subject her to some stuff in a framework which does not appear to be or require any form of acting, it’s a real challenge to identify any signals that the movie is catering to a fantasy rather than documenting a real event.
(In the same vein, Hector B: there is a great deal more japanese porn out there than schoolgirl porn. But I would argue that a lot of that sort of porn is identifiably fantastic (i.e. an adult pretending to be a schoolgirl in trouble) while a lot of the modern internet porn I have seen featuring western women (i.e. mostly American porn) is trying very hard not to seem like a fantasy. I think this may represent the general lag between Japanese and Western entertainment styles; or the more normative role that porn has in Japanese culture. I don’t really know, and have hardly done an exhaustive study!)
Uncloaking …
This is a column I wrote for my school rag: the context was that the frats and some other living groups couldn’t seem to advertise a social event without nekked women on their posters. It gets into some of the objectification-control-violence issues, and how if feels like shit to be in a workplace where you’re reminded of your “real place” in such a way.
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V122/N8/col08stein.8c.html
And I’m with Marcy: anyone who wants to have sex with me better be _with me_ , not some stupid misogynistic idea of what sex should be.
So, you respond to visual stimulation AND think that “emotional relationship based stuff” is, somewhat, BULLSHIT.
I wonder where you got this ideas from? Oh, wait, that’s right, MEN’S VIEW OF SEXUALITY.
Exactly my point. One view of sexuality is reigning over the other one. The MALE over the FEMALE, instead of both having the same importance on BOTH MALE AND FEMALE.
I’ve looked at a lot of porn in my life, but haven’t paid for any ever since I had access to the Internet. During this last decade and a half, I’ve noticed that mainstream porn has had to get pretty desperate to compete with the free stuff. Penthouse has basically gone hardcore, going almost so far as to show penile penetration and peeing and fingering and other stuff that used to be in higher-priced fetish magazines at adult bookstores (and I’ve hardly been in one of those in years, either.) Playboy (still the softcore standard for vanilla inoffensiveness in a porn mag) now shows pink, but the poses are the same and the pink shows because the hair is all gone.
The Internet really changed so much. There’s a whole world of paysites that I’ve never had much interest in (though I love to watch the Abby Winters promo videos.) There are tons of sites with short videos of amateurs and professionals and foreigners and absolute weirdos getting off in ways bizarre, sexy, interesting, and offensive. And there are the amateur sites where anything goes, which is usually a bad thing. Sites like Redtube.com have things that make me feel ill, but also have some obviously real sex where the actors (and I mean people in action, not necessarily “thespians”) are in to what they’re doing. It’s often better to leave the sound off, so as not to hear the degradation that may or not be there. Is that a moral cop out? You bet. But I ain’t paying for it, so I can sleep at night, usually. I now have a good idea just which links on sites like indienudes.com to avoid. (Free hint: if a website is called something along the lines of “I Share My Bitch” then chances are it’s pretty much what the early-feminist vanguard said porn is like.)
And I’m glad people have brought up stuff like slasher movies and such. But I don’t take the smaller box office totals to heart, since so much money is made on pay-per-view, cable, and dvd sales these days. Some movies never do that well at the theater, especially if the target audience can watch it uncut, at home, with its clothes off. Sick shit like The Devil’s Rejects, Hostel, Captivity, even some French movie I saw on Showtime a few nights ago (Spoiler alert! it’s about a stalker woman who thinks she’s a dirty middle-aged sadistic man, though she’s really just a closeted lesbian or something I guess) convey the idea that women are to be hated, or at least need to constantly prove their trustworthiness. But as long as they aren’t fucking and enjoying it, those movies will always be rated R instead of the box-office destroying NC-17. I just love living in a culture where images of shooting or stabbing someone is less hazardous to children than fondling genitals with consent. Can’t have any of that, can we?
“I just love living in a culture where images of shooting or stabbing someone is less hazardous to children than fondling genitals with consent. Can’t have any of that, can we?”
I just love living in a culture where the male perspective goes so completely unexamined that he’s always ready to make poor analogies defending his privilege to cum to women’s inferiority since the consequences are never his problem.
Homicidal criminality is not inevitable. Sexuality is.
Boys don’t grow up to have their inevitable shooting-or-stabbing-someone experiences with another person enormously affected by the distorted ones presented as a kid.
On the other hand, images of sex burned into young minds shape their sexuality, which absolutely affects their inevitable future experiences–to women’s detriment (as usual), not men’s.
Choking/rape porn is the new bar for what we identify as misogynistic imagery, but it distracts us from the fact that porn-lite, though angelic in comparison, is still misogynistic. It’s scary that the hardcore stuff is so mainstream now that people will barely be able to identify the sexism implicit in the softer varieties.
Do they? Has this actually been established? Or is this a useful claim to make for people who find porn hateful on purely moral grounds?
Suggesting children’s exposure to porn is unhealthy doesn’t make me a Christian! I’m a heathen atheist, but I first learned about porn’s effects a couple years ago in a college course at a reputable, respected university. It was pre-feminism for me (I naively thought I already was equal), so I couldn’t have cared less while it was being taught because porn was always around me, like trees or white noise. So now I don’t remember the specifics or researchers’ names, unfortunately. Sorry.
I remember the most well-known study set up 3 groups to respectively view soft-core porn, hardcore porn, and a non-sexual movie control. The voyeurs gave shocks to women and men after a month or so of daily viewing. Both the number and intensity of the shocks was directly correlated to how extreme the sexual content was and how much they watched–and the shocks were only forced upon female subjects. This rule held for whether it was women or men doling out the shocks, so you can see how insidiously internalized misogyny can start that way as well. It would also create the sub-dom dynamic and pain element to be normalized and labeled as just plain generic “sex,” when that’s more of a fetish that has been implanted as naturally occurring sex.
Sorry I can’t remember all the other ones! I had no agenda then, so I’m not making things up. Like I said, malestream porn has been white noise most of my life. Well, pink noise.
K.A., if you are saying men aren’t affected by negative stereotypes perpetuated in pornography, then you are living in a dream world. The hypermasculine culture requiring dominance of most men and all women is what leads to much of the rape, assault, theft, and even most of the murder in this world (on the personal and national scale.) Most anti-woman porn is just one tiny part of what keeps this mindset going. Little boys are taught not to be “like girls”, not to cry, not to show feelings, not to appear weak, and all the other bullshit that constantly undermines women’s place in the world. And this happens whether or not they see “Bitches Get Reamed XIV: This Time It’s All-Anal Action!” at a ripe young age or not.
Most porn sucks for many reasons. Either it’s contrived, fake-looking crap made for a market I don’t even want to be part of, or it’s so gonzo sexist that I can’t even get turned on because I am morally opposed. But there are images so beautiful, things so sexy, and beauty so incredible out there that it’s worth digging through all that crap to search for those beautiful pictures that make it worth the search. It’s pathetic, some would say (and I won’t say I don’t sometimes think so myself,) but the rewards are there. Just like flipping through 200 channels to find something worth watching, we are inundated with media choices. And 99% is crap, even the stuff that isn’t sexist.
I think this is true for porn fans as well. It’s just that, for a lot of them, the easy options are to swallow the misogyny or go without, and because we’re in a culture that’s pretty misogynist to begin with, they choose the latter.
That’s the other problem that skews things - it’s much, *much* easier to find the misogynist stuff (or, often, potentially neutral stuff advertised in a misogynistic way) in “free” form than it is for the “ethical” stuff, because the ethical producers don’t do stuff like sell their content to anyone who’ll pay for it.
I think this is true for porn fans as well. It’s just that, for a lot of them, the easy options are to swallow the misogyny or go without, and because we’re in a culture that’s pretty misogynist to begin with, they choose the latter.
That’s the other problem that skews things - it’s much, *much* easier to find the misogynist stuff (or, often, potentially neutral stuff advertised in a misogynistic way) in “free” form than it is for the “ethical” stuff, because the ethical producers don’t do stuff like sell their content to anyone who’ll pay for it.
I think this is true for porn fans as well. It’s just that, for a lot of them, the easy options are to swallow the misogyny or go without, and because we’re in a culture that’s pretty misogynist to begin with, they choose the latter.
That’s the other problem that skews things - it’s much, *much* easier to find the misogynist stuff (or, often, potentially neutral stuff advertised in a misogynistic way) in “free” form than it is for the “ethical” stuff, because the ethical producers don’t do stuff like sell their content to anyone who’ll pay for it.
“K.A., if you are saying men aren’t affected by negative stereotypes perpetuated in pornography, then you are living in a dream world.”
But what about the MENZ! Of course gender constructions harm everyone involved and rob all of us of healthy egalitarian relationships and power structures, but only one gender is oppressed by it!
We are all shortchanged by it, but only one of us is oppressed by it. How can you not get that? Pretty much all of Pandagon’s progressive politics is predicated on this recurring theme!
I think this is true for porn fans as well. It’s just that, for a lot of them, the easy options are to swallow the misogyny or go without, and because we’re in a culture that’s pretty misogynist to begin with, they choose the latter.
That’s the other problem that skews things - it’s much, *much* easier to find the misogynist stuff (or, often, potentially neutral stuff advertised in a misogynistic way) in “free” form than it is for the “ethical” stuff, because the ethical producers don’t do stuff like sell their content to anyone who’ll pay for it.
K.A., finding something hateful on moral grounds doesn’t make one a christian! I’m merely suggesting that the claim “it poisons our minds” is a very convenient technical fallback for people whose real argument is “it’s wrong!” Such people don’t have to be christian. It is easier to argue that something you hate should be banned if you can say “but what about the children!” Which is what your argument seems to be.
In short I think, if you don’t like objectification of women, argue against porn on that grounds, not on the grounds that it might be bad for children.
I don’t believe these studies present a compelling case for the “dangers” of pornography for young minds, although I don’t know a great deal about them. But in any case I don’t think it is sufficient reason to ban something - I don’t want you coming for my computer games after you have nabbed someone else’s porn, thank you very much. I think we can come up with a better plan than that for managing adult activity.
K.A., you are on to me. I was saying it’s all about the men (or MENZ, as you so curiously spell it.) But you said, “…images of sex burned into young minds shape their sexuality, which absolutely affects their inevitable future experiences–to women’s detriment (as usual), not men’s.” And I disagreed. I am sorry that my disagreement was in the form of something that suggested possible detriment to men, but I couldn’t figure out any other way to do so. Maybe I could come up with an analogy to bicycles or cookware, but someone would be offended.
That may be so, libido, but there are ways for porn consumers to get stuff that’s not terrible, especially if they’re willing to pay. Men need to take responsibility to show the industry where they want to spend their money.
It is easier to argue that something you hate should be banned if you can say “but what about the children!” Which is what your argument seems to be.
My argument was for it to be banned? News to me. Where did I argue that? Why do you keep reiterating that I am coming to nab your porn? Can’t I critique its social effects without being accused of trying to oppress you?
My argument focused on children because I responded to someone who was talking about what kids are exposed to in general these days, which seemed appropriate in light of studies showing that our first exposure to porn is during childhood, thus preceding any real-world sexual experience. It’s not about children so much as how it shapes our notion of sexuality from a young age.
Don’t you worry about establishing a pattern of children orgasming to misogynistic material? I guess that means I fall into the hand-wringer category in Amanda’s post, but studies prove it affects adults who likely have an established sexual history, and I’m out to oppress you just by wondering how kids who see it as their first experience of sex can have their conception of women influenced? I’m just putting it out there, but you react like I’m clawing at your bedroom, hungry to put a chastity belt over your eyes or something.
Oh, I was totally baffled by the censorship accusation Flash, but I guess you skimmed my response to someone’s post on kiddie porn comics. I was talking about my basis for supporting the ban of virtual kiddie porn, which was off-topic anyway. I don’t hold such views about adult-oriented material, even though I view much of it as hate speech against women.
I started reading the article, and I immediately thought of Auslander’s article. I read the rest of it while looking forward to posting the link to everyone’s general amusement… only to find out near the end that you already knew about it. Sigh.
I don’t believe that porn was ever innocent (read “Justine” lately?), but the hateful porn was probably less generally accessible in the Dark Ages before the internet. There’s a difference between downloading a movie off some webpage, and having to go to the local smut store and getting the owner to sell you the tapes he keeps under the counter.
Jon– Sure, reinforcing gender constructions that limit us from expressing the full spectrum of natural human emotions/behavior is unhealthy and dysfunctional for all involved (read: I agreed with you that it’s a detriment to women AND MEN equally in that regard), but the construction *additionally* supports the oppression of women by normalizing a reigning paradigm of male supremacy and female inferiority. You’re male? Oh, boo hoo, you’re oppressed by being cast as the one not being degraded and abused, just like women are outside of fantasy, which they have to live with every day in real life. You don’t.
The sexual objectification issue is where I think a lot of people get hung up, weboy—they think (and sadly, some anti-porn feminists reinforce this notion) that looking is in itself objectification. Objectification is the process of reducing someone to an object. I don’t think looking at a picture lustfully really does that.
I think that perspective is really important and that you have to at least be willing to imagine that looking isn’t in itself objectification in order to understand how porn really is objectifying and cruel, plenty of the time. Looking isn’t the same as performing in ways that involve cruelty and violence, and if people thoughtlessly conflate the image of someone being exploited with the image of women enjoying sex, then there’s a problem. i think that if you’re going to produce/consume porn at all you have to make that distinction, if only to be able to find something you yourself enjoy.
(Sorry about the multiple posts earlier - there was no indication that comments were stuck in moderation.)
I agree completely - that “Take Back the Sexy” LJ community I link to is, among other things, about doing just that.
I was just trying to figure out why they don’t. I do think the “especially if they’re willing to pay” is a big obstacle, because the free material that’s out there seems to be a lot more skewed toward misogyny (or they just advertise more?), and because a lot of people don’t trust *any* porn providers enough to make a transaction.
sorry K.A., I responded to your sentence in isolation and when elaborating my response I argued with a straw person. Ooops.
Regardless of the various straw people in the room, I remain cautious about claims that pornography affects our sexuality (as opposed to, say, misinforming our understanding of the mechanics of the matter). This is the realm of psychology “studies” and I don’t trust them.
I certainly was exposed to porn in childhood (that situation where you find it in the street) and I don’t think it had a great influence on me. I am highly dubious about the existence of “a pattern of children orgasming to misogynistic material”, sounds like moral panic to me. And since porn is for adults not children, children can only enter the debate through moral panic. Certainly considering children viewing porn doesn’t help us to understand whether adults can enjoy non-misogynistic porn.
I think Jon has a point, the wide availability of free porn, including various vidoes made by normal people has really affected the market. It is hard to get people to pay for picutres of naken people, or for plain old sex. The only thing that they can keep behind the pay wall is the most awful stuff, and I suppose this is all they can get people to pay for.
Karmakin:
it’s not about what is the symptom and what is the cause. It’s a never ending circle. Porn influences life and life influences porn. The difference is that trying to regulate porn is easier than trying to regulate social trends that we cannot quantify.
FlashHeart–
Well, you asked if there were studies backing what must be my moral agenda, and I cited a study that I learned at school when I had absolutely no interest in this topic and thus no agenda. Then you said you don’t believe studies anyway. What can I do?
I had cable growing up, and it was definitely a hateful thing to see happening to women, though it was merely packaged as “sex” and I always regarded it as such. But it’s what’s there, all the time, culturally supported, its detractors maligned. If you don’t believe in scientific studies, I guess all you trust is anecdotal evidence, so I’ll tell you that in hindsight, it has planted ideas about what is arousing that I’m certain wouldn’t have aroused me otherwise. Like another commenter said before, some guys will hold themselves up more to watch their penis go in and out. I do that. Guess why? I also like my hair pulled. Guess why?
I never felt like when I was being sexually harassed growing up that it was a form of harassment; it was just the same drip, drip, drip of vitriol spewed my direction, because it felt awful and violating, but the dynamic was business as usual against the backdrop of porn culture. These ideas are simple now, but too complex for me to have explained or even recognized at the time. It was learned helplessness thanks to internalized propaganda that made me feel the same way all the time, and I never advocated for myself as a result. If contempt for you is always buzzing in your ear, you cease to recognize it as contempt.
I went more than 2 decades not noticing controversy about porn or that feminism still existed, so it was partly my resentment upon realizing how it co-opted my natural sexual development in many ways I find disturbing now that led me to stumble across feminism on the net in the first place. So I’m not advocating this position from some women’s studies brainwashing or something. I get porn. I feel like I always have to apologize and explain that I’m not some uptight prude. I’ve used it more times than I can count. Or rather, the industry used me.
Again, I originally mentioned children because the comment before mine was about kids specifically. Packaging misogyny and sexist dynamics within porn can condition anyone regardless of age.
FlashHeart–
Well, you asked if there were studies backing what must be my moral agenda, and I cited a study that I learned at school when I had absolutely no interest in this topic and thus no agenda. Then you said you don’t believe studies anyway. What can I do?
I had cable growing up, and it was definitely a hateful thing to see happening to women, though it was merely packaged as “sex” and I always regarded it as such. But it’s what’s there, all the time, culturally supported, its detractors maligned. If you don’t believe in scientific studies, I guess all you trust is anecdotal evidence, so I’ll tell you that in hindsight, it has planted ideas about what is arousing that I’m certain wouldn’t have aroused me otherwise. Like another commenter said before, some guys will hold themselves up more to watch their penis go in and out. I do that. Guess why? I also like my hair pulled. Guess why?
I never felt like when I was being sexually harassed growing up that it was a form of harassment; it was just the same drip, drip, drip of vitriol spewed my direction, because it felt awful and violating, but the dynamic was business as usual against the backdrop of porn culture. These ideas are simple now, but too complex for me to have explained or even recognized at the time. It was learned helplessness thanks to internalized propaganda that made me feel the same way all the time, and I never advocated for myself as a result. If contempt for you is always buzzing in your ear, you cease to recognize it as contempt.
I went more than 2 decades not noticing controversy about porn or that feminism still existed, so it was partly my resentment upon realizing how it co-opted my natural sexual development in many ways I find disturbing now that led me to stumble across feminism on the net in the first place. So I’m not advocating this position from some women’s studies brainwashing or something. I get porn. I feel like I always have to apologize and explain that I’m not some uptight prude. I’ve used it more times than I can count. Or rather, the industry used me.
Again, I originally mentioned children because the comment before mine was about kids specifically. Packaging misogyny and sexist dynamics within porn can condition anyone regardless of age.
I viewed soft-erotic material as a child, and I know I was turned on. Maybe it IS important to think of what children look at. I never was exposed to torture porn, luckily. I wonder if it would have changed my sensibility.
I like gang-bang porn without a rape theme. Hard to find, but there is some. There’s a really good mag my husband and I like called “Raunchy Couples”.
Also, in the porn mags that aren’t mainstream it is common to find that the second half is not porn at all, but pictures of corpses, women fucking clowns, women fucking clown corpses, stories about necrophilia, zoophilia, alien rape, animal abuse but the other way around (zoo-keeper getting raped by a gorilla), auto-erotic stories where the heroine is cutting herself, etc.
I never knew what to make of it. I wonder what the more smarter commenters here think of that. I never thought of it, but now I think maybe it’s and important part of paying for porn for some people? Looking at something outlandish, cruel and degrading?
I wrote a long post that disappeared into the ethers. Oh well, sorry flash.
Yes, it has been consistently established, and the fact that childhood experiences shape sexuality is so self-evident as to make me believe you’re being deliberately obtuse. Are you really this willing to make yourself look stupid in order to defend porn?
Sexual imprinting? The effects of sexual abuse on children? And yes, exposure to pornography is considered both by the psychological community and by the law to be sexual abuse of a child.
As someone whose childhood sexual abuse involved exposure to pornography at an inappropriately young age, fuck you. How sick you must be in order to defend showing pornography to children as a somehow innocuous behavior. You disgust me.
Yes, it has been consistently established, and the fact that childhood experiences shape sexuality is so self-evident as to make me believe you’re being deliberately obtuse. Are you really this willing to make yourself look stupid in order to defend porn?
Sexual imprinting? The effects of sexual abuse on children? And yes, exposure to pornography is considered both by the psychological community and by the law to be sexual abuse of a child.
As someone whose childhood sexual abuse involved exposure to pornography at an inappropriately young age, fuck you. How sick you must be in order to defend showing pornography to children as a somehow innocuous behavior. You disgust me.
Please be patient. I do clear out the moderation queue periodically, but I can’t be expected to do it within seconds of you hitting post. Your comments will come out in due time.
Meh - I don’t really get off viewing actual sex acts. I love images of beautiful women. But all the action takes place in my brain.
Reaching back far upthread, I think Cat mixed up shonen ai and yaoi; the latter is, if I recall correctly, the hardcore one. As for the mention of lolicon, can someone explain to me what the audience for straight shotacon is? It just seemed kind of inexplicable to me.
This has been alluded to above, but I don’t think it’s been stated explicitly: the consumers of porn are a superset of the customers of porn; the people who actually pay for it are a small fraction of raincoaters who thus exert a disproportionate influence on the content of the porn.
While clearly the consumer base isn’t bothered by what goes into the porn, it seems a bit like the anecdotes that come up whenever someone mentions that porn scenes must end in a money shot–large numbers of people pipe up to say that they don’t like that and wouldn’t mind if it was dropped. But, of course, that doesn’t stop them from watching it. I’d wager that it’s the same for the violence.
This applies pretty cleanly to whatever else leaches out of porn, because a large proportion of men are influenced heavily by the tastes of a relatively small cadre of raincoaters. Might this be heavily influenced by the fact that since casual porn users no longer pay for their porn, the influence has tilted overwhelmingly toward the raincoaters?
anecdotes that come up whenever someone mentions that porn scenes must end in a money shot–large numbers of people pipe up to say that they don’t like that and wouldn’t mind if it was dropped. But, of course, that doesn’t stop them from watching it.
No, because I find commercial porn to be boring and unerotic, I don’t watch it.
Yes, Hector B., but you’re the exception. In the vast majority of cases, what I wrote is true. The exceptions aren’t numerous enough to count. Folks more diligent than me have pointed out upthread that a lot of dudes download free porn. A smaller proportion of them pay for it.
I’m a lesbian, my porn consumption is restricted to lesbian porn. And yes, I have definitely taken advantage of the internet to access it. My conflict comes from realizing that most of what I get off to is actually made by men, for men; that even though they’re not in the picture the whole appeal to men is that they COULD be in the picture in the next moment. (Yes, I know there is porn made by lesbians for lesbians, but honestly the production values are often poor in contrast, and the other stuff is so much more easily and freely available). I have to not think about the implied male gaze in order to get off — I only like porn (still images or action) where the women are looking at EACH OTHER, and not at the camera (cameraman, male viewer…). But I do feel a little guilty about it, and I’m not 100% sure why that is; what I’m looking at is not degrading or violent in its representation. I’m not sure how much of the discomfort is the general fetishizing of my form of sexuality for male consumption, or the unknown circumstances of the women involved in its actual production, or something else…
And yet, I still get off to the stuff, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.
On the whole, I have a hard time sorting out my views on porn and what’s I think is okay and what’s not. So I like threads like this, the discussion is relatively intelligent and respectful, and helps me see things from different angles.
btw, an aside related straight women liking gay male porn, I know some lesbians who like gay male porn. I don’t really understand it, and I’ve never been able to get a good answer to my queries — responses are usually something like “I don’t know why I like it, it’s just hot” Does anyone have any ideas on that? I’ve wondered if there’s a desire to see men be the degraded ones, since as someone pointed out above, a lot of gay male porn does involve force and degradation.
So, you respond to visual stimulation AND think that “emotional relationship based stuff” is, somewhat, BULLSHIT.
I wonder where you got this ideas from? Oh, wait, that’s right, MEN’S VIEW OF SEXUALITY.
Firstly, I believe JoAnne used the word “me” twice in that paragraph. Secondly, I believe JoAnne is unlikely to be male (but, then again, this is the Internet…).
Is it not possible that, when it comes to individual sexuality, “de gustibus non est disputandum” should be the operating assumption?
Yes, it has been consistently established,
Could you be a bit clearer on what you believe has been consistently established? When last I read anything on the related topic of TV, it had been shown that images of violence affected kids. I seriously doubt that children need erotic images to start developing an interest in sex per se; this does not preclude criticising the framing or form of said erotica, of course.
My guess is that the set of people they’d like to watch and the set of people they’d like to get with aren’t the same. I know that’s true for me, and I don’t understand why so many people act like it isn’t (e.g., assuming that being good looking means being better in bed).
K.A.: I’m not sure I understand the difference between being harmed and being oppressed - I imagined it was one of degree but your comments make it sound like a difference in kind. Could you (or anyone else, I suppose) please explain it to me/link me to an explanation?
Thank you,
MH
Oppressed because it upholds the model of women being inferior to men. Jesus, this isn’t rocket science! You don’t see how misogynist abuse of women on screen normalizes a patriarchal paradigm and things like the virgin/whore dichotomy? Unbelievable.
“When last I read anything on the related topic of TV, it had been shown that images of violence affected kids.”
It has been established that the media desensitizes us to images of violence, but it has never stated that it makes children mime a shoot-em-up in real life.
No one seems to care about the study I cited about porn though! They just ignore it and go off into something else. Interesting.
It’s really bizarre to me that you all would defend children seeing porn and say we aren’t influenced by it. And again, I bring up children because that’s when most of us start watching.
Well, as someone who looks at porn, and even pays for it on occasion, I have very mixed feelings about this topic. There’s no denying that the majority of the porn out there is extremely misogynistic. Frankly, a lot of this stuff makes me feel slightly sick to my stomach, even to just read the descriptions of it. I try to seek out porn where the performers appear to be enjoying themselves, but I often have to wade through a lot of misogynistic filth to find it, so when I do find something I like I will sometimes pay for (what I hope will be) more of the same. (Just to be clear, I’m a straight male, and I’m talking about porn that’s aimed at straight males.)
I’d like to believe that by actively seeking out and paying for a “better” class of porn, I’m actually helping to change the industry for the better, but unfortunately, I’m far from certain that’s the case. For one thing, even in porn where the woman (or women) appear to be enjoying themselves, there is often a definite whiff of misogyny. For another, how can I be sure that the women in the porn I watch were not coerced in some way?
Given all this, I’m sure some of the posters here would tell me that the only ethical thing for me to do is to stop looking at porn. The thing is, I don’t believe that, just because most porn is degrading towards women, that porn always has to be degrading towards women.
In summary, I pay for porn. I do not get off on seeing, women spat on, beaten, brutalized, called “slut” or “whore” or otherwise degraded. I do get off on watching attractive* women engage in sexual activities where they seem to be having a good time. I would like to encourage the porn industry to produce less of the former type of content and more of the latter, but I’m not sure if paying for membership to a site where the misogyny is basically reduced to background levels is really helping with the problem.
*I don’t find skinny women with hairless bodies and giant, obviously artificial, tits to be particularly attractive, but that’s a whole ‘nother discussion.
Consumer, please point out the “majority” here saying that porn itself is inherently always and forever evil. I appreciate your attempts to make the situation better, but it would be easier to swallow that if you didn’t misrepresent what people in this thread are saying.
I’ve wondered if there’s a desire to see men be the degraded ones, since as someone pointed out above, a lot of gay male porn does involve force and degradation.
Not in my experience; the women I know (straight, bi, and gay) who like gay porn do not (as far as I know) watch or read or write gay porn with force and degradation (in fact, I’ve very rarely come across gay porn like that, although I haven’t done a great deal of looking, I guess). That is to say, the porn we talk about watching (and reading, and writing) usually has the men treating each other as equals; if one takes the submissive role he’s not being treated like human garbage against his will. THAT, I think, explains the appeal of gay porn for some women, if not for most women, but that’s just me guessing.
Given all this, I’m sure some of the posters here would tell me that the only ethical thing for me to do is to stop looking at porn. The thing is, I don’t believe that, just because most porn is degrading towards women, that porn always has to be degrading towards women. - Consumer
The ethical problem that requires a person to stop buying porn isn’t some nebulous theoretical ideal.
First, many if not most of women in porn were abused as children. Sexual commodification was (criminally) instilled in them as “normal” very early on. And second, in a patriarchy, members of the sex class cannot make entirely “free” choices when it comes to sexuality.
You, as a porn consumer, cannot tell if the women you’re watching prostitute themselves onscreen were coerced into it or not. And because we live in a patriarchy, NONE of them ever had true freedom of choice in the matter.
By buying porn, you are supporting an industry that thrives on an abundance of women who have already been conditioned by their abusers to accept sexual objectification/commodification. Pornographers profit from this, and they do so knowingly.
Even if you’re not giving your money to the industry, what do you think it says about your own humanity that you seek out and are aroused by images of women who in all probability are only there because they were sexually abused as children? And how do you think this affects the way you view and treat women in your own life?
I suggest you google “Robert Jensen” and read some of his articles on this subject.
where is your basis for this weird assumption? are you suggesting the amount of porn you’re viewing is related to your misogyny? i call bullshit. maybe on the TYPE of porn, but not the amount. and also to the idea that because you have a fetish your somehow more misogynist. fetishes aren’t all bad!
also, to everyone here who keeps mentioning buying porn, what about those of us who watch a lot of porn, but have never, ever, paid for it? just something to think about, i’m not sure how that affects the market, or if it even does.
OT - i know it’s been said before, but, this anti-spam is AWFUL!!
oops, that was supposed to be:
derp, what about women who view porn? how do you think it affects us?
as a skinny woman with a mostly hairless body and giant, although real, tits, i appreciate knowing you think i’m unfuckable. thanks.
why is it men always have to have some nasty comment like this?
“oh i don’t hate women, really… well EXCEPT for these ones, even though i PAY to see those, i swear i LOVE women…”
dick.
slingshot, women in patriarchy are taught to eroticize our own domination and degradation (Dworkin’s addresses this specifically). The conditioning isn’t obvious to us, and it’s very hard to accept, even for women who identify as feminists. Each woman’s experience is, I expect, unique. But no one is exempt from the influence of the patriarchy - and the ethical imperative to abstain from consuming pornography applies to ALL people.
Oh, and that Porn Consumer feels entitled to post his opinion on women’s fuckability ON A FEMINIST FORUM, in a discussion about PORNOGRAPHY’S DEGRADATION OF WOMEN’S HUMANITY, is the perfect example of patriarchal influence. I’m sure he will be shocked that you would take offense. Because as a male consumer of pornography, he doesn’t see women as human - but he’ll be hard-pressed to admit this to himself (or anyone else.)
Damn. Sorry about that.
slingshot, women in patriarchy are taught to eroticize our own domination and degradation (Dworkin’s “Intercourse” addresses this specifically). The conditioning isn’t obvious to us, and it’s very hard to accept, even for women who identify as feminists. Each woman’s experience is, I expect, unique. But no one is exempt from the influence of the patriarchy - and the ethical imperative to abstain from consuming pornography applies to ALL people.
Oh, and that Porn Consumer feels entitled to post his opinion on women’s fuckability ON A FEMINIST FORUM, in a discussion about PORNOGRAPHY’S DEGRADATION OF WOMEN’S HUMANITY, is the perfect example of patriarchal influence. I’m sure he will be shocked that you would take offense. Because as a male consumer of pornography, he doesn’t see women as human - but he’ll be hard-pressed to admit this to himself (or anyone else.)
The industry is a garbage bin for molested, assaulted, neglected, isolated, impoverished, or disenfranchised girls when they become women (an arbitrary legal definition of adulthood), and no shift in cultural attitudes toward sex is going to change that. We can see this as giving them an additional option, or we can see this as being complicit in their further abuse. I agree that girls in porn are almost universally emotionally damaged in some way (and the ones who aren’t are statistically negligible, or lying because they’re unaware of what the alternative weltanschauung could have been). Even in an imaginary sex-positive culture where sex was blessedly not viewed as dirty and shameful–something all feminists can agree on–the women most drawn to filmed prostitution as a profession would still be the ones who were abused! Even in that scenario, would it be fair to laud the job as freedom just so the 5% of privileged women making up the industry are also free to enter the profession? Our right to pursue happiness via personal freedoms should not be coming at the cost of exploiting destroyed women’s right to happiness. That’s real oppression: other women with stable, non-dysfunctional upbringings validating an industry where the vast, vast majority of other workers are there because they were violated and permanently traumatized by abusive fathers and uncles and moms’ boyfriends.
Porn is like any other sex trade, which hinges upon men protecting other men’s right to have unhindered access to women’s and children’s bodies. Men buying porn benefit from another man’s handy work–whoever violated her while in a position of authority during her formative years. One man sexually molests a child, creates the future star by hypersexualizing her and giving her psychological problems, and she spends the rest of her life trying to take back the power by reliving the situation over and over, hoping one time it’ll end differently–with her in power. Buyers consume the reenactment of her abusive history because they feel entitled to it without feeling responsible for exploiting her underlying psychological motivations for doing it. Denial and delusions have to exist to justify it to the users, just like johns who go to prostitutes will often think she is REALLY having an orgasm or that the prostitute is telling him the truth when she tells him that he is REALLY “the best she ever had.” They are willfully living in la-la-land because they will not give it up.
Reframing sex as not being shameful in this culture is a good pursuit, but reframing porn as acceptable has done nothing to change the nature of it, as we’re seeing now. Now instead of some men hating women in private, we’ve constructed a nationwide arena in which to display and dispose of women while they’re humiliated and brutalized; it’s a lion pit where men go to see women suffer. The fantasies in porn are from the mind of a misogynist, and it is burned into children’s brains young, since most people are exposed to it before they are even in middle school. That’s what they’re conditioned to be aroused by. Is it any wonder most girls today disavow feminism? They’re being exposed and aroused by it very early too! Our sexual health and development is part of any other aspect of development, and co-opting our sexuality while we’re children should be reframed as abusive and robbing our rights in the realm of future interpersonal freedoms, rather than viewed as a sign of personal liberties at work. This is about corporate liberty, not individual liberties. We’re all enslaved by it, but only women are tortured.
I think anyone who advocates for prostitution, filmed or live, should have to work in the industry first. Why aren’t any of you professional sex workers?
I have a funny feeling slingshot is not a woman, but a man pretending to be his fantasy of the perfect woman (loves porn, looks like a porn actress).
RE: slingshot’s gender
Amanda, I didn’t get that impression at all.
slingshot,
I could have been a little more specific on how viewing porn affects women.
As I said, in patriarchy, women are taught to eroticize our own degradation. So, in keeping with our conditioning, we watch pornography and/or act out what we see with our partners. Every time we experience sexual pleasure in doing so, we reinforce that conditioning (institutionalized oppression relies heavily on mechanisms like this to perpetuate itself.) When we are complicit in our own degradation, where does that leave us, ethically? When you, as a woman, consume pornography knowing the harm it causes to your sisters, how do you reconcile that?
I ask that, not to rhetorically blame women, but in sincerity. I believe that the porn dilemma is just another instance of the patriarchy shaming women into conforming our bodies/behavior to benefit our oppressors. We (re)define and (de)value our sexual pleasure in terms of how well it serves male sexual desire. Why? Because the patriarchy rewards us for it.
“One man sexually molests a child, creates the future star by hypersexualizing her and giving her psychological problems, and she spends the rest of her life trying to take back the power by reliving the situation over and over, hoping one time it’ll end differently–with her in power.” - K.A.
Childhood sexual abuse is so tragic. Especially for girls, it is one of the most insidious effects of the patriarchy. I think that because it is so often a close family member (father, uncle, older brother) who abuses them, the concepts of love, sex, and boundaries become twisted and confused for them. Of course she loves her father, and when he abuses her, he tells her that he loves her, and she believes him. Because she doesn’t fight back (out of fear, or confusion) she feels that she has “allowed” him to do this to her. She may even experience some measure of physical arousal (it’s not uncommon, especially for victims of prolonged abuse) along with the pain, further complicating things. Her personal boundaries have been anhillated; she no longer can distinguish between love, sex, violation and abuse. And she certainly cannot conceptualize “consent.”
That should be “instruments of the patriarchy,” not “effects.”
amanda - ack! i didn’t mean to give that impression. i am a woman, i swear!
acutally i don’t LOVE porn - i do watch it, but i would really watch more if it weren’t for all the awfullness in it. seriously.
i honestly wanted to know what happens to WOMEN who watch porn, not just to men. i mean, if men watch it, and they learn to hate women more, what happens if i watch it?
i do try to watch good stuff, but like someone else said, how i do i know they aren’t being coerced? how does this affect my attitude towards women (myself)?
and i don’t look like a porn star, but rather i happen to have big boobs and be skinny. i’m hairless due to trichotillomania - which is a problem that 2% of women have. most porn stars are WAY skinnier than me, i must admit.
Derrp, I agree with all of your posts, which are concise and well-put. It’s very frustrating to not be able to get my point across the same way.
I really wish people of the opposing camp would look into the shock-administration study I mentioned. I had zero bias when I learned about all those experiments because I didn’t find feminism until 2 years later.
If the requirement for entering filmed or live prostitution was completing an interview after being given a dose of sodium pentothal while under hypnosis and attached to a lie detector to ensure that none of them had dysfunctional backgrounds, the entire industry would bottom out. No one would be left! Maybe that’s what we should do. Or maybe we can start eliminating the assholes who target women disproportionately by jailing them for life, so we can reduce the number of women denied safe, healthy, stable upbringings in the first place. I doubt they’d leave their privilege and functional psyche for the joy of being a porn actress or prostitute.
i’m not sure i understand how we can be complicit in our own degradation…?
is ALL pornography really causing harm?
if so, what is an acceptable method of arousal for those of us who enjoy porn to replace it with?
even if I stop viewing porn, i am unsure how to stop all the men. every man i know views porn. all my boyfriends have. should i just stop dating until i find a man who doesn’t view it, or what?
KA, I asked you to support a claim and you provided me with references to studies which I rejected, and you’re right it kind of makes me seem like a dick. It’s not that I reject science though (I am a scientist), just that years of dealing with psychologists and their “studies” makes me highly dubious of their findings. (Hope that explains my rejection of your original explanation a little more sensibly).
I am similarly suspicious of claims about the level of abuse experienced by sex workers or porn stars. I don’t know about porn stars, but my understanding of sex workers in Australia is that they are a much more diverse bunch than just sexually abused victims. The majority in fact are brothel-working women with low qualifications, for whom the flexible hours and high pay are a vast improvement over office work. Many of them are students. They are not “forced” into the work at all, nor are the majority of them drug addicts. The kinds of studies quoted by anti-sex work, anti-porn crusaders on both sides of the topic can be highly selective, focussing on street-based sex workers with drug problems rather than the backbone of the industry.
Finally, re:62, is there anything particular wrong with your having learnt to do things a certain way from the porn you saw as a child? Couldn’t it just be that you would ultimately have realised these things excited you, and porn just helped you see it before you started having sex rather than after? While I understand your point about the relationship between harrassment/vitriol and porn, I don’t know that the other part of the porn’s effects which you describe - teaching you certain things were sexy - has been presented as a negative effect.
(And, sigh, for those such as What the Hell, this does not mean I am supporting showing porn to kiddies, or whatever your moral panic agenda of the day is. I am merely asking a question)
so how do women get out of it? how do i unlearn what i’ve been taught?
I think this is an excellent point.
however, i feel a lot of my squeamishness about actually BEING a sex worker is because of the way society views them.
i would be able to do it if:
i knew the sex was on my conditions
if i thought i wouldn’t be totally ostracized by my community when i was recognized.
these problems are not of porn, itself, but of society, and of men, and of course the patriarchy.
derrp, KA and others seem to be suggesting that when an adult consumes porn they are benefitting from the work of an adult male in preparing a girl to become a porn star. Putting aside my suspicions about the exaggerated statistics underlying this claim, I think it doesn’t add much to the arguments for or against porn. This is because the problem extends beyond the one industry, and is not a special property of porn.
Every time you go to a cafe or a supermarket or throw out your rubbish you are taking advantage of a system of abuse. Someone with less opportunities or wealth than you is doing that job because they can’t be an architect or a scientist. While the abuse which maintains these power relations is different, it is still there and we can’t choose to boycott or critique every service in a capitalist world because unequal social relations maintain it. While the argument is a very strong one as an explanation for your personal decision to buy a product, it doesn’t mean much beyond that. People being forced to take a job because of power relations, or being rendered more suited to one job than another by an oppressive system, is the nature of our world. It is not in itself a critique of any particular cultural activity.
For example, people who work in cafes as waiters generally didn’t have the same educational opportunities as architects, and they were “prepared” for the job by a system of repression in school which ensured they didn’t get the same opportunities as others. This isn’t a facile joke on my part either - when I was 16 I still had never heard of university. My schoolteachers, my social milieu and my parents conspired to make sure I didn’t have the same chances as the private school kids I met when I went to uni, who had known all their lives where they would go after school. This system functions to prevent people from poor families becoming great scientists or architects. Yet we don’t criticise the fundamental concept of the “cafe” or the “rubbish removal system” or “plumbing” because of this, do we? Well, marxists do. But the majority of us don’t. We look for ways to make engagement in the process more voluntary.
I suppose those of us who accept the possibility of porn as a non-misogynist cultural activity wish to find ways to make porn positive and voluntary. We want to reduce the strength of the preparation process, make the product more available to a wider range of consumers and less harmful (like banning smoking in cafes!) and we want to improve the workplace relations in the industry itself. I suppose this is liberal democracy in action…
(And KA, under a liberal democractic system, potential employees don’t do lie detector tests!!!)
in case this thread is not dead, KA I posted a long post in response to your previous posts. The short version: you asked why I rejected your studies. My answer: I am a scientist, I have worked with psychologists for several years, and I don’t trust their studies. They are bodgy. Which is why I asked the original question, almost rhetorically - when psychologists investigate things they don’t seem to do it very well.
nah, porn consumer threw out that comment because he wanted you to know he wasn’t one of “Those” porn consumers. He likes looking at normal real, women, like, uhhh…. you/hypothetical pandagon reader. whoa.
shit, the more I think about it, the more inadvertantly and unintentionally fucked up that attempt at collegiality gets.
Derrp @9:15-
_
“And second, in a patriarchy, members of the sex class cannot make entirely “free” choices when it comes to sexuality.”
_
Well shit. Evidently, every past and future sexual encounter of my life just is an hour of rape-tainted water aerobics in an acid-bath of societal coersion, only differing in degree of exploitatin. We all aught go hang ourselves at puberty.
or get used to the idea. hmmm. awkward.
//The thing is, that all the things that I could replace porn with are even sadder and more pathatic than porn.
K.A., it’s interesting that you keep saying that before you found feminism, you were “unbiased.” Not true - you were biased in favor of patriarchal norms, because that’s the default.
“I doubt they’d leave their privilege and functional psyche for the joy of being a porn actress or prostitute.”
That’s exactly it. Male privilege is so ingrained that most men can’t imagine life without it (if they can even admit it exists at all).
slingshot, I think you’re missing my point. The pornography industry itself is harmful to women, for the reasons I posted earlier - the issue is much, much larger than the individual consumer making “good choices” about what type of porn to consume. As for an “acceptable method of arousal,” I can’t tell you what to do there. But I can say with certainty that degradation of women is unacceptable. The same goes for deciding whether or not to date men who view pornography. If you want to know what I do in my personal life, I’m not averse to telling you. My only advice, though, would be to do what you think is right for you.
“for those such as What the Hell, this does not mean I am supporting showing porn to kiddies, or whatever your moral panic agenda of the day is”
flasheart, this kind of disrespectful bullshit has no place on a feminist blog, or anywhere else for that matter. And as for your “but buying apples exploits farm workers so what’s the point of opposing porn” argument, I call false analogy. Porn is not a necessity of life. And guess what? I’m a scientist, too - and I disagree that psychological research is, as a rule, “bodgy.” Each branch of science has its uses and its limitations, but why do you need to dismiss this one out of hand?
“Evidently, every past and future sexual encounter of my life just is an hour of rape-tainted water aerobics in an acid-bath of societal coersion, only differing in degree of exploitatin…”
Indy - Strawman. Patriarchy affects essentially every aspect of our culture. If you don’t accept that basic premise, then I don’t think we can really have a discussion here. It would be like trying to discuss chemical bonding with someone who “doesn’t “believe in” molecular orbital theory (yes, I know a guy like that - and he’s a tenured professor.) And as for what you could “replace porn” with… that’s for you to figure out.
Interesting comments, all around.
Question: What do you think of free homemade porn? For the sake of argument let’s assume one can consistently tell the difference between true homemade porn and industry porn designed to look homemade.
On the one hand, it apparently avoids most of the economic abuse, on the other hand there are still the issues of consent in a patriarchal society, and the fact that any woman making such porn is exposing herself to the male gaze.
Let’s investigate this a little closer, derrrp. I asked at comment 40 if the role of porn in influencing young minds had been established. In response, what the hell said
Responding to a simple question with “you are sick to defend blah” is moral panic. It is not disrespectful to point this out, when one is asking another question.
I also didn’t say “but buying apples exploits farm workers so what’s the point of opposing porn”. Rather, I argued that the flaws in a system of production of a product do not in and of themselves render the product itself invalid. It is not a false analogy, but an example of an argument.
If you would like a better example, consider American Football. Or, in America, sport more generally. No-one reasonable would argue that the achievements of the NFL and the basketball leagues are not based at least partly on exploiting the lack of opportunities available for black sportspeople. American sport has a huge talent pool available to it which is not subject to proper competitive pressure. This is not an argument against American Football, or sport generally. It simply means that sport reflects in the large problems inherent in American society. No-one seriously argues that American Football is a bad sport because it takes advantage of black people’s lack of opportunity. Rather, we argue it is a crap sport because it is a crap sport.
“No-one seriously argues that American Football is a bad sport because it takes advantage of black people’s lack of opportunity.”
I guess you’ve never met a radical feminist, then. Well, now you have. There is no adequate analogy to women’s oppression - it is the oldest and most widespread form of oppression in human history. At present, there is no culture on earth which is not patriarchal, and there’s no reason to think things were substantially different in the past.
As for your sports analogy: the very existence of football does not depend on the coerced “consent” of one class of people. Football can, and has been in the past, played solely by white men, and it was just as popular then as it is now.
Pornography’s success relies on a steady supply of women (the oppressed) willing to commodify themselves sexually, and a steady demand from men (the oppressors) who want to watch women commodify themselves sexually. In a patriarchy, the oppressed class is not on equal footing with the oppressor class when it comes to making decisions about their sexuality. In a patriarchy, the sex class are dehumanized, and this is blatantly apparent in degrading pornography. As women gain equality in the public sphere, pornography in the private sphere becomes more and more degrading - and more and more publicly acceptable. Why do you think that is?
derrp, allow me to repeat - it is not an analogy. I am not saying “porn is like American football”.
Your argument seems to be: industry A depends on a steady flow of oppressed group B to exist, therefore industry A must be evil.
This argument is logically inadequate. For example, industry A might be cotton, and oppressed group B slaves. But the cotton industry can be constructed without slavery. The current state of things does not make the industry itself evil, only its current state.
So your argument requires acceptance of the fact that the porn industry cannot be constructed in any other way. I don’t believe this is the case.
Also, I tried to say this before but my post disappared: the claim that most or all women who work in the porn industry are suffering a history of sexual abuse or oppression is dubious. I don’t know about porn stars directly, but these kinds of claims are also made about sex workers and they are based on very selective use of statistics. For example in Australia most sex workers are brothel-based sex workers, and extensive research with them has failed to turn up this finding. Brothel workers tend to be women who like the job for its flexible hours and decent pay, better than they can get in other industries given their skills. I suspect that this is true of pornography as well, although as it gets more extreme I suspect that this is changing. The absence of decent research with porn stars prevents us drawing conclusions about these womens’ histories, and so we shouldn’t suppose the worst just because it fits a theory.
Incidentally derrp, when this happened
did you mean to say that radical feminists think American Football is a bad sport because it takes advantage of black people’s lack of opportunity? Because this seems very strange. Regardless of who it does or doesn’t take advantage of, American Football is a bad sport. It has stupid rules, the players get constant breaks, the players wear too much body armour and look really really stupid, and it takes way too long to complete. This would be true even if it were the most progressively managed sport on the planet - it’s still a bad sport. This is why we shouldn’t judge an industry on the basis of how it is constructed at a point in time, but on its own merits.
(Or similarly; rugby is a good sport regardless of the fact that it is played by South Africans and rich public school prats).
APART from the sexual aspect, you just described capitalism.
Bugger.
Pornography’s success relies on a steady supply of women (the oppressed) willing to commodify themselves sexually, and a steady demand from men (the oppressors) who want to watch women commodify themselves sexually.
APART from the sexual aspect, you just described capitalism.
How about this? Sex without mutual pleasure of those involved is abuse of one form or other. When someone(men)use someoneelses body for plesure while they are not enjoying it this is abuse. It is also a part of a rapeculture which doesn’t consider mutual enjoyment necessry in order to label an act ’sex’.
People buying sex/masturbation with someoneelses body are abusers. Prostitution is about commodified abuse and so is porn.
I don’t object to homemade porn IF we can be certain that those in it are willing to share it with the world. Nor do I object to written, or painted porn except by literary criticism (wich, granted, I take quite seriusly).
In addition, the acts performed in porn are physically harmful for those involved and often very painful. That we train society to call this pleasure is just sick.
B, what if one person wants to define the mutual pleasure to be not sexual? For example, if you don’t get sexual pleasure from giving your partner an orgasm, but you get the personal pleasure of knowing he or she had one. Does that mean you have consented to being abused? And if not, does that mean “mutual pleasure” doesn’t have to be sexual? If not, can we extend the pleasure to be “receiving money”?
I think your framework is too limiting in the one case, and offers no help in the other.
I’ts fairly obvious. If someone performs a sexual act because of money or emotional blackmail it isn’t because they enjoy the act.
By your reasoning someone who is raped under duress or a threat goes along because they enjoy the pleasure of not being shot/knifed/having their kids beaten/abused/raped..
I don’t think my meaning was that difficult to understand - if the sex isn’t about mutual enjoyment it isn’t sex. It says something about people’s psyches that their partners non-enjoyment isn’t an automatic turnoff.
I don’t see why not all countries do as we’ve done here in Sweden and criminalize pimps and johns. You cannot sign away your right not to be harmed otherwise, if you want someone to kill you or sign a contract where your employer can disregard safety regulations et.c. the perpertrator will be condemned regardless, why is there such a clamour to claim it is ok in these cases?
well B, I think you ignored my question. What if I enjoy giving my sexual partner sexual pleasure without getting off on it sexually? This isn’t such an unusual scenario. Why should this necessarily be abuse? And if you allow the scenario where I get personal non-sexual pleasure from “helping out a mate”, why can’t it extend to monetary pleasure?
Why should the pleasure part of mutual pleasure be restricted only to sexual pleasure? Isn’t there some level at which we can trust individuals in a society free of coercion to decide what sort of pleasure they get from an activity to which they both mutually consent? It seems a very strict rule to insist that everyone who engages in sex is only doing so freely if the pleasure they both derive from it is sexual, and anything else is abuse. Granted the situation is different in a society where the choice cannot be (reasonably) freely made, but in an ideal society, surely people can choose to engage in sex for more reasons than just purely sexual pleasure?
If a person enjoys bringing someone else sexual pleasure, even if they aren’t getting sexually stimulated themselves, that’s still mutual pleasure.
If there is some other motive–getting money, or complying with some kind of coercion, then it isn’t mutual pleasure. In the latter case especially we are clearly talking about abuse and in the real world of sex work there are generally abusive threats backing up the positive reward of money (generally involving some third party taking most of the money too.)
The trouble is that many abusers will want their victim to pretend to “like it” somehow. For that matter genuine sexual response is no guarantee abuse is not going on too, either. Ultimately it comes down to someone’s say-so, whether they were actually abused or not–forced somehow into a sex act rather than choosing it freely for some positive reason of their own. We have certain rules that probably do exclude perfectly consensual acts from being regarded as such legally, no matter what anyone says, because in real life the vast majority of these cases do involve coercion and are abusive.
It’s interesting we’ve come to these gray areas in a thread that started out with porn that clearly emphasizes denying women pleasure and bringing them pain, humiliation, and being cheated instead. That’s well out of the gray zone. So wherever the boundaries are, a whole lot of the US sex trade is way over it into abuse, whether or not all such trade must always be considered abusive by its nature.
not true, I think - at least where I come from.
Skimming back through all your prior posts here, I can guess that where you come from is somewhere in Australia, but that’s just a guess.
I dunno, I’d like to believe that Australia and New Zealand are decent approximations of a consensual paradise; be nice to think so anyway. But of course this thread is talking mainly about the USA. And a lot of the dark side of the sex trade is even worse elsewhere–such as in Third World nations catering to First Worlder “sex tourism” and other related rackets like “mail-order brides.”
Are there no Australian sex tourists who visit Thailand, then?
Well, good on you if y’all have really made an enclave of human respect in your own corner then. But I live here, for good or ill.
And maybe I guessed wrong where you are from. Perhaps some parallel universe?
Much earlier, yesterday, you said
I think I am one of very few Pandagonians who would call themselves a “Marxist.” Real Marxists, at least those in this particular timeline, do not, of course, “criticise the fundamental concept of the ‘cafe’ or the ‘rubbish removal system’ or ‘plumbing’…” That’s one of the big advantages of Marx’s approach to political economy, as anyone who ever took a serious look at it would realize (but I gather few ever do take that look)–Capital isn’t about moralizing about what should be, it is about understanding how what does exist actually works. The moral judgements are left to the historical process itself–and hence, to the ongoing political debate.
Mark, you are right that I come from Australia and NZ. Where I come from, there isn’t a huge amount of coercion, not enough to qualify for “generally”. I suspect that it might be true in the US too, and that certain anti-porn/anti-sex work campaigners like to exaggerate the evils of sex work management and the victim status of the workers. They tend to focus on street-based sex workers (the crack whores of popular culture fame) rather than the functional brothel workers; and they exaggerate the role of drugs in supporting sex work, rather than sex work in supporting drug abuse. These kinds of throwaway ideas (like the ubiquitous “crack whore” of infamy) have worked their way into much mainstream discussion of sex work and pornography. They are, like most of the christian right’s ideas, an oversimplification and, at least where I come from, an outright lie.
Similarly sex tourism is exaggerated.
As for the Marxism thing, I am aware that marxists frequent cafes. I put that line in anticipating some snarky libertarian riposte. I also thought most readers would adjudge me a marxist from that paragraph, and aimed to soften the blow…
On the topic of porn affecting the way people have sex, does anyone actually know of a man who likes to come in women’s faces? I don’t talk about this much with other men, but I have never met a man who goes for this approach to climaxing, and yet it is ubiquitous in porn. This could be a good reality check for the theories of porn’s influence on human behaviour. Surely something so simple to do and ubiquitous in modern porn would get a fair amount of real application, if porn does affect our manners…?
The situation in Australia:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Trafficked-women-being-raped-starved/2005/07/06/1120329497809.html
Wow, I can’t believe this thread is still going! But since yesterday I’ve been thinking about something that was mentioned in an earlier comment: the idea of “virtual porn”, that as computer graphics technology and skill gets better and better, there may come a time where no real people are necessary to portray sexual acts. In that case, then we’re still dealing with the issue of consequences of viewing depictions of things, but no longer have the issue of people being harmed in making it. Is that “better”? But then I think that people could also make porn that is even MORE horrific if they don’t need actual people to do it (I honestly have a hard time imagining things more horrific than some of the stuff referred to here, but I’m sure some sick fuck could come up with something that could turn my stomach even more). Thoughts?
And on porn affecting people I found this when googling using the words ‘porn’ ‘affect’ ‘coming’ and ‘face’.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,1079016,00.html
Not so hard to find in other words. I’m sure those interested can find lots more.
Indeed, B, there is a problem of women being trafficked to Australia from Asia to be used as sex workers. The outline of the problem in that report is pretty much true, although the figures given in that Herald report are an exaggeration based on a dodgy extrapolation. There is a strong sex-worker union in Australia which attempts to work with these women; the organisation quoted in that report works from a different model to those unions, and is at times antagonistic to them.
Nonetheless, women in that sector of the sex work industry are a minority, and every sector of government is trying very hard to stamp it out. You might be surprised at the level of cooperation and concern in Australia where these things are concerned. It’s also worth noting that this is a sector of the industry which can exploit immigration laws, and behaves worse because of it. Hardly a problem unique to sex work. Again, it doesn’t reflect the broad thrust of Australian sex work laws, which are to regulate, license and tolerate; and because of these laws, many ordinary women are able to work in this area without fear of violence or coercion.
B, that didn’t answer my question. I was thinking of the particular sexual act because it involves no particular pleasure for the man and it is generally considered degrading. So one wouldn’t generally do it for any other reason. Your article suggests one guy who wanted to do threesomes and anal sex because he saw them in a movie, but this could be reasonably considered, I think, to have enticing new sexual experiences behind them. Coming in someone’s face doesn’t, the reasons for doing it are purely abuse. It’s a clear-cut example of pornography’s pernicious influence - but I’ve never heard of any real-life examples of someone doing it.
Well as I said - search for yourself. I’ve heard of it before so it shouldn’t be difficult to find.
“So your argument requires acceptance of the fact that the porn industry cannot be constructed in any other way.”
I don’t know what the porn industry would look like post-patriarchy. My argument is that IN A PATRIARCHY, the porn industry necessarily involves abuse of the oppressed class (as a commodity) by the oppressor class (the consumers), and therefore it is unethical to support it.
“… the claim that most or all women who work in the porn industry are suffering a history of sexual abuse or oppression is dubious.”
Try this collection of statistics - more research certainly needs to be done.
RE: football and radical feminism - look it up. It has to do with violence.
You keep going on about “let’s talk about the IDEAL society,” when what you really mean is “let’s talk about gender/sexuality issues without addressing patriarchy.” Can you REALLY not see why people have a problem with this approach??
And then in post #116, you claim to know that prostitutes “where you come from” aren’t threatened with abuse. As though there’s something magic about where you live that insulates women from male violence. Wrong! It’s universal.
flasheart, have you heard of Occam’s Razor?
I guess I don’t understand WHY anyone “needs” porn for arousal.
If you don’t want sex, don’t have sex and don’t make yourself want it with some artificial stimulus.
If you want sex, find a willing partner or masturbate; neither is particularly difficult. If you need something to help you masturbate, maybe you really don’t want sex all that much.
I’m 50, I don’t have any problems with arousal and I’ve never looked at porn. Why the heck would I need it? My imagination works quite well, thanks.
Yes flashheart, many men who watch porn like to cum on women’s faces, or other parts of the woman’s body. Many men who watch porn get ideas from what they see there, and then they want to try it out with a real live woman.
If you haven’t heard of any real-life examples, then you are looking in the wrong places. MANY many women have experienced being with a man who is clearly trying to act out some scene that he has viewed before. And it is repulsive and disgusting.
I see a lot of people in this thread doing a LOT of justifying their desire to see women degraded and hurt. Own it! If you like it, then fucking own it, don’t try to twist it around to make it seem like porn doesn’t degrade and hurt women. It does. If you want to change the way your body reacts to it, then change it. I did. It’s difficult, and you have to confront a lot of stuff about yourself and about the world we live in. But, it frees you up to experience real desire, not something packaged for you by a bunch of rapists.
Gotta agree with B here, sex isn’t something you do because you are paid to. Sex is something you do because you want to. Anything else just isn’t sex. Porn is not sex. Those women who “seem to be enjoying it” are ACTORS! They are PAID to seem like they enjoy it. Get it? Seriously, how stupid do you have to be to not realize that they are ACTING??!!! God, read Jenna Jameson’s book at least, before you start talking about how much women love being in porn.
Flashheart is seriously creeping me out. I guess you use a lot of prostitutes, huh? You seem to know all about their histories. You are in DENIAL buddy. You so badly want to continue oppressing women, that you will say anything in order to keep those blinders on. You have a lot of learning to do.
I’m really surprised to see so many people here talking about porn as if it’s no big deal. I’m also really sad to see women who don’t know how to “stop men from using it.” If all the men around you use porn, well that is just sad.
Amanda, not to be snarky, but you stated that it’s hard to believe so many men out there actually get off on seeing women being hurt. Why is this hard to believe? It’s clear to me every single day, that there are plenty of men out there who want to hurt women. Who like it, who get off on it.
So why is it so hard for you to believe? I am sorry that you feel like if you face up to these truths, you will get flack from the pro-porn crowd. But, it’s true. I’ve been called a prude, anti-sex, a man-hater, etc, because of my views on porn. And yeah, it’s hard to stand up for my beliefs when so many people disagree. So yeah, you will get flack, but that’s because those people are in denial, just like you were.
You say anti-porn people are dishonest because they say “just fucking” is degrading. But what you see as “just fucking” I may see differently. Does that mean I’m being dishonest? No, it means that I have a different opinion than you. It means I see degrading things and you don’t. Doesn’t mean that you are right and I am wrong. Doesn’t mean that I’m being “dishonest.” Just because YOU don’t see misogyny, doesn’t mean it’s not there. You admit that you have blinders on about this topic, so maybe you need to start analyzing these images of “just fucking” a bit more.
Flashheart (#118) - Well, I have met women who think it’s fun - either to be done to, or, depending on physiology, to do. Wasn’t totally clear whether the fun was based on some inherent fun-ness, or because it seemed dirty/porny. But it’s pretty hard to define inherent fun-ness anyway, except for certain physical sensations that just about everyone agrees on.
Amanda: Have you ever considered having some general posting rules here where people agree not to actually insult each other or impute vile motives to each other? (Like they do on, say, Obsidian Wings.) I’m all for very strong disagreement & questioning of our own basic societal crap… but when it starts to turn into “of course you say that because you’re a ______ who really wants to ______”, it just gets sad & ugly. There has been a bit of that here.
I’ts fairly obvious. If someone performs a sexual act because of money or emotional blackmail it isn’t because they enjoy the act.
B, my very first job was cleaning shit off the floors of the toilets in a holiday camp. Literally. I did not enjoy it.
Now, sex without intimacy can be soul destroying - I don’t think I could do it (at least not for very long), and there’s certainly a lot of exploitation in the way sex work is done today, but I hesitate to label prostitution as abuse per se, at least in relation to the rest of the working world at the shitty end of the labour market.
And there’s a very strong argument for making prostituion legal and regulating it to minimise the exploitation involved.
And, no, NZ is not a consensual paradise.
flashheart - i have been with a guy once who was into that. uck. (i never let him do it to me.)
speaking for myself, i don’t feel i NEED it, but sometimes i WANT it. i’ll be horny, but can’t quite get myself off. i’ll want some stimulus. i’ll read erotica, or watch porn.
my imagination is good, but i still read books, and watch movies. i like to do the same thing when i’m horny, but with sexual stories and movies.
do i NEED movies and books? i don’t know. but i LIKE them. and i like erotica and porn as well.
any evidence for this?
i’ve had casual sex and enjoyed it and didn’t feel my “soul” was being destroyed, although i guess i’m not sure how i’d know if it was….
Phoenician
Except that the study the EU made on the results of different member countries laws on prostitution showed that Sweden, where being a john or a pimp is illegal, had had greater success in fighting trafficking and keeping men from (ab)using prostitutes.
any evidence for this?
None whatsoever. Add a big fat YMMV to these comments if it is not there already.
I’m 50, I don’t have any problems with arousal and I’ve never looked at porn. Why the heck would I need it? My imagination works quite well, thanks.
Are you a hunter-gatherer, living off the grid? Because most people over 25 or so run around perpetually preoccupied. While they might think of sex while working, they’re equally likely to think of work while sexing. Something to put one in the mood, to drive out the thoughts of I need to finish this report, when can I take the dog to the vet, Susie needs toe shoes, crap my check engine light just came on, etc. is often necessary.
Beth:
This very question came up here on Pandagon some time ago, and I myself wondered the same thing you have here. A commenter suggested that drawn/written pornography might be more acceptable or less exploitative because such porn didn’t involve actual human beings and therefore didn’t harm anyone in its production.
Thing is, drawn porn can (and does) depict some very nasty stuff, so I’m not sure if we can say that it’s less harmful. If I’m seeing a video of two people having sex, and by all indications (visual and aural), the partners are enjoying themselves and want to be doing what they’re doing, is that worse than a cartoon in which someone’s being raped? My first instinct is to say that it is not, because of the acts being portrayed. But there could be other layers to this that I haven’t considered
ME:
I’m 50, I don’t have any problems with arousal and I’ve never looked at porn. Why the heck would I need it? My imagination works quite well, thanks.
Hector B:
Are you a hunter-gatherer, living off the grid? Because most people over 25 or so run around perpetually preoccupied. While they might think of sex while working, they’re equally likely to think of work while sexing. Something to put one in the mood, to drive out the thoughts of I need to finish this report, when can I take the dog to the vet, Susie needs toe shoes, crap my check engine light just came on, etc. is often necessary.
ME:
Nope, single mom with 2 jobs. You think YOU are preoccupied? Try my life, I’ve been doing this for the past 10 years. And I can still get in the mood very easily, just by imagining what I would like to do with a partner. If you need something to put you in the mood, maybe your sex drive just isn’t all that strong. Why force it? You’ll just be more stressed and the sex won’t be fun. That’s what I don’t understand.
ME:
I’m 50, I don’t have any problems with arousal and I’ve never looked at porn. Why the heck would I need it? My imagination works quite well, thanks.
Hector B:
Are you a hunter-gatherer, living off the grid? Because most people over 25 or so run around perpetually preoccupied. While they might think of sex while working, they’re equally likely to think of work while sexing. Something to put one in the mood, to drive out the thoughts of I need to finish this report, when can I take the dog to the vet, Susie needs toe shoes, crap my check engine light just came on, etc. is often necessary.
ME:
Nope, single mom with 2 jobs. You think YOU are preoccupied? Try my life, I’ve been doing this for the past 10 years. And I can still get in the mood very easily, just by imagining what I would like to do with a partner. If you need something to put you in the mood, maybe your sex drive just isn’t all that strong. Why force it? You’ll just be more stressed and the sex won’t be fun. That’s what I don’t understand.
My comment @102 may have been hyperbolic, but since as derrp says, the patriarchy surrounds and subsumes us all, it certiantly isn’t a strawman.
You’ll just be more stressed and the sex won’t be fun. That’s what I don’t understand.
You really don’t, so why don’t you try shutting it? It’s great for you if you don’t need or want porn to get aroused. Other people do, because they are, oddly enough, not you. Since you have no idea how stressed they feel or how much fun they’re having while fucking, you might want to keep your eyes on your own paper.
That said, I’m definitely not defending people who need woman-hating porn to get off. They can go, um, fuck themselves.
buggle at 130, you may be creeped out by my knowledge and experience of sex workers, but I’m afraid you’re looking the wrong direction. I have 8 years’ experience doing research with sex workers and injecting drug users in Sydney. I have met a lot of sex workers from a lot of different sectors of the industry, worked on studies of most sectors of the industry, and worked alongside women from the sex worker unions and injecting drug user representative organisations in Australia. This has certainly given me an insight into how normal some of these women can be. Given how rapidly the industry can change and the fact that I am not connected to it now, this does not constitute an argument from authority, but I certainly hope it constitutes a defence against the claim that I use a lot of prostitutes and am in denial. Although of course, having worked alongside these women, seen the way they view their own work and their clients, I am not particularly inclined to view visiting sex workers as a habit which demands defending (except perhaps against being a sad bastard).
derrp at 126, yes I keep talking about porn in the ideal society. But here is the question Amanda originally tossed out there:
I took that to mean I could talk about an ideal society, not as you put it, that I could “talk about gender/sexuality issues without addressing patriarchy”.
A. H. Fish — you are one woman in approximately 10^7.
And how can I explain that getting in the mood is not a question of forcing? When I’m tired and want to relax, I’ll have to put my feet up, but I’m not forcing myself to relax. When I want to get in the mood for Christmas, I’ll go in the woods and cut down a tree. My Christmas drive is just as strong as it ever was; it’s just a question of shifting focus from the day-to-day. It takes me three days of vacation to feel that I’m on vacation. Etc.
I just posted a long response to buggle at 130 but it seems to have got lost. This is a disappointment. In case it is in moderation, here is a shortened version:
Buggle, I don’t use sex workers, I have 8 years’ experience researching sex work and drug use. I have worked alongside members of the Australian sex worker union, and have known a lot of sex workers.
So, no need to be creeped out. Or to think I am in denial. Quite the opposite, I like to hope.
Flashheart, the fact that you call anti-porn people “anti-sex” just proves you have a long way to go to understand this issue. Porn is NOT SEX. Being anti-porn does not make a person anti-sex. Porn and sex are two completely different things. Get it?
That’s great that you have done all this work with sex workers, but I don’t see how you could have done all this work and not see any coercion? And to say that sex tourism is exaggerated? You see what you want to see, to justify the things you want to do.
I find the defensiveness of people who enjoy porn to be really interesting. Sure, you want it, you like it, whatever, fine. But what about the people who you are looking at? Do they want to be there? Do they like what’s happening to them? You don’t know! You don’t know if you are watching a rape happen, and are getting off to it. You don’t know if you are watching an addicted mother of 3 get fucked for the 37th time that day, just so she can put food on the table. You don’t know if you are watching a 16 year old girl who thought she was going to be doing a “photo shoot” and ended up getting gang-banged.
So yeah, what the fuck is hot about that? I get it, you like to see naked people that you find attractive. Seeing other people having sex makes you think about having sex. Fine. The point is not about what YOU like, the point is about WHO ARE THESE WOMEN? And why don’t you care about them? Sure, maybe some of them truly love what they do, and that’s great for them. Hopefully they are healthy and happy and safe. I’m not really concerned about these women. I’m concerned about the rest of them. I”m concerned about the ones who are forced to be there. The ones who have been so abused that they think their only worth is sexual. The ones who are too young and naive to know how much this will hurt them.
But really, who cares about them, as long as you get off, right?
Yes it’s amazing that asking for the enjoyment of all involved makes you anti-sex.
As for Linnéus’ question - watching porn you contribute in harming those you watch while desensitising your empathy, wathing anime rape you harm and desensitise yourself. I always find that harming others are more morally reprehensible than harming oneself, murder a worse crime than suicide and so on.
Junk Science, why don’t you try some meditation? It’s no wonder you can’t get off when you’re this angry.
buggle, I don’t think I ever anywhere said being anti-porn is the same as being anti-sex, at least not as far as I can see going back in this post.
Also, you seem to be misinterpreting things I write. For example,
I never said I didn’t see any coercion, just that the extent of it is exaggerated. For example, in comment 116, I responded to claims that sex work is “generally” associated with threats of violence to say that in Australia this isn’t true. To deny “generally” is not equivalent to admitting “none”. In fact in comment 123 I said (in respect to a report about Asian sex workers in Australia being beaten, starved and raped) “The outline of the problem in that report is pretty much true”. How does that fit your claim that I do “not see any coercion”?
I don’t think I “see what I want to see” in this topic, but I certainly think you are seeing what you want to see in my replies. Perhaps in that vein you will interpret this response as defensiveness… which would be unsurprising, wouldn’t it, given your somewhat inaccurate summary of my character and lifestyle in comment 130?
I am not an uncritical defender of porn. I am also not an uncritical observer of the opinions of anti-porn feminists, who I think have allowed a particular form of American puritanism to sway their view of sex work and pornography. Sex workers are not all helpless victims in need of rescuing; just because a critical feminist observer doesn’t think they could do sex work, does not mean every sex worker must have been forced by society into accepting their role as the puritans’ ideal slut. In order to defend these puritanical views of women, anti-porn crusaders need to fudge the books, and I don’t think it helps us to develop a reasonable view either of human sexuality, women, or the industries in question when they do that. (And by puritanical I do not mean anti-sex; I mean viewing women as natural gatekeepers of a particular mystical sexuality which can only be expressed healthily in a loving relationship).
Flashheart
When talking about coercion, profit going to pimps and bordelloowners et.c. you said that such didn’t happen where you were from.
When I later posted a link describing trafficking in Australia, the first I found I might add as there seems to be quite a lot out there, you claimed that this was an abberaition. Despite that all research on the matter shows how difficult it is for johns and others to know who isprostituted due to coercion and who isn’t - which you ought to know if you actually work with prostitutes as you claim to do. Later on you say that you’ve never heard about men wanting to come on someones face in real life - again despite working with prostitutes and claiming to know how well off they are in Australia.
Further you claim that anti-porn feminist are american puritans. I don’t know where your weird idea of us come from as the majority of anti-porn feminists I know certainly are neither puritan nor American. I myself is Swedish and agnostic and certainly approve of sex for the sake of sex (even ONS)- which doesn’t exclude intimacy or mutual enjoyment.
To me it is the pro-porn people who are anti-sex. Since sex is about enjoyment all these acts where people are not enjoying themselves are anything but sex and to propagate this abuse instead of pleasure is as far from sex-positive you can come.
Flashheart, I did read that part of your post wrong, in #18. I see now that you were not equating anti-porn with anti-sex.
However, in your last post, you are saying that anti-porn activists are being swayed by puritanical beliefes. So, ya basically just said that if you are against porn, you think sex is bad. And that is just not true. Or that we have some mystical idea about women’s sexuality. Not true.
Who is fudging the books? And why are you the authority who gets to decide when the word “generally” can be used? Have you interviewed every single sex worker in the world? Nope you haven’t. Sure, there are plenty who like it, and don’t need to be “rescued.” There are also plenty who think they like it. There are also many many that would do anything to get out of that life. And can’t, for whatever reason.
I’m creeped out by anyone who uses or defends porn, so no need to take it personally.
I just think you are doing a lot of arguing and defending of porn. And I wonder why-what is in it for you? What do you hope to accomplish? Do you consume porn yourself? Have you ever been a sex worker? Are you female?
Eh, this is why I don’t spend much time here with the pro-porn crowd. Heart at womens space at the margins just did an amazing post about porn. Check it out, you might learn something. I’m done wasting my time with a porn apologist.
B- good stuff. You get it. Porn isn’t sex. Porn is not about sex. It is about dominating and subjugating women for men’s pleasure. That’s called abuse. Not sex.
And word B., how much work has this flashheart done if he’s never even heard of men wanting to cum on women’s faces. That’s like, so typical in porn. He just seems really out of touch. And the whole point IS that it is degrading.
Thanks buggle and B. Sometimes I become unsure about a few of the comments by pro porn males. It’s almost as though they get off on women’s discomfort and history with porn. As far as not having heard of men wanting to ejaculate on women’s faces in real life - well sorry but I find that difficult to believe. That’s unless of course he wanted a *conversation* about it. As it happens I’ve experienced requests for sploogy on the face many a time and all by porn obsessed morons.
Thanks buggle and B. Sometimes I become unsure about a few of the comments by pro porn males. It’s almost as though they get off on women’s discomfort and history with porn. As far as not having heard of men wanting to ejaculate on women’s faces in real life - well sorry but I find that difficult to believe. That’s unless of course he wanted a *conversation* about it. As it happens I’ve experienced requests for sploogy on the face many a time and all by porn obsessed morons.
“I am also not an uncritical observer of the opinions of anti-porn feminists, who I think have allowed a particular form of American puritanism to sway their view of sex work and pornography. Sex workers are not all helpless victims in need of rescuing; just because a critical feminist observer doesn’t think they could do sex work, does not mean every sex worker must have been forced by society into accepting their role as the puritans’ ideal slut.”
Nice basket of red herring you’re slinging around here, flasheart. No one claims that all women involved in the sex trade are “helpless victims in need of rescuing.” No one claims that every sex “worker” was “forced by society.” Guess what? There’s a continuum that runs between coercion and force, and in a patriarchy, the oppressed class experiences coercive forces that you, as a man, will NEVER experience. SOME women in the sex trade ARE victims in need of rescuing, and as a porn consumer, YOU can’t distinguish between them and the “willing participants.” You’re right that the “slut” is a role women are forced into, though - what you don’t seem to fully understand is that it is the patriarchy which defines the role, and does the forcing. Feminists don’t use the word “slut” to describe any woman… that would be misogynist a**holes and porn “stars” you’re thinking of.
“As far as not having heard of men wanting to ejaculate on women’s faces in real life - well sorry but I find that difficult to believe. That’s unless of course he wanted a *conversation* about it.” - AnnaR
Well, flasheart, it looks like the other posters here aren’t swallowing your bullsh*t either. You work with “sex workers” and yet you’ve never heard about this phenomenon? I’d like to hear you address this.
“Sometimes I become unsure about a few of the comments by pro porn males. It’s almost as though they get off on women’s discomfort and history with porn.”
AnnaR, that’s exactly what’s happening. It’s a conscious “getting off” for most men - they openly admit, to themselves and others, that they don’t respect women as equals.
For the pro-porn males who self-identify as feminists, it’s a slightly different situation. They still don’t respect women as equals (patriarchy will do that to you) but they know that it’s wrong to feel that way. Instead of admitting it and working to change it - as do “radical” male pro-feminists - the pro-porn males deny it and do their damndest to convince themselves and everyone else that it’s not true. They so desperately want to keep their porn and still consider themselves empathetic, “feminist” human beings.
But their words and behavior bely the woman-hating that goes on beneath. Why else would a man feel that it’s an acceptable risk, that the women he’s jerking off to may well have been coerced/forced into prostitution/porn?
Well, flasheart has an answer for that: he denies the very REALITY that women are coerced and forced! He doesn’t want to think about the patriarchy! He just wants to have his porn and still be a feminist! Is that so much to ask?
Yes, flasheart, it is too much to ask.
There again seems to be some confusion about the meaning of some of my comments here, so I will try and clear it up again. B in 154, I did not say that coercion “didn’t happen” in Australia, I said it wasn’t “generally” applied. This is not a subtle difference. It means it “sometimes” or “occasionally” happens, as in the case of human trafficking, which I said was exaggerated, not “an aberration”.
The reason coercion doesn’t “generally” happen in Australia is that in general Australian sex workers are brothel-based sex workers, and brothels in Australia are licensed by the council and regularly inspected by council officials and sex worker union representatives. Brothel owners involved in violence or trafficking face loss of their business and imprisonment for a very long time, and there have been high-profile cases of this recently. The laws have teeth and are enforced. New brothels even have to get planning permission, so local residents get to oppose their creation and they always have conditions attached to their license.
The coercion does often happen amongst, for example, street-based sex workers and some migrant workers, but not all. Many migrant sex workers work in legitimate brothels with proper rights and working conditions, for example. The remainder are usually illegal immigrants, and there have been big advances in our understanding of, and ability to catch, these trafficking rackets. It’s also worth noting that a lot of these women were sex workers in their own country, knew the conditions they would be working under, and came here voluntarily, accepting the conditions of the contract (onerous though they are) and the risks of illegal immigration status, in order to earn dollars. There is no doubt that the people running these rackets are unsavoury individuals, but this doesn’t change the facts about the women and their motivations.
In raising this I have simply been trying to make the point that not everything one hears about sex work from feminists is necessarily correct, and even if it is, the American or Swedish experience does not reflect a universal situation. A lot of anti-sex work and anti-porn feminist material has a theory of coercion developed in the US that is not necessarily a universal statement about conditions under patriarchy, let alone in an ideal world. It is worth bearing this in mind when assuming that every man or woman who visits a sex worker is necessarily abusing an exploited man or woman.
As for the “sploogy test”, I really thought I explained the logic of this clearly when I mentioned it, and it really was a throwaway comment. I did not say I had “never heard of a man who does this” or that it didn’t happen in porn:
I was suggesting that the existence of such real men would stand as good anecdotal evidence that porn has pernicious effects on the sex lives of some men. I don’t know how saying I have never met such a man reflects on my experience of working with sex workers, my knowledge of porn, or anything else, but comments from 156 on seem very certain that this is the lesson we can glean from this. Perhaps my original comment was not read? Anyway, my question has been answered, and I am shocked at the results of my little straw poll.
In case anyone is still reading this thread, I will embellish on my comments on puritanism separately. I will finish this (excessively long) comment by mentioning Sweden. I don’t know much about the Swedish approach to sex work but I suspect its history is connected with Sweden’s rejection of the general principles of harm minimisation. Sweden has an extremely strict approach to drug use which is controversial in the rest of Europe and the antipodes. There is much debate as to whether or not it is working, and I would imagine that the same debate applies to sex work. If the sex work laws are working to discourage sex work, I would imagine there are two main reasons for this - sex work is very well hidden (and consequently more dangerous for the women doing it) and the Netherlands are a weekend sex tour away.
I should add that my other motive in making my claims about Australia is not to defend my (completely imagined, I can assure you) use of sex workers, but to defend a system of thinking - harm minimisation - which has worked very well to keep the poorest and least educated members of Australian society protected from many of the problems (hepatitis C, HIV, chlamydia and syphilis) which are still very serious in the US.
And finally, though undoubtedly no-one cares to read them, my follow-up comments on puritanism.
The feminist position I have been loosely describing as anti-porn and anti-sex work (which is a ludicrous oversimplification obviously) has to be at its heart based on the idea that when women enter these industries, as derrp put it, “There’s a continuum that runs between coercion and force”. i.e. there is no free will, which is obviously excluded from such a continuum. Putting aside trivial notions of coercion such as “I need to work to live” (a coercion common to all forms of work, not just sex work), this continuum obviously has to work through other types of social and cultural pressure. Such a continuum explicitly ignores the possibility that a woman might think “well, I don’t mind having sex with people I don’t know for money, even if I don’t like them, and the money is good, so…” or, worse still, assumes that any such opinion could not have occurred “naturally”, as it were, but must have been inculcated by a system of social coercion.
At its heart, this view is founded on the idea that no woman would want to do that, and it is on such ideas that many political philosophies have floundered. This view has to rule out a whole set of motivations for the actions of a person other than the propounder of the view. This is why so many women snort derisively at Andrea Dworkin, because she has explicitly ruled out the possibility that they could want to do that of their own free will, when they clearly have.
So at its heart, the theory that all sex work is coercion is based on a model of human sexuality which specifically excludes certain motivations and purposes as impossible. Particularly, the idea that anyone would be fully, explicitly willing to have sex for any reason except their own immediate sexual gratification and/or a deep emotional bond. And usually immediate sexual gratification as sole justification is viewed askance, as a woman having been tricked by her peers or the patriarchy into thinking she is getting what she wants when really she is being used.
This theory has to exclude a whole range of possible real motivations for the behaviour of groupies, sex workers, strippers, porn stars, and now even simple ordinary girls who want to do silly things at drinking binges. And any theory which rules out a set of freely formed motivations for sexual behaviour on the basis that “no woman could possibly choose to do that“, i.e. any theory which privileges certain motives as pure and certain motives as corrupted or affected by outside forces, must in some sense be puritanical.
The peril of this view, of course, and part of the reason I really like Amanda Marcotte’s writing, is that the opposite view is so simple and empowering. The opposite view allows one to consider coercion, conditioning and patriarchal power as affecting people’s decisions - but it also allows one to say “well, I don’t understand it but maybe she really did want to do it”. And it forces one to try and consider people as they really are, people, rather than perfect point objects in a theory of the universe.
(It also doesn’t rely on exaggerated evidence and evidence based on only one country’s circumstances to back up its conclusions).
one of my posts is in moderation I think, so 162 will probably occur before the post that was meant to precede it.
Further to that little rant, here is some information from Australian sex workers about trafficking:
http://www.bayswan.org/Austraf.html
You’re creating a strawman here. On side, the “radical” pro-feminists who reject porn altogether and speak out about its wrongness, on the other, you’ve got the pro-porn men whose feminism gets scare quotes and, rather than legitimately disagreeing, know you’re right but are just in denial. There’s no room, apparently, to be critical of porn without taking a hard-line prohibitionist (moral, if not legal) stance.
Personally, it is an issue for me, and it’s something that’s altered my behavior. These days, I try to minimize that risk by sticking to material that’s made/controlled by the people depicted, and distributed in ways that are more “communal” than “producer/consumer,” and usually non-commercial - “open source” porn, if you will.
libidojournal, where did I advocate prohibition? As for you “minimizing the risk” - what do you want, a f*cking medal?
Hence the “moral, if not legal.” Your position appears to be an all-or-nothing one - either you’re one of the “good guys” who’s totally against all pornography, or you’re a moral defective.
And no, I don’t want a medal. I’m just trying to point out an example of a middle ground, and maybe argue that people who choose to look at porn don’t have to abandon all ethical considerations.
Good stuff derrp. It doesn’t really seem that complicated to me. People who don’t get it, don’t want to get it. They want to keep using porn. Lots of these people want a cookie for not watching the “hard” stuff.
Personally, I don’t want my sexuality to be all wrapped up with a big industry of objectification and degradation, but that’s just me.
I’m sure it helps you sleep better at night, to know that YOUR porn isn’t quite as bad as the rest of it. But is it really worth it?
buggle, it makes me physically ill to know that there are men who, with full knowledge of the porn/sex industry, consider it acceptable to continue participating in it as long as THEIR porn isn’t the worst of the lot. It’s such a cop-out, to knowingly take advantage of their privilege in this way. And it speaks volumes about their value system. They consider their desire to get off to images of faceless women SO IMPORTANT that they are willing to accept the risks we’ve talked about here. And yet they’ll call themselves “feminists.” What a perversion of the word. It’s insulting and sickening.
Am I to assume by the little convocation of insults from 167 on that derrp and buggle have given up reasonable discussion, and now intend to engage only in condemnation? If so I am disappointed - at comment 165 I made an effort to show that I have been representing the opinions of Australian sex worker unions, and I would be disappointed to think that their views were being ignored in favour of blanket condemnation.
Flashheart: I don’t know if others are still reading the thread but I am, and I appreciate your thoughtful writing. That’s not a comment on your point of view exactly, although I find more to agree with than not… and I don’t know anything about life in Australia… but you’ve provided a lot of non-repetitive food for thought and been polite about it, and you get a medal for that.
Amanda: I don’t know if you’re still reading either, but I just want to repeat my comment from #133 about moderating. Totally apart from the subject matter (although porn seems to start most of the really nasty flamewars) I would really love it if posters were at least strongly discouraged from turning threads toward a venomous discourse on what the other posters’ real motives are, and why they are eeeevil. Posts like #130 and #171 (assuming 171 is referring to the people derrp was arguing with) are where I would draw the line, but that’s just me.
Thank you Hob. Australia, England and NZ (all three countries of which I am a citizen) are social democracies with, I think, very different attitudes towards some of the social problems the West is facing, and I think everyone could benefit from taking the time to consider how we have tried to solve some of those problems. We are certainly quick to consider the opinions of Americans on many topics, but it seems that when it comes to serious problems that America faces - on health care and drug use, for example - many Americans feel they need to reinvent the wheel rather than looking to systems which, though they may be flawed, do work quite well. There are worse ways of approaching a problem than to ask oneself “what does the rest of the world think?” (But as a Quaker I am sure you know that…)
Wow, flashheart gets a medal for being polite? I found him to be incredibly offensive and ignorant.
As for him “speaking for” sex workers, that is absolutely inappropriate. He can not speak FOR sex workers.
Yes FH, I gave up on “reasonable discussion” with you. Mostly because I think you are being completely defensive and unreasonable.
I’m not condemning sex workers, I’m condemning consumers who try to justify using women’s bodies to get off.
There are two kinds of insults going on in this discussion: stated and implied. Now, whether or not the implying is being done consciously… that’s harder to discern. I prefer to believe that they are the result of ignorance, as opposed to malice.
As for my own posts, I do not believe I was out of line, as they were a response to the implication that mens’ orgasms are more important than women’s rights/lives. Obviously, this is a statement that the porn-defenders here will disagree with - but it is a statement I stand by.
buggle, of course the men defending their porn will support each other. It’s in their interest. Which is why I am so disgusted by it - the implication is that THEIR interests (porn) supercede the interests of the women who they’re getting off to.
flasheart, do you remember that movie, The Dark Crystal? Remember the part where the two gelflings are “dreamfasting”? I wish you and I could do that.
I wish that we could lay out all of our experiences, thoughts and feelings before us and then have this discussion in that context. I like to think that if men could somehow experience what it is like to live life as a member of the sex class, with all that entails, that this issue would be instantly and completely resolved. If all the harm suffered by victims of the sex trade were to be felt by those who inflict/perpetuate it, consciously or not - and I mean truly felt, as though it were themselves feeling the pain - I cannot imagine how it could continue.
If I may, I’d like to join the discussion…
I’m a bisexual polyamorous male. When I’m horny and my gf and bf are either not around or not in the mood, I quite often look at porn. So do they, in the same situations.
I look at straight porn, lesbian porn, gay porn, orgy porn, bondage porn of all orientations. In some of them men cum on women’s faces, in some of them men cum on men’s faces, in some of them women squirt on men’s faces, in some of them women squirt on women’s faces, in some of them none of that happens at all. In some of them men are in control, in some of them women are in control, in some of them no one is obviously in control. Some of it is rough, others soft and “erotic.” Some of the stars of both sexes are obviously enjoying it, some are obviously bored out of their minds, some no doubt don’t wish to be there.
I don’t doubt that some of the actresses there were once abused. I’m sure some of the actors were, as well. And I’m sure some of them there do it because they actually enjoy it.
I don’t consider myself part of the “patriarchy,” though I’m sure you’ll say that as a man I’m part of it whether I want to be or not. *shrugs* No doubt the same applies to my boyfriend. Though I have trouble seeing how this applies to my girfriend, who’s also bisexual, and who often gets off from the exact same material.
I’m not really sure what this long, rambling post was supposed to convey, except perhaps that because part of an industry is tainted, doesn’t mean the whole thing is. I don’t stop eating all chicken just because KFC is inhumane.
Well derrp (176), I guess that is one way to approach an argument. You get to decide when someone has aimed an “implied insult” at you; and then you can safely dismiss anything they’re saying as coming from either ignorance or malice, since clearly it must be ignorance or malice; someone who was neither ignorant nor malicious would certainly be agreeing with you. And if you believe that what they said “implies” an unethical point of view - because, of course, if they didn’t really have that evil motivation, then they would be agreeing with you - then you might as well just keep insulting them until they see the light. As long as you’re on the side of the angels, nothing you say can be unjustified, right? Conversely, nothing the Bad People say can be free of evil intent - especially if they express any support of each other, which is just further proof that they have something to be defensive about.
Or, you might consider that people like Flashheart aren’t actually saying abuse of women is OK. That “implication” is in your mind, because you believe any acceptance of porn inevitably causes abuse of women. But Flashheart doesn’t think that is true. You’re not working from the same premise. But instead of arguing about that, you’ve just decided to behave as if he secretly knows you’re right but has decided to be evil instead. It’s exactly the same approach as the kind of anti-abortion absolutists who insist that you really want to kill babies, because they can’t imagine that you don’t believe a 3-month fetus is a baby. Or if you tell me that if I kiss a boy I’ll go to hell and so will he, and when I say I don’t believe God works that way, you say “How can you take that chance? You think your sinful desires are more important than the fires of hell?” Or, “You only persist in drinking your glass of wine because you can’t feel the pain of children who are victimized by alcoholic parents.” Being passionate is not enough, you have to understand that other people can see cause and effect in the world differently from you and not because they are evil or crazy. Ironically that’s what Buggle seemed to be trying to say in #131, though he/she seems unable to apply it to others. I don’t often comment on this blog; I spoke up here not because I think this is the most important argument in the world, but because some of the other commenters were having a real and diverse discussion - I’m not just talking about Flashheart or people who agree with him - and you’ve turned it into just another Internet flamewar.
At least you do seem to have a genuine and deeply felt positive concern for people. Buggle seems to have come here just to find someone to hate. And if that seems like an unjustified imputation of motive, well yeah - not very nice, is it?
Hobs: “… you believe any acceptance of porn inevitably causes abuse of women.”
In a patriarchy, yes. This is not some kind of trivial caveat - we cannot talk about porn apart from the patriarchy. It was borne from patriarchy, it grew in patriarchy, and it’s still thriving… IN PATRIARCHY.
“At least you do seem to have a genuine and deeply felt positive concern for people. Buggle seems to have come here just to find someone to hate. And if that seems like an unjustified imputation of motive, well yeah - not very nice, is it?”
Ah, yes, the old “divide and conquer.”
Concern for people - which, needless to say, includes WOMEN (also known as “members of the sex class” in a patriarchy - is exactly what buggle and I have been trying to focus on in this thread. And it’s why we are both so upset to see it being pushed aside in the interest of mens’ sexual tittilation.
Oops, missed a parenthesis there:
Concern for people - which, needless to say, includes WOMEN (also known as “members of the sex class” in a patriarchy) - is exactly what buggle and I have been trying to focus on in this thread. And it’s why we are both so upset to see it being pushed aside in the interest of mens’ sexual tittilation.
Buggle at 175, I have been patient and polite, and I think even if I had been “defensive and unreasonable” it would be warranted in light of your initial response to my points, at 130.
derrp at 177, I do remember that part of the movie but I think you are being disingenuous in invoking such a need on my part. You and buggle both seem to claim to know the feelings and experiences of all sex workers, and take great exception to my disputing the factual basis of your claims. So it seems that it might help you to “dreamfast” with them. But this is the problem with “dreamfasting” or its non-magical equivalent, anecdotal evidence, isn’t it? Because you can always choose your anecdote.
In fact at this post (177) you have continued to do just that, claiming that if I could feel the pain felt “by all sex workers” I would have a different view. But I have presented a view (ignored by you and buggle) that not all sex workers feel pain. I don’t see that anyone should engage with your conclusion (all porn and sex work is bad) when you have failed to defend your premise (all porn and sex work involves suffering). On a tactical or practical level a claim like “some porn and sex work involves suffering, so none can be trusted to be safe” might be more reasonable, but this doesn’t seem to be at the centre of your position.
So I ask you to engage properly with the claim that all sex work involves suffering by looking at the experience of sex workers outside the US - for example visit the website linked to at 165, or read the work of Roberta Perkins. You could, for example, post a comment here disputing aspects of the work of those people. You say at 175 that no-one can speak FOR sex workers, but then you and buggle seem to have assigned yourselves that right. If you wish to speak on behalf of sex workers, you should understand the experience and opinions of more than just a victimised subset in one country.
Also, at 180 you say the patriarchy is not “some trivial caveat”. But Amanda’s original post discussed the possibility of pornography “in a feminist world”. I take that to be a request that we explicitly consider the “trivial caveat” to be missing - we merely need to establish if it is possible “in a feminist world”. And obviously a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for the existence of porn or sex work “in a feminist world” would be that it is possible to engage in such work freely, without feeling coercion or pain.
I think we may be approaching this post from different interpretations of its purpose, but regardless of whether the purpose can be disputed, I don’t think that buggle or derrp (or, I suspect, B) are willing to properly consider information which contradicts their established view of sex work and pornography. Or they aren’t reading my comments properly. But either way, I think there is more to the story than they currently realise, and I would like them to read about that. I have posted a sex worker view - please, if you respect these women’s autonomy, read and think about it.
Thanos6, you’re a diverse chap aren’t you? I think the anti-porn crusaders on the left have to ignore a lot of types of porn in order to justify their position. This is why in this thread they have ignored the comment far above regarding yayoi (male on male rape porn read by teenage Japanese girls), and in the real world tend to ignore gay porn. In order to fit gay porn into their model, they have to either 1) extend the same logic (people are coerced into porn through the patriarchy’s social power, or more directly through men’s sexual power over women) to men, which doesn’t make sense; or 2) argue for some distinct inherent difference in qualities between men and womens sexuality and emotions, which mean that men are able to freely choose to do porn and sex work (even though for men too it can be painful and degrading) but women are not.
I think secretly a lot of anti-porn and anti-sex work feminists want to believe 2, because it suits the puritanical view that womens’ innate understanding of sex must be corrupted by outside forces in order for them to consider such acts. But they can’t easily adopt this view, because it is so popular with the right wing religious model of sexuality and has such devastating implications for other aspects of women’s sexual freedom - after all, under this model women who have casual sex probably also have been corrupted by the patriarchy, and would need to be protected from themselves.
These contradictions in the radical feminist critique of sex work, particularly, are quite glaringly obvious. The only way to maintain the theory is therefore to ignore all porn which doesn’t fit it, and to ignore any evidence that women might freely choose sex work. To my mind, this is ideology rather than theory.
“some porn and sex work involves suffering, so none can be trusted to be safe”
Jesus, flasheart, that’s EXACTLY what I’ve been saying. I don’t know how you can read my posts and think otherwise. How to quantify “some” is the question, for you. The FACT that we live in a patriarchy, where women are valued primarily for their ability to serve men (sexually and otherwise), INEVITABLY leads to abuse of the sex class by the oppressor class - this is the question, for me. The difference between our emphasis, I take to be evidence that you accept womens’ sex-class status because it benefits YOU as a member of the oppressor class (in that you like getting off to sexualized images of women whose identity and circumstances you don’t (can’t) know.)
If you think you’re the only person who has studied this issue, think again. The fact is that there is not enough research in this area. Guess why? Not only does one gives enough of a shit about sex “workers’” experiences to actually do those studies, but MEN are threatened by the very idea. Good luck finding enough “evidence” to prove it to yourself one way or the other. I posted my own link - did you read that?
I would ask YOU to consider that since you ARE a member of the oppressor class, that you are HANDICAPPED when it comes to being able to understand the experiences of the sex class. How can you possibly think that, as a consumer of porn, who lives in a patriarchy, who is a member of the oppressor class, YOU have the special, correct view of the sex “industry”? Do you think that’s reasonable?
And who said anything about “casual sex”?
porn != sex
prostitution !=sex
accepting money != actual consent
I don’t consider myself part of the “patriarchy,” though I’m sure you’ll say that as a man I’m part of it whether I want to be or not. *shrugs* No doubt the same applies to my boyfriend. Though I have trouble seeing how this applies to my girfriend, who’s also bisexual, and who often gets off from the exact same material.
Thanos6, it’s amazing to me that you think you, or anyone else, are exempt from patriarchal influence because of your sexual orientation. You, as a non-hetero, are one of the demographics that suffers the most under patriarchy. Maybe YOU don’t see it. But consider:
There are 33 states in which you can still be legally denied employment based on your sexual orientation. In a 2007 Gallup poll, 31% of Amerians surveyed said they thought that sexual relations between consenting adults of the same gender should be illegal, 54% oppose gay marriage. Twenty-seven percent oppose including sexual orientation/identity in hate crime legislation.
Wake up!
Thanos6, “the patriarchy” isn’t a club you belong to by choice, but by default (as a male).
Actually, scratch that last post.
Patriarchy is a system of oppression. It assumes that the default status of a human being, is not only male, but white and heterosexual (among other things.) Anyone who does not fit that definition is “other” and thereby a lesser being.
As a man, you have male privilege. As a non-heterosexual, you DON’T have het privilege, and as such are oppressed by the patriarchy.
The “club” that you belong to is one that only accepts males, and you belong to that club by default.
derrp at 184, you’re talking about a tactical position there, not a theoretical position, and the tactical position has nothing to do with Amanda’s question about “in a feminist world”. Coming as I do from a country where sex work is regulated and sex workers have strong representation within the industry, I think it is acceptable to regulate the industry to prevent abuse and I am happy to trust the regulation that exists (mostly) to protect women in the industry from exploitation. If you are not, you don’t have to pay for sex.
But this has no bearing on Amanda’s question: is porn possible in a feminist world. From the point of view of the status of the workers, if we can accept the possibility that people could do it willingly, then the objection to porn based on the actors’ suffering can be overcome.
So do you accept that in a feminist world this is possible, or do you retreat to the view that everyone has to think the same way as you, described here:
And finally I should note, lots of research has been done on sex work. You have only read the women as victims “crack house” style of research (this has been described by Maher L in her anthropological studies of 80s “crack whores” in New York). You might like to check the other side of the research, for example starting with the work of Roberta Perkins. Again, I can only stress that the anti-sex work crusade in 80s America has really poisoned many peoples’ knowledge of this industry, including that of many researchers.
“I tend to have an opinion on this subject that makes no one happy.”
Well, I agree with you 100% FWIW. Makes me happy.
“The FACT that we live in a patriarchy, where women are valued primarily for their ability to serve men (sexually and otherwise), INEVITABLY leads to abuse of the sex class by the oppressor class - this is the question, for me.”
I think it is true that some abuse is inevitable in such a system and that those who use porn (myself included), are focusing on our own self-centered desires in spite of the reality of systematic oppression and the possibility of personal coercion/exploitation.
I also agree with those who point out that this is the case across the spectrum in a capitilistic society. Whenever any of us call upon any of countless “low-status” workers - janitors, maids, fast food workers, any sort of wage-slave, etc. We are putting our own pleasures above concern for their systematic oppression and likely abuse.