Worms
My blog is famous for thread drift (well, as much as anything about my blog can be famous), but I’m going to be pro-active here and start a proper post for the issues raised in this comment, which is threatening to massively derail the thread where it was originally posted. Which thread was approaching an Ionesco-like level of absurdity, so that might not have been a bad thing, but whatever.
If I were writing a proper post about pornography I would phrase some of this differently, more carefully, actually make an effort to organize my fricking thoughts, but since a couple of people have already started responding I’ll just paste what I originally wrote, warts and all. And then move people’s comments over.
P.S. I was responding with this comment to various questions and observations that had been put to me about the stuff in the worm thread — Amanda’s use of porn, Delphyne’s arguments on imagery, etc. It’s not an organized manifesto.
***
Okay, I finally read through the worm thread, or at least the exchanges between Amanda and Delphyne. It was annoying because there was a lot of talking in circles and past each other, lots of red herrings.
Amanda says she likes and uses pornography. She knows most of it is misogynistic crap, and (presumably) she knows that there are serious abuses in the industry, but she enjoys it anyway and just tries to avoid the bad stuff. Sounds to me like she’s got a conflict to work out.
The feminist question I would ask is not, “Is a photograph automatically degrading?” because I don’t think that’s the issue. The feminist issue should be, “If you know that there are problems in the porn industry, if you know that you may be watching filmed rapes or the equivalent thereof, how can you still enjoy this stuff?”
Of course, part of the problem for me in a discussion like this is that I don’t understand the enjoyment of pornography at all. Even the “good” kind, wherever it is, doesn’t appeal to me.
The most interesting thing Delphyne said in that thread, which kind of got lost, is that masturbation/sex does not equal porn. That’s certainly true for me. It’s not a case of my disapproving of pornography and therefore avoiding it; it’s a case of my not being interested in it at all. It has no place in my sex life or fantasy life. In fact, the pornography I’ve seen has been so repugnant to me that it might as well be an anti-aphrodisiac.
I’ve never even understood why men need to look at pictures to masturbate. Bizarre. Can’t you just think about something you like? Why do you need to rifle through magazines to find a picture? Or now, rifle through videos to find a scene? Just close your eyes and imagine whatever you like. It always seems to me that a person would have to be extraordinarily lacking in imagination to need these manufactured external images.
And of course this reliance on images is just an effect of conditioning; before pornography became common or even before the days of French postcards, people were whacking off as much as they do now, but they didn’t need to look at anything. It’s just this modern reliance on pornography that renders so many men incapable of coming up with their own fantasies. And women, too, it seems now.
Well, I’m rambling, but my point is just a full-disclosure kind of thing. Anti-porn feminists often suspect “libertarian” feminists of not owning up to their own enjoyment of pornography. In that same spirit I’m owning up to the fact that I don’t enjoy pornography at all, so it’s hard for me to put myself in the shoes of people who need it.
385 Responses to “Worms”
-
Mandos says:
So, in response to your images post, Violet, I think that’s very interesting and the heart itsef of the whole debate. The role of images in human response. However, there are people who go further and say that fantasy itself is problematic. And some would argue that the use of images is just a neutral extension of fantasy.
It would take a while for me to go through this interesting issue, but I had a thought that you might find interesting. You know all those Venus figurines? You know how some male anthropologists/archaeologists used to theorize they were some form of caveman masturbation objects? You know who some later more feminist thinkers objected and said they might be goddess figurines representing fertility?
Why not both?
I’m not saying it is both, just thinking of the possibilities for the role of the image.
(this comment reposted to this thread by Violet)
October 12th, 2006 at 9:22 pm EST -
delphyne says:
“The feminist question I would ask is not, “Is a photograph automatically degrading?” because I don’t think that’s the issue. The feminist issue should be, “If you know that there are problems in the porn industry, if you know that you may be watching filmed rapes or the equivalent thereof, how can you still enjoy this stuff?””
That will pretty much put you in Amanda’s camp then, Violet. On its own your question leads not to no porn and no women being degraded, but to better porn, ethical porn where no human beings were harmed in the making of this product - human rights-approved or whatever. That’s what Amanda and all her male friends who fast-forward past the nasty parts claim they are arguing for. The problem is that it’s an exercise in denial, because porn’s purpose is to degrade and dehumanise - if someone can get sexually excited by it at the same time all the better. Nobody would argue that sexual assault should be defended because somebody gets sexually excited by it, why should this form of abuse be any different?
It is degrading to be used in this way. Having your sexuality stolen or paid for in order for another person to achieve sexual pleasure at your expense is inhumane. You noted in that in another thread when you described how Playboy has consistently worked at putting down women and sexualising us whenever it gets the opportunity. I’m wondering why you would step back from that analysis now.
Obviously your question is important too, but only when it’s seen in the context of all porn rather than just the “bad” stuff that can be done away with.
(this comment reposted to this thread by Violet)
-
Mandos says:
In other words, the image as such steals something from the imaged. It’s a very metaphysical objection.
(this comment reposted to this thread by Violet)
-
Violet says:
porn’s purpose is to degrade and dehumanise
Actually, I think the purpose of pornography is to cause sexual arousal.
Of course I know that some people believe that the arousal that comes from viewing pornography is totally predicated on the presumed dehumanization or objectification involved. Most recently Twisty memorably made this point when she said that in a feminist world, pictures of people having sex would be as interesting as pictures of ameobas dividing.
I disagree. Humans are very social, very sexualized animals. I suspect that looking at each other naked is going to remain popular even once we achieve the egalitarian utopia we all long for. I’m sure that this future pornography would be very different, but that it would exist in some form is, I think, quite likely.
Now, is the pornography that exists today degrading and demeaning? Yep. And that very definitely includes Playboy. Is the industry that produces it harmful and abusive? Absolutely. I’ve been told there’s “good” pornography somewhere, most probably in lesbian niche markets, but I really have no idea.
But does this mean that sexual imagery itself is inherently degrading and demeaning? An occasional visitor to my blog, ehj2, has spoken to this, and if I remember correctly he believes that whenever our sexuality is commodified — including allowing ourselves to be photographed for pornography — we are diminished. There’s an inherent degradation involved in the transaction, a sort of crime against the spirit. Is that what you believe, Delphyne?
-
Violet says:
And I’m officially paging Chris Clarke to attend to this thread, since the ability of pro-feminist men to deal honestly with pornography is in serious doubt this week. (Yes, I know that’s a low blow and completely inappropriate. Sue me)
-
Violet says:
Oh, one other thing: As for the conflict that feminist porn-enthusiasts must feel — “how can you enjoy this stuff knowing what you know?” — my own guess is that it’s like all the other compromises people make. Eating chicken and choosing not to think about the horrific animal cruelty in the poultry industry. Buying T-shirts from Wal-Mart and choosing not to think about the slaves who produced the garment. We all do that stuff.
-
Violet says:
Delphyne, I should explain (though I feel like I’m talking to myself), that I’m not trying to distract from the real problems of real pornography. If you were to say, for instance, “Virtually all pornography in the world today is demeaning and degrading,” I would agree with you. It’s when you say things like “The purpose of pornography is to degrade and demean” that you raise eyebrows. It becomes a conceptual argument; you’re no longer talking about the real world, but delivering a categorical truth about the nature of a certain human activity. That’s why people start asking you about photographs and what not, trying to pin down the logic. It sounds like you’re equating looking at a photograph of a naked woman with sexual assault, and that is by no means an obvious equation.
-
Chris says:
Gee thanks.
I do know that erotica exists that is far less degrading than the current pron norms. It tends to be textual. It tends to be written by women. Despite being better than the norm, it is almost always shot through with internalized patriarchy, simply because that is the sea in which we swim.
I used to pretty much agree with the 1970s slogan “pornography is the theory, rape is the practice.” I’m not sure I do any more, but solely because of the existence of that whole other erotica subculture you reference above, what with the nice lesbians and nurturing gay men and happy consensuality and all. And again, I’d bet THAT stuff is shot through with patriarchy as well.
Were I setting up the world, which I am not, the current tactical focus would be on the egregious crap that is becoming increasingly mainstream, the pedo and the coercive and the blatantly and deliberately demeaning. And of course the issue is not limited to what appears in the image, but the conditions under which the more benign-seeming stuff is made. Once that was dealt with, the discussion could be continued as to whether simple visual representations of nudity or apparently egalitarian sex were equally problematic.
I think ehj2 is a mystic. No pejorative intended there, but I’m not a mystic. I have trouble thinking of the act of shooting a photo as the cusp in which something becomes porn. I think the intent with which the image is created, the uses to which the image is put, and the degree of consent of the subject are all more important than the act of shooting the photo.
I am visually oriented, like many men. I see a photo of an apparently happy smiling naked person, usually but not exclusively women, and I have a predictable physical response. Much of the imagery out there spurs no such response in me: I find scenes of coercion repulsive. There are images that stride the fuzzy boundary, where the coercion (or whatever) is subtextual, that both physically attract and emotionally and intellectually repel me.
Fortunately, I am not my cock. I can accept that I have a physical reaction to the borderline, subtly repellent stuff and not try to justify the existence of that repellent stuff to make myself feel better. The more I learn about life, the less that stuff affects me.
But there really is an explosion of the blatantly horrible stuff, it seems, and from what I hear and read from young het women, young men are being molded in the pornographer’s image, apparently under the impression that the stuff portrayed in the movies is how sex is supposed to be. And that frightens me.
-
Violet says:
Thank you for that comment, Chris. That’s pretty much exactly what I would want to hear from a man, so I’m sure you’re lying. I kid.
But there really is an explosion of the blatantly horrible stuff, it seems, and from what I hear and read from young het women, young men are being molded in the pornographer’s image, apparently under the impression that the stuff portrayed in the movies is how sex is supposed to be. And that frightens me.
The only porn film I’ve ever seen (this is how out of it I am) was back in the 80s when I was in college, and my gay roommates rented a hetero porn film for fun one night. I came downstairs and they were laughing themselves sick at how mechanical and awful hetero sex looked. I was appalled. I was going, “No! no! Sex isn’t like that at all!” And it wasn’t — the stuff on screen bore no relation to any lovemaking I’d ever been involved in in my life.
That was in the 80s, before the current porn explosion, before people even had personal computers. If that horrid movie I saw almost 20 years ago was bad, I can’t imagine what the stuff is like now. And to think that people are taking their cues from that shit…
My question, though, is what exactly to do about it.
-
Mandos says:
Well, one theory is that this is simply the patriarchy “cornered”. In a sense, males having been forced to accept the participation and theoretical equality of women need more and more lurid reminders of women’s “ultimate nature”.
That’s an optimistic interpretation.
In other sense, we are living in a world where *everything* is increasingly more lurid.
-
Violet says:
I have trouble thinking of the act of shooting a photo as the cusp in which something becomes porn.
I don’t think that’s what ehj2 believes, and if I gave that impression, my mistake. I think he believes that the problem is in selling our sexuality, even via a photograph. But he could explain that better himself.
Mandos, I don’t know how to evaluate the “patriarchy cornered” argument because we don’t have a control. Who knows?
-
Heart says:
OMG. “Visually oriented.” Yeah, right, men are “visually oriented” and women aren’t. It has nothing to do with women, being made by men, to be the “visual orientation” they need to get themselves off on a lonely day. Has nothing to do with the fact that men can create whatever they, as the “visually oriented” want to visualize, whereas women have no such societal or cultural power.
God. Chris and Mandos, you present various places as evolved. A clue. You aren’t.
ginmar: Not having to kiss male ass is kind of the point of feminism.
Yes, it is. Kissed plenty of male ass in my day. Them days are long gone. I am a very, very proud political lesbian. If that gives belledame or whomever else Heart burn, well, them’s the breaks, take a couple antacid and call me in the morning. I’m getting old. In the years I have left, I’m going to be *all* about the women. And I’m going to tell the truth about men. You’d better believe it.
Heart
-
Mandos says:
I do not present as anything. I do not demand that you consider me anything. I am whatever you wish to see in me.
-
Mandos says:
Also, I do not see Chris implying that women are not likewise visually oriented. I mean, that’s a common trope, but I do not see Chris invoking it.
But it’s interesting. Why did Heart feel the need to invoke me as a person, when I never referred to her?
Oh, maybe it was the belledame thing.
-
Violet says:
Well, Heart, I generally like guys (good guys of course) and I like Chris and Mandos. But I do wonder about the “visual orientation” thing. I don’t mean that I’m reading anything sinister into Chris’s self-description; just that I continue to be puzzled about the importance of physical imagery to so many men.
You know, if someone asked me to visualize the color yellow, I could do it instantly: bang! There it is! The color yellow, right there in my visual cortex. I wouldn’t need to flip through a magazine or search my house or get online to find a yellow object to look at to be reminded of what yellow is. Yet when men want to think about sex, for some reason they can’t just call it to mind and whack off. They have to go find a picture. It’s almost comical, this image of men racing through a video to find ’something to whack off to.’ Dude, can’t you just imagine great sex? Imagine a naked woman? Imagine the last naked woman, or picture of a naked woman you saw? Why must your eyeballs be stimulated anew each time?
-
Mandos says:
So I would like to clarify that I don’t actually see why men are/should be visually oriented myself. I mean, I find it hard to believe that women aren’t stimulated by images. Evidently, as Amanda says, some women even seek out images as many men do. (They may be male-identified and patriarchal or whatever, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re women.)
I guess that images lend things a concreteness and reality that is a much sharper image than what the mind can generate, and some people need this sharpness for maximum titillation.
And remember, some radical feminists are not satisfied by the mental fantasy limitation. It still consists in objectification. So the problem is still objectification and the use of women for unidirectional pleasure.
-
Violet says:
By the way, to anyone reading this thread who feels compelled to share his personal fantasies or porn-fueled fancies: don’t.
-
Mandos says:
Oh, and, re: Heart, I have nothing against Heart as a person and am even sympathetic to some of what she writes, but I’m generally under the impression that she doesn’t believe that men should opine or think about sex and gender as such at all, except maybe to agree with her and/or hand her evidence. It’s the only way I can decipher her latest intervention.
If that’s actually the case, then that has interesting implications for how she thinks the world should unfold.
-
Violet says:
And remember, some radical feminists are not satisfied by the mental fantasy limitation. It still consists in objectification. So the problem is still objectification and the use of women for unidirectional pleasure.
Mandos, I think you have misconstrued the argument. I think what they mean when they say “fantasize responsibly” is that people should be careful about nurturing pedophilic and abusive fantasies in themselves. That’s how I’ve read it.
To say that they believe people mustn’t think about other people because thinking about other people objectifies them…well, I don’t think anyone is really saying that.
-
Mandos says:
“To say that they believe people mustn’t think about other people because thinking about other people objectifies them…well, I don’t think anyone is really saying that.”
So I tried to hold your interpretation in my head when I read things like that. It’s a reasonable interpretation and one I’d have favoured. But I found it untenable after a while. What I think that they are saying is instead that we build fantasies on our experiences, and our experiences consist of image-memories of real people. Our willingness to use those fantasies-based-on-memory for our own pleasure increases our sense of entitlement to pleasure at the expense of others and our willingness to objectify people in other situations. In other words, while it may not make us rapists, it serves to generate a rape culture.
Certain among them are quite insistent that it is possible to achieve sexual fulfillment without fantasy *at all*. Dubhe at BB even gave us a programme to experiment with this along with the guidelines for responsible fantasy.
-
Burrow says:
Has the entire blogosphere gone batty since I’ve been gone? I had no idea I was the glue holding all of you together.
-
Violet says:
Dubhe at BB even gave us a programme to experiment with this along with the guidelines for responsible fantasy.
Link! I want the link!
-
Violet says:
Burrow is here!
Yes, the whole blogworld’s gone straight to hell. I saw a comment of Sheelzebub’s over at Heart’s, I think, where she said she’s now been accused by one side of being an anti-sex prude and by the other side of being a sex-pos “fun” feminist.
Meanwhile, I continue to make perfect sense…to myself.
-
cicely says:
OMG. “Visually oriented.” Yeah, right, men are “visually oriented” and women aren’t. It has nothing to do with women, being made by men, to be the “visual orientation” they need to get themselves off on a lonely day. Has nothing to do with the fact that men can create whatever they, as the “visually oriented” want to visualize, whereas women have no such societal or cultural power.
I wouldn’t bet my lunch on it, given the full cultural context, but I think there does seem to be evidence that men, in general, are more visually stimulated than women are. Women appear to enjoy and respond to written erotica or porn more easily and more often than visual stuff. This is certainly true of myself, and I’m mostly satisfied with fantasising as per Violet’s comments anyway. That may be just how life has unfolded though - there’s no political or moral perspective on that for me. Say I’d been in a relationship with a woman who had a bigger interest in lesbian visual porn than I did. I may have taken that on myself, beyond the relationship, once having been introduced to it in a deeper or more involved way.
I think women *are* beginning to achieve a level of societal and cultural power with which they can create ways they want to visualise and be visualised, and that’s the area I’d prefer to focus on as a feminist wrt porn, and in general. There are feminists within the porn industry, and feminists as consumers of porn, (and I’m not wanting to get into an arguement about who’s a feminist and who’s not here. I’m down to ‘who cares?’ on that one, at least for arguements sake…) and my funny view is that they’re women, feminism’s constituency, too.
I’m not personally opposed to pornography in which no-one is being directly hurt, and the women involved are operating from their own agency. (I’m not of the view that it’s impossible to make any real choice in a patriarchal world since women argue passionately and to me convincingly, that they make these choices.) In practical terms, working to ban pornography is a lost cause, imo. I neither think it’s right, ( because it’s freedom of speech) nor possible. You don’t get to win the game by leaving the field or blowing up the field. If people want to play they’ll find a way. You have to stop people ‘wanting’ to play, and, as Violet said, humans are social and sexual animals. It ain’t going to happen. All we can do is regulate the industry to remove abuses and ensure civil and working rights for those people - women and men - who choose to participate in it.
-
Mandos says:
Violet, among other things:
-
Violet says:
Mandos, that post doesn’t make the point you think it makes. Dubhe is just saying that most men are so desensitized to degrading pornography that they can’t see it’s degrading anymore. He recommends they stop looking at it and replaying it in their minds for 8-12 weeks (while simultaneously interacting with real women in an empathetic way), before they come back to it. Only then will they perhaps be able to evaluate it as degrading or not.
That has nothing to do with some broad notion that simply thinking about other humans objectifies them.
-
Violet says:
I should say, so they can evaluate their own favorite porn to see if it’s degrading or not.
-
cicely says:
Well, Mandos, I followed that link, but I don’t think I’ll be following its advice. In the comments it gets right down to it being anti-feminist to find anyone physically sexually attractive for any reason at all.(Is there any point in discussing sexual orientation issues then?)
God, sometimes all it takes is the glint of reflected light off the desired one’s teeth. Aren’t we getting into - what is sexual attraction perse?
There is power and submission just in giving or receiving someone’s ‘charm smile’, (that came from an episode of ‘Bones’). I get back to that we actually don’t know enough about sex, since we’ve been so culturally repressed around it while giving it monumental negative significance for so long, to be bringing in a whole different set of repressive values for different reasons. I’m for getting honest about it and opening it up rather than closing it down.
-
Nieves says:
Violet,
I don’t believe for one minute that you are this naive. Is this some sort of faux-innocence designed to keep the male readers sweet?
Men watch pornography because they hate women. It is not enough to fantasise about women being abused. Men want to see the evidence; they want to see it happening before their very eyes. That’s when they know that they are ‘real men’.
-
Mandos says:
Not simply *thinking*, but masturbating to the thought. Thinking of what so and so said the other day, or mentally replaying, I dunno, baby’s first steps, are probably not going to fall under the limitation.
Essentially, yes, they’re asking us that every fantasy be carefully analysed for signs of patriarchy. However, we are so steeped in patriarchy that no fantasy will be patriarchy-free*. I find it hard to read them any other way—not just that post, but the body of work taken together.
*And part of the fight is whether presently inconvenient and/or unpleasant seeming desires have a place in our fantasy vocabulary.
-
Mandos says:
Been there, done that…
-
will says:
“The feminist issue should be, “If you know that there are problems in the porn industry, if you know that you may be watching filmed rapes or the equivalent thereof, how can you still enjoy this stuff?” ”
I can’t. I think the issue is that most people shut their eyes or are extremely naive about porn. Thus, they selectively forget or don’t know that they may be watching the equivilent to rapes.
“Men watch pornography because they hate women. It is not enough to fantasise about women being abused. Men want to see the evidence; they want to see it happening before their very eyes. That’s when they know that they are ‘real men’.”
And women watch porn because they hate other women as well?
I do not buy it. Certainly there are men who enjoy domination and degradation. But I suspect that the vast majority of people who watch porn are not women haters, but rather people who shut their eyes to the bad aspects of porn. That is not to say that a significant number of porn watchers do not have serious women-issues.
-
Jimmy Ho says:
Shutting your eyes at the “bad aspects” of pornography is woman hating. It presupposes, without any evidence, that there are positive aspects other than the viewer’s onanistic satisfaction and makes light of fellow humans’ suffering.
Not caring about how deshumanizing the racist and misogynistic language used in the Amptoons reviews is to women, and women of colour in particular, is woman hating.
Putting the suffering of the women used on the websites promoted through Alas in balance with a man’s financial needs is hateful women. I never thought all pimps, in real life, are savage monsters from outer space; they’re merely convinced that they are entitled to sexually exploit women for their own survival. In the words of a Belgian former prostitute who refused to become a pimpstress, they are “making money with other peoples’ asses”.I remember how a French biographer of Louis Armstrong lightly presented him being a pimp, in his youth in New Orleans, as “what all men had to do back then in order to survive”; she added laughing that he wasn’t even successful at that because his only “whore” was “fat and ugly”.
-
richard cherry says:
Right from the moment we started talking about ‘what men like’ and ‘what women like’, we were lost. This is why endless discussions of this issue become pointless and degenerate into ‘you’re a troll’ men are monsters’ ‘ you’re not feminist enough’. It’s the liberal equivalent of ‘women are stupid’ ‘they can’t drive’ ‘they just need a good shagging’ and all that shit. Surely we’re grown up enough to accept the existence of darkness and people thinking (even doing) bad things without our needing to feel so personally accused that we go into denial.
Given that Violet’s whole ethos is about thinking and debating without accusing, it’s hardly the usual fare here.
And for the record I’m not trying to shut down debate or tell people what they can and can’t think or say - I would just like to suggest that there may be better ways to spend our time than shouting louder than the next feminist (which I still don’t claim to be BTW).
And I’m even being drawn into a comment on the porn stuff myself arrgh …. I believe porn exists to make money. If they could make money out of non-expolited cuddly bunnies that’s what they’d do. The degradation of women (and, some say, men) is just a nasty by-product - no less real or bad, but not the primary motivation IMO. -
Jimmy Ho says:
Speaking of racism, I’d like to note that I do not think that Violet handled the “racism vs. misogyny” thread which she ended up closing to comments. Ironically (I understand irony is quite the trendy thing), I pretty much agreed with Ampersand’s critique of hers at the time. Had I only known.
-
Jimmy Ho says:
Sorry: I don’t think Violet handled it (the discussion) well.
-
Jimmy Ho says:
One more thing: comparing pornography watching (or even prostitute patronizing) to clothes shopping or food buying does not stand: a human being can survive without sexual relations and nobody needs images (especially pictures of live humans) to masturbate to.
-
will says:
Jimmy Ho:
I would agree that when you watch porn, you are helping perpetuate an industry that is overwhelmingly bad for women (and as a result bad for society).
But I do not agree that, therefore, anyone and everyone who watches porn hates women. Perhaps that is too fine a line.
On a similar note, does everyone who buys a barbie doll hate women as well? Or just strongly dislike.
VS:
I still need to get rid of that tube of porn that I found. We need to have a controled burn. And, before you ask, I do not even have a vcr anymore so I cannot and have not watched any of the tapes. (See!!! I like women!! I really do.)
-
ginmar says:
Wow, Will, it’s awe-inspiring to see how you can hang around so many feminists and get it so wrong. “So what about women?”
Yeah, because, you know, they thought this up all by their lonesome in a sexist society hwere the only women who aren’t hated out and out are the ones who give the patriarchy what it needs—female acquiescence.
-
will says:
Hey Ginmar! Great to see you again! I’ve missed you.
-
Infidel says:
Although I’ve never experience phone sex I find it interesting in that it doesn’t depend on visual stimulation and when it is interactive, the participants in real time are doing the deed together apart, each knows it is a fantasy, and it is all about money.
-
Jimmy Ho says:
I don’t know much about “phone sex” either, but visual stimulation is not absent from it, since much of the advertising for it uses pornographic or porn-inspired photographs.
Also, the woman operator’s performance has to rely on pornographic culture to satisfy the caller: she has to be “true” to the image he’s visualising, and if she wants to keep the job (the concurrence is huge) she’d better be up-to-date in porn terminology. The customer could hang up and switch to another service any moment.
Of course, her own fantasy or pleasure is irrelevant: she has to follow his, just like in prostitution. She has to hear him moan and masturbate, endure being called a “slut” or a “bitch” by a total stranger while pretending to enjoy it. Even though there is no physical contact, the only way to do it without going mad from the start is to practice dissociation. while not as directly damaging to the woman’s body, I still find it rather degrading, and it is still an inherently unequal relation. -
Burrow says:
Basically I was going to say what ginmar said.
In a patriarchal society the choices of women are limited to what they have been socialised with, and that my friends is anti-woman propaganda. All of us.
-
Infidel says:
jimmy ho,
“she has to be “true” to the image he’s visualising”As I think about it, and fantasize about the fantasy I might enjoy over the phone, I think I may actually be audiolizing, I think there is sexual arousal in the breathing, dirty talking, far from the visual, that visual stimulation is absent from it. I would have to try it.
Sight, Sound, Touch, Smell, Taste
Pocket pussies, or plastic suck machines pander to the demand for pornographic touch- that’s pretty unobtrusive. Anyone ever heard of pornographic smells or flavors?
When is Woody Allens Orgasmatron ever gonna get here?
-
Hugo says:
My theory about porn has less to do with visual stimulation and more than an obsession with everlasting novelty. What I hate about porn is that we tire of one image so quickly and always want “new”. That’s near the heart of what’s so problematic about it.
-
Pony says:
Oh I get it. Phone sex for you is not visual, but purely aural, from “sexual arousal in the breathing, dirty talking,” of the 64 year old bald toothless woman with nicotine stained fingers that you’re imagining.
Right?
Right.
-
richard cherry says:
aaaaarghhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
-
richard cherry says:
so (jimmy ho) VS didn’t handle the “racism vs. misogyny” thread well - from where I was sitting she got a whole load of abuse for some things she never said. when she pointed out - pretty mildly - the salient point that was escaping some posters - to wit: she hadn’t actually said what people were giving her a hard time about ’saying’, she got called a racist. I’d have gone to fucking town on them.
scuse me while I hang my head a bit. the rest of you just listen to two people who have ‘little experience’ of phone sex come up with some opinions about it.
ballet ballet ballet……………. -
Violet says:
Mandos and Cicely, I really think you’re misreading that post of Dubhe’s. It’s about How to Tell if Your Porn is the Good Kind or the Bad Kind, which first requires a program to Restore Empathy for Women in the Pornsick User’s Mind.
The whole thing is keyed off the findings of Dr. Diana Russell, which are good solid results: that the use of hardcore pornography greatly diminishes a man’s ability to feel empathy for women. This has been well-demonstrated, and it’s not great. We don’t really need less empathy in the world, do we, especially in a world where rape victims are getting blamed for being raped and pregant women are being shamed as sluts who deserve to die.
Russell also distinguishes between “good” pron, which she calls erotica, and “bad” porn, which she defines as stuff that is abusive and degrading to women. Well, that’s tricky, but whatever. (Also, please excuse the heteronormativity here.)
Here’s the Cliffnotes version of Dubhe’s post:
1. Is your porn good or bad? (I’ll just dispense with the “erotica” terminology for now.)
2. How can you tell? Well, one thing you need to be able to make the distinction is the capacity to feel empathy for women.
3. But here’s the catch! If you’ve been using bad pron, your capacity for empathy is diminished! (True.) So you won’t be able to tell!
4. How can you restore your ability to empathize with women?
5. For 8-12 weeks, don’t look at your porn. Just stay away from it, and don’t replay it in your head either.
6. Use that time to also try to interact with women as full human beings. Think of them as people, with families and hopes and dreams like you. (Really, this is the same kind of empathy training that’s given any group of people who are desensitized to another group of people.)
7. At the end of the 8-12 weeks, go back to your porn and look at it. Now your empathy for women should be sufficiently restored that you can evaluate whether your porn is “good” or “bad.”I think the post is very clear. And I don’t see how anyone can think that Dubhe is making sweeping statements there about sexual attraction, fantasy, or anything like that. It’s a very specific program to help porn-sick men restore their empathy for women.
-
Violet says:
One more thing: comparing pornography watching (or even prostitute patronizing) to clothes shopping or food buying does not stand: a human being can survive without sexual relations and nobody needs images (especially pictures of live humans) to masturbate to.
Jimmy Ho, I’m going to defend my analogy on two points:
1. I think the mental acrobatics of the consumer are similar; I really want this thing so I won’t think about what it took to create it.
2. No one needs Kentucky Fried Chicken to survive; there is other food available. Just like no one needs pornography or sex to survive; they do it because they want to.My purpose here is not to defend pornography. My purpose is to try to understand how a feminist can use commerical pornography. Is it like me (a vegetarian) breaking down and eating Kentucky Fried Chicken?
-
Mandos says:
I’ll respond to Violet’s response to me a little later (like, tonight or tomorrow), but I’d just like to post about the whole “needs vs. wants” thing. Biologically speaking, yes, our needs are quite simple: carb-enriched protein glop, water, and shelter. As social beings, we generally consider our “needs” to be more than just glop. So I don’t think that the reductive game of “you don’t need A, but you do need B, thus A is not like B” is very helpful.
-
Violet says:
Actually, Mandos, I’m glad you posted that Dubhe thing because it reminded me of the Russell definition of pornography, which is:
“Material that combines sex and/or the exposure of genitals with abuse or degradation in a manner that appears to endorse, condone, or encourage such behavior.”
Everything else that’s designed to cause sexual arousal (without the abuse and degradation stuff) is referred to as “erotica.”
At least some antiporn feminists are using the Russell definition of pornography, but it is by no means a widely known or accepted definition. So when Delphyne, for example, says “pornography is designed to degrade women,” people like me or Amanda who are thinking of the more traditional definition of pornography (sexually explicit material) immediately have questions.
In that worm can thread, Amanda kept saying that she thought Delphyne was arguing from tautology (porn is bad because porn is bad), but it’s possible that Delphyne is just using the Russell definition of pornography.
-
Mandos says:
This can’t be the case for Delphyne re her views on Jack Goff and his girlfriend trading their images for each other’s masturbatory pleasure. (Girlfriend chimed in and confirmed that this is the transaction and she knew the nature of it.) Delphyne claimed that Jack Goff was a (presumably garden-variety) misogynist for doing this. JG’s girlfriend is objectifying JG (and that’s a problem) but it’s a lesser offense, since JG’s offense contains the Male Gaze.
I really, really doubt that anyone had a reason to imagine that JG or his girlfriend were trading abuse and degradation pics. Leaving aside the whole controversy about *that*.
I don’t think that even BB and Dubhe hold a strictly Russellian porn-differentiation scheme. I know that there are some who do, and it’s interesting to behold what erupts when these little seams are tugged at.
-
Violet says:
You’re right, Mandos, — I went back and found what Delphyne said in that humongous worm can thread:
With regards to your question about the definition of pornography, I’ll just repeat what I’ve said again, it is sexually explicit material designed for the purpose of masturbation (not just arousal as you argued) but masturbation - it’s why porn mags have sticky pages.
So she’s not using the Russell definition.
-
Pony says:
Sorta off topic and I apologize but don’t know where else to put this: Is there something wrong with your site, or my browser, Violet because the comment thread is always a long straggly thing (of beauty of course) about 4 words wide. Sure is hard to read, and of course, being so causes me to skip over ‘certain’ posters comments entirely!
It’s always fascinating to me to watch people being put into boxes, Russell this and MacKinnon that. I think I’m as die-hard a rad fem as they come, thinking that was the only kind of feminism and it was when I was active. But I’ve never read any of this academic stuff that seems to qualify one for feminism accreditation with the ‘analysts’ who seem to know it all. So strange. We just instinctively knew when we were being declassifed from the human race.
Anyway I’d like an answer to my browser/website question if possible.
-
cicely says:
I think the post is very clear. And I don’t see how anyone can think that Dubhe is making sweeping statements there about sexual attraction, fantasy, or anything like that.
I hear you about the post, Violet, but I went on and read all the comments as well and just got exasperated.
I think Richard has a point in that the production of porn is about money when you get down to it. The main purpose of it is to make money. Yes, it feeds off the sexist attitudes to women that permeate the whole society - (so why isolate porn?) - but that’s not *all* it does, and we don’t ever get to whatever positive purpose it might also serve in a world that’s full of repressed, perverted and negative attitudes about sex and sexuality when we might have developed more along the lines of bonobos if patriarchal religion hadn’t stuck it’s big fat oar in. Who knows? And that’s my thing. Who knows? Anti-porn radfems don’t ‘know’ any more than anybody else does what a healthy human sexuality might look like in an overall social context. They’re trying to mould one out of an ideology when they don’t actually know wholly where they’re starting from or what they’re starting with in the first place. I mean, as a society we’re still incapable of honesty around sexual matters. Every cop show you see has some male character trying to have the police co-operate in not letting his wife know about his woman on the side. Then there’s the corresponding female character who somehow, against all the odds, is able to believe that *her* man wouldn’t do that.
So, back to the money. As far as I’m aware many or most developed countries have gone through phases when they’ve invited immigrants in to do jobs that the resident population feels are beneath them. This begs the question - who are the women involved in pornography by choice? Why do they do it? Is it always only a financial motive? How do they feel about the work or the men? And if we’re going to ask the questions we should listen to the answers. It’s like they’re always being talked about, but never listened to, and especially if what they say doesn’t match what the enquirer wants to hear.
This is why I come from a place of no censorship, empower women - economically and in every way possible - give women choices, look after their health and safety, and deal with what comes openly and freely out of that. And definitely - get rid of the stigmatisation around all sex work. (which involves women, men and transexuals, let’s not forget.) A feminist anti-porn approach just adds to or re-locates the source of repression and stigma as far as I can see.
You know - I don’t like it myself when the clock strikes midnight and the parade of sex-ads begins on Oz tv. I can often be heard, in the privacy of my home saying stuff like ‘oh, for fucks sake’, and I’m silently thinking ‘do we have to watch these women on parade appealing to the pricks who can’t tell one woman from another because all they want to do etc, etc.’ I do think about the lack of individuation etc, but I don’t kid myself that this means I understand everything about the men or the women and the rest of their lives. And I don’t begrudge the women selling their services (using their voices or bodies in particular ways different from others) to make a dollar either. If they preferred to work behind the jump at a supermarket or as a dental nurse or whatever, they would.
Well, we’ve been here before I know. I think I’m getting to a point where I don’t even want to talk or argue about this anymore. I’m out.
-
Violet says:
Pony, I don’t know what’s going on with your browser. Are you maximizing the window? The comment thread should be only slightly narrower than the post itself. That’s how it’s formatted in my code, and that’s what it looks like for me on a fully-maximized browser window.
-
Violet says:
I think I’m getting to a point where I don’t even want to talk or argue about this anymore. I’m out.
I’m sorry to hear that Cicely, because I always love your comments. Even when I disagree with you on certain points, I share your open-minded, curious approach to sorting these things out. I think we need more of that and less arguing from conclusions.
-
Pony says:
“If they preferred to work behind the jump at a supermarket or as a dental nurse or whatever, they would.”
Cicely, here’s an article and some newspaper links that speak to your concerns. At the bottom of her blog post, Ms. Jared links a San Francisco Chronicle four-part article on sex-slaves. One of the women, a sex-slave (or immigrant worker as you’ve intimidated) responds directly to the idea expressed in your comment above.
-
Pony says:
Arrgh. I should have broken the link. And of course, I meant intimated. Thank you and good night. :P
-
cicely says:
I followed the link thanks, Pony, but it’s just more of the same from my point of view. Porn and prostitution perse harms all women - full stop. Yes, sexism and straight out misogyny exist - as do the exploitation and abuses - including sex-slavery. I don’t deny that. I get plenty angry about it all too. But you and I both know that different people, different women, different feminists even, have different ideas about how to combat those things accepting that they undeniably exist. My approach doesn’t begin from the same sure and solid platform yours does. And this is after reading many, many words, from all sides and points of view on the subject. (i.e. I haven’t just ‘read everything I believe’! I found that on someone’s blog yesterday.) I don’t pretend to have the answers to the problems but I can’t conclude that they lay in the prohibition of the the selling or purchasing of sexual images or services altogether. There’s a puritanism in that approach that I’m unable to accept would be a good thing in the broad scheme of things. Far better, imo, for feminists to focus on the whole culture of sexism, and allow the women who choose to work in the sex industry to change its culture from within. Society’s responsibilty in that case is to provide sex workers with rights and protections and dignity, and that does include pathways out of the industry for those who request it. Of course that has to be without punishment or censure for their having been in it in the first place. Naturally, given our whole attitude to sex and sexuality, people will have been and will be damaged by participation in sex work even when they originally chose to do it over other available options. But I believe an awful lot of that has to do with the stigma and the shame around it and we’ll never know how much that accounts for unless we change it.
Thanks for your kind words, Violet. I don’t mean I won’t be coming here, just that I’m exhausted with arguing about this subject. I want to just take my line as I’ve determined it and that means showing solidarity with sex workers who choose it at any given time, for any reason, and taking my cue from them.
-
Jimmy Ho says:
Richard Cherry, if you have any information or personal “experience” (Infidel’s word, not mine) to share, feel free to do so: I could only be glad to read even a harsh refutation of what I wrote.
I have drastically reduced my blog-reading and nowadays, I limit it mostly to radical feminist blogs. Alas was an exception until recently, this here website is another: I appreciate Violet’s writing and willingness to confront and analyze difficult issues; although I don’t see her as a radical feminist, I understand and value that she sympathises with some radfem views, especially the opposition to any kind of pornstitution.
Her political stance seems also close to mine, and this is not something I see often in the American blogocosm.
None the less, I maintain that she did not seem willing to understand why women of colour commenters had such a visceral reaction to that particular post. My aim was not to reopen the debate, but to point out how “ironic” it was that, at that time, I agreed with Ampersand, who had already sold out to a racist pornographer when he wrote his critique.
Given the context of the Alas tohu-bohu, it was important to me to clarify how most of us tend to see racism in some instances, but are blind to it in others. Being a racist is always worse than being called a racist. I do not think that Dr. Violet Socks is racist, but I can understand why her formulation and the attitude she adopted could be seen as such. I can’t agree with her about the Alas fracas and not be honest with her about that.It is relevant here to specify that I write this as a Greek man of Micrasiatic descent who would be classified as “Caucasian” (really Balkano-Mediterranean) if I ever went to USofA, which I have many reasons to doubt.
-
Jimmy Ho says:
(More precisely about the “blindness” I’m talking about: the persons who defend Ampersand in the latest thread about the domain sale are all conveniently ignoring how those “Reviews” for “ethnic porn” are hurting women of colour; they chose not to listen to the indignation of at least two women of colour feminists who know all too well what it means to be seen as an “exotic” sexual object.)
-
Jimmy Ho says:
Oy, my address to Richard Cherry should read as “any information or personal ‘experience’” about “phone sex” (I assumed the paid kind that is part of the sex industry).
-
Pony says:
You must not have read the prostituted women’s story told in her own voice. She disagrees with you.
-
Isobel says:
It’s just this modern reliance on pornography that renders so many men incapable of coming up with their own fantasies.
Perhaps there lies the answer to that ever-asked question or why so much of the erotic fanfiction, even the fic actually involving women, is penned by the female hand.
-
Pony says:
Violet I have tried different things with the browser, no luck. I’ll still read!
Cicely, I’ve been a prostituted woman. I don’t call it sex work, that gives it a dignity it does not have. I don’t know any whore who did it by choice, nor any whore who did not want out. I did not want to be unionized et al. Please educate yourself before you throw that word choice around. It’s just plain wrong.
-
Mandos says:
I’m going to take Cicely at her word and note that, this blog having hashed out most of these issues once before already, she’s already seen Pony’s argument several times.
-
Jimmy Ho says:
Violet,
As a quick response to your comment number 50:
the mental acrobatics are vaguely similar (a similarity pushed to equivalence by porn consumers), but the comparison is very limited, mainly by the fact that there isn’t such a thing as “sexual starvation”. The level of necessity is simply not comparable, something Laurelin has eloquently summarized here.As a semi-vegetarian, I don’t eat any kind of meat. However, if I were in a situation (isolated on a desert planet made of metal or something) where I was in danger to die of starvation and the only food available ware Kentucky Fried Chicken, then yes, after making sure that there really wasn’t any other means (likesay licking metal), I would value my survival over the lost life that of the killed animals. Otherwise, I have no use for KFC or any other kind of meaty meal.
There is no equivalent to that situation in the sexual field, and pro-porn people who convince themselves that the desire for sex is one and the same with the need for food are comparing live women’s bodies with inanimate products. If you’re not an anthropophagist, there is no reason to accept that.
To paraphrase André Comte-Sponville, the prostitute is the bread, not the baker. -
Mandos says:
“There is no equivalent to that situation in the sexual field, and pro-porn people who convince themselves that the desire for sex is one and the same with the need for food are comparing live women’s bodies with inanimate products.”
Actually, this is a false analogy, and oddly enough, it can only be sustained if you believe sex and porn are the same thing.
Needs are social and, as I said, comparing them for relative needitude is reductive.
-
Jimmy Ho says:
I am not the one establishing that analogy; I tried to show why it is absurd. It has a key role in the rationalisation used by porn or prostitution users to justify their behaviour: “I was so horny/no woman want me” etc. This is a difficult issue to discuss with diability rights activists, for instances (prostitution is a “social service” for disabled people in the Netherlands and I think Denmark). You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve heard brothels equated with restaurants.
You can masturbate without using photos of prostituted people, but you can’t eat without food.
-
Violet says:
To cicely and Pony and Mandos:
A recurring issue in this debate is with people focusing on one type of evidence. I’ve heard the “let’s listen to what the sex workers themselves say” from both sides, many times, and the trouble is sex workers say different things.
As far as I can tell, there are innumerable stories from women who have been abused in the porn industry and of course in the prostitution industry. Whenever I hear, “let’s listen to what the women themselves say,” those are the stories I’m reminded of. But there are also workers in those fields who tell a different tale, or at least who propose a different approach to the problems than the ones offered by most anti-pornstitution activists.
That’s the sort of complexity that most of the time gets shoved aside or just skipped over, which I think is rather a problem.
-
Violet says:
Jimmy Ho, no one needs Kentucky Fried Chicken or slave-sewn T-shirts. Really. But I understand that the food and clothing connection bothers you, since food and clothing (though not KFC and t-shirts) are generally considered necessities.
So change the metaphor to: buying cheap Christmas ornaments without thinking about the fact that they were painted by slaves in China.
-
Pony says:
I’m not shoving it aside Violet. I’m just focussing on the links in dicscussion, and the article which is from the viewpoint of a recent Asian woman sex slave in San Francisco.
I would not like to be called an anti-porn feminist, thank you. While being true, it is a slice, it is very restrictive and doesn’t begin to define my feminism, or me, and is loaded with the implication that there is somewhere something good about rape for profit.
The sex slaves story is one of the truest I’ve read, my my perspective as a former whore, of colour. Women of my aboriginal ancestry were whores from the day the Europeans set foot on this shore. And it’s been our first “choice” from that day until today. I highly highly resent that word, especially coming from whites, and men, and white women who’s “choice” was never mine. I would argue it’s not a choice for white women either, and we can see that with the Ukrainian and Czec women who are now given this “choice”.
The link in question is deep in. The response indicated to me not that someone disagreed with me, which is fine, but that the relevant story wasn’t read, for whatever reason. Of course I may be wrong about that.
-
will says:
Christmas ornaments are made by slaves in China?!??!??
I never did trust those P.Buckley Moss ornaments!!
Once again, VS said it better than I could have. Of course, I think it takes greater naivity to think that the women really want facials than it does to think that a glass ornament could be hand painted in the United States by a citizen with health benefits and still only cost 25 cents.
-
Violet says:
I’m not shoving it aside Violet.
No, I didn’t mean to imply that you were.
As for terminology — anti-porn feminist — that is always difficult. I mean we have this ongoing problem in feminism with laying claim to certain names for ourselves, and other people disputing those names. I use “antiporn feminist” to describe those for whom the fight against pornography is an explicit component of their feminism, though by no means the totality of it.
-
Mandos says:
So the problem, Jimmy, is that you used a very extreme example—that doesn’t happen normally—to establish the distinction between porn and food. The “what would happen if you were starving in the desert” parable. The problem is that in the desert our concept of human needs is entirely different from our concept of human needs in a productive civilization. The same argument can be used to dismiss, say, arguments from human dignity, or argments for emotional needs, etc.
The pro-porn side (or anti-antiporn side as some of them are more correctly called, I think) would not accept your analogy that consuming the image of a woman is the same as consuming the woman. That is itself the question we’re trying to answer here.
-
Pony says:
Ok Violet. I’m not American and have never identified with the kind of feminist politics in America: bra burning. What??? Nor am I used to this idea of a feminism which seems to get its ideology outside feminism.
The majority of the feminists on the blogs, with rare exception, are Americans, and the American cultural and political way is VASTLY different from the Canadian. Some of the difference is what confuses me.
-
Mandos says:
I’m a Canadian too but I don’t find them *that* different.
Re Dubhe: Violet, if I had read Dubhe’s post by itself, I’d agree with you—it’s a therapeutic programme for men to return to a psyche prior to skewage by degrading porn. But the problem is, as Cicely alluded, that the exercise is a little bit rigged if you read the totality of what BB and Dubhe write. We’re expected to come up with certain conclusions after trying it.
-
Violet says:
Pony, since Cicely may not be checking this thread again, I went and found this comment she made back in February (she’s been a regular commenter here since the first of the year):
It’s not always the case that a woman chooses to sell her body to stave off starvation, pay urgent bills etc because she has no other option. When I was in my early to mid twenties in the 1970’s in New Zealand, a small group of my friends, all lesbians, used to regularly go to a particular hotel that was well known for the activity, for drinks and to pick up clients for some quick money. Only one of these women was addicted to a drug. The others liked a drink and a good time. I was unable to bring myself to do this, not for moral reasons, or because of fear of violence - I just couldn’t act the part. (I was actually quite in awe of these women who could…), but I used to tag along for the drinks and good time bit. We all had factory or semi-skilled jobs - or access to same - that didn’t pay well, but paid enough that prostitution wasn’t something any of us actually needed to do to get by. What I’m saying I guess is that it was a clear choice. What all the women had in common, apart from that they were lesbians, was that they were young, liked bars, and were kind of adventurous. I doubt any one of them was doing this just a few short years later. I actually know this about most of them. Not sure where this fits in, it’s just that I never see references to this type of thing in political discussions about prostitution.
In subsequent threads we’ve often returned to this subject of Cicely’s friends and where they fit in the pornstitution debate. I think these women are the rare, rare exception among prostitutes, but they do exist.
I don’t want to broaden this into a discussion of prostitution. I just want to explain on cicely’s behalf that she has her own life experiences that have brought her to a rather different conclusion about the possibilities of sex work.
-
cicely says:
Pony, I didn’t follow all the links from the opening page, but read all the opening page. Mandos is right that I’ve seen and had many if not all the arguements, a lot on this blog, and I’ve also gone to many other places and printed off material to read away from the computer. I really meant it when I said that I haven’t just ‘read what I believe.’ This is not an easy issue and there are no easy solutions to the problems including poverty, sexism, racism, transphobia, exploitation and abuse around pornography and prostitution. Very recently here in Australia, in Melbourne, an arrest was made at a house where a number of Philippine (spelling?) women had been held captive as sex slaves for about six months. I am as disgusted and angry as anyone else about the men (and women) everywhere who operate this trade as well as with the men who don’t concern themselves with the question of whether or not the woman (or girl) they’re paying to have sex with has been in any way co-erced. And when I say ‘as angry as anyone else’, that includes self-identified and self-named sex-workers who still argue and organise for their own right to work legally and safely. You’re not one of them, and maybe you don’t personally know any, but they do undeniably exist nevertheless.
I can imagine a very different world to the one we’re living in now, in which sex and sexuality is not slimy with shame and calling a woman a whore will carry as much weight as an insult as calling someone a masseuse or a psychotherapist or an actor has today. I don’t know exactly how we’re going to get there from here, I admit, but I see it as a legitimate and desirable goal and I don’t see the anti-porn & prostitution feminist approach as one that offers any hope in that direction. So, my question to you, Pony, is can you see my vision at all?
-
delphyne says:
“So when Delphyne, for example, says “pornography is designed to degrade women,” people like me or Amanda who are thinking of the more traditional definition of pornography (sexually explicit material) immediately have questions.”
Violet, I’m wondering what you think this traditional non-degrading pornography is - Playboy from the 1960s?, Mayfair? Razzle? Bettie Paige? When you say the “more traditional definition” I don’t think you are actually using is a definition, rather you are taking the traditional, or to be more accurate patriarchal *view*, that we should deny the degradation inherent in pornography (writing about whores) despite the fact that that is what it is being bought for.
I used the fact that porn is designed for masturbation in my definition deliberately, because it excludes a whole lot of material that people like to pretend is porn in order to muddy the issue (particularly women who pretend their slash fiction or whatever is porn so they don’t have to feel so bad about their boyfriend using the real stuff - because they’ve got theirs so they must be equal, right?).
“In that worm can thread, Amanda kept saying that she thought Delphyne was arguing from tautology (porn is bad because porn is bad), but it’s possible that Delphyne is just using the Russell definition of pornography.”
That’s because she ignored all my arguments in support of my claim, and, despite the thread running to four hundred posts neither she nor anyone else managed to come up with this mythical non-degrading pornography that people keep talking about, so the tautology claim was wrong although it did make Amanda sound educated. Sexually explicit images of a person are degrading, especially for women because the double standard is still alive and kicking even after nearly forty years of feminism, so a woman who is sexually used is downgraded whilst the man using her gains in male power. If you think pornography is OK would you like to be seen in pornographic poses by your family, your colleagues, your enemies? How would you feel about seeing them in the same way?
In fact Amanda’s arguments were a lot closer to being tautologous than mine - “my friends aren’t misogynists, therefore it is not misogynistic of them to use porn”. Well actually it is, but I think that’s where the fundamental disagreement lies - in a refusal to see that if men are using pornography they are expressing their misogyny, supporting misogyny and helping to spread misogyny.
-
cicely says:
We cross-posted, Violet. I’m still here. (But off to bed now - it’s getting on for 3am here.) Not only that, but it seems to be me who’s broadening this discussion into one on prostitution….
Thanks for posting that quote on my behalf.
-
Violet says:
If you think pornography is OK would you like to be seen in pornographic poses by your family, your colleagues, your enemies?
If I think pornography is okay? Ha! Delphyne, all the pornography I’ve seen is repellent. I dislike the stuff intensely. In our sexist world, it seems it’s all shot through with horrific sexism and outright misogyny (the gay porn I can’t talk about).
I’m sympathetic to those who see profound problems with our porn-sick culture. The thing is, I think anti-porn feminists are actually shooting themselves in the foot with sweeping statements like, “the purpose of pornography is to degrade women.”
Why? Because for most people, “pornography” means “material designed to sexually arouse.” So what you’re saying sounds like, “material designed to sexually arouse is degrading to women.”
But many people (including me) can readily imagine a future Star Trek world where there is no sexism, but where people still love sex and are thrilled and excited by depictions of sexuality. So your statement causes much conceptual consternation, and debates ensue about whether trading photos between lovers is degrading and what about gay porn, anyway? All of which is an enormous distraction.
Frankly, I think antiporn feminists should stop with the big theory about how images demean a person and just focus on the real-world situation of godawful sexist porn. I think the case can readily be made from the material at hand, and people would be able to find common cause without getting bogged down in these absurd and unresolvable conceptual debates.
-
Pony says:
I do not doubt your reading Cecily, nor deny you your vision.
The article, the 4th in the series at the San Franciso Chronicle link, is the sex slave speaking. Roughly, she says at the end “they think we do this by choice”.
She and I hold the same view. So do over 90 percent of prostitutes interviewed for recent studies,
We cannot read everything, even with the best of intentions. I certainly cannot.
-
Pony says:
Ah yes: The Star Trek world, where everything is oh so new and sciency exciting: the 6 inch heels on commando fems, hard as rock projectile cleavages, and not to forget, spray on uniforms constructed with whatever the wearer may not have received in utero. Oh I just love the future. So different from now. Or 50 years ago.
-
Pony says:
I have finally read the quote blog in your post Violet. It’s one and two words wide in my browser!! This only happens here so I’ve no idea but will look into it further.
When we talk about prostitution, we are not talkiing about well educated people with jobs who dabble in it as a kind of risque thrill. I can assure you, the girls I know would hurt them bad. Because there’s nothing we hated worse than a dilletante, trivializing what we did, a middle class woman playing at being fun and dirty for a night. They are hated more than the tricks.
I have never met a whore who didn’t think this way. I have no truck with people who say what someone told them their friend who worked with them’s cousin did. If you follow.
I have done street work, and very high class call girl work. I was an exclusive. That means, the limo came for me. I can assure you, it’s just as horrible fucking a millionaire as it is fucking a n oil-field worker when you don’t want to do it, and don’t want to do what they want you to do, and pretend it’s fun fun fun. Whores get trapped by women who want to basque in the risque too, and we have to pretend for them we like what we’re doing, or at least that it’s not so bad. Really. {bright smile}.
I’ve done with the subject, here, Violet. But thanks for posting Cicely’s link. It’s as I thought.
Pretty Woman. Holly wood whores.
-
delphyne says:
“Why? Because for most people, “pornography” means “material designed to sexually arouse.” So what you’re saying sounds like, “material designed to sexually arouse is degrading to women.””
Where has this wide definition of pornography come from? In my day, when I actually looked at porn sometimes and didn’t see a problem with it, in fact was a proud “non-prude”, everybody knew what pornography was. It was also something to be slightly ashamed of (if you looked at it) and definitely to be ashamed of if you appeared in it. Now only the women in it are ashamed and hurt by their degradation whilst porn users can proudly admit to their use. It was never just about sexual arousal, it was about seeing women in a particular sexist way - they want it, they love it, they’re gagging for it. All lies.
How would non-sexist pornography (writing about whores) look, Violet? How would the porn-makers get anybody to appear in it in this utopian future? Because I guess in utopia there will be no sexual abuse or rape, so that pretty much eradicates the whole pornography workforce as it currently exists, the majority of whom have experienced either one or both. Who except someone whose sexual boundaries have been destroyed will want to take something that is private and personal and put it on show for strangers to use?
As for not liking theorising about porn, I don’t really know what to say to that. You act as if theorising somehow excludes noticing what is actually in pornography which it doesn’t - the theory is based on the contents of porn and women’s real experiences of it. Women are hurt by pornography, we need to know why.
-
cicely says:
Because there’s nothing we hated worse than a dilletante, trivializing what we did, a middle class woman playing at being fun and dirty for a night. They are hated more than the tricks.
Left school young, working class girls all, Pony. Not a high class pub. I worked in factories and hated - or at least thoroughly disliked my jobs. My friends chose casual prostitution from time to time also because it was what they preferred to the available work alternatives. They considered it easier money with better hours and more autonomy. No pimps. No co-ercion. No-one’s different experience is being trivialised, but that’s what *they* did and why.
Now, I really am going off to sleep….
-
richard cherry says:
Jimmy Ho 62 - I don’t have any experience of phone sex, but that’s why I won’t be venturing any opinions on it. I was amused by the irony of two commenters offering thoughts on something they say they have no/little idea about - I do the same myself, but wish I wouldn’t.
That apart, I’ll be with Cicely talking about something else. Interesting that she hasn’t assumed her personal experience to be that of the whole world. -
Jimmy Ho says:
I do not really see any “irony” here: first, I said that “I don’t have much knowledge” about “phone sex”, it is Infidel and you who keep bringing up “experience”, but I can clarify that I don’t have any (as opposed to “some, but not much”) experience of it. What I know about it comes from its advertising in every media (street posters, press, television, radio) and articles I have read or reports I have watched. I did not systematically gather and file that information, that’s what I mean by “not much”.
Based on this and what I know (much better) about other fields of the sex trade, I proposed an explanation of how it works, from the perspective of someone who has never been a “sex phone” customer or operator. I didn’t claim to have the last word about it, nor that my comment was the result of years of research about the “sex phone industry”.
Also, I think Infidel made it obvious, afterwards, that he was not really interested in a response, so I’m not as convinced as you are that he was “offering thoughts” about it. -
Amanda Marcotte says:
I’m not going to wade in again, but I’d like to point out that it’s a false dichotomy between people who “need” porn and people who never look at it at all. Most people I know who use it do it on occasion, but certainly they don’t “need” it. I haven’t looked at a porn video in like a year, but rest assured, I’ve masturbated. This is also true of a lot of male porn users. There’s a myth that to look at porn at all is to be an addict, but like gambling, most users are not habitual. In fact, that was my main point in the original post—the stereotype of the porn addict misogynist does exist, but doesn’t describe all the men who look at it on occasion.
-
Pony says:
Just a little racism once in a while. Not on a regular basis mind you. And usually, while I’m alone you know? Not like I “have” to make racist comments. I’m judicious about it.
-
delphyne says:
“There’s a myth that to look at porn at all is to be an addict”
Maybe there is but I don’t see that going on here.
I think most men who use porn are probably fairly regular users though and I don’t have any reason to believe otherwise. I’m not calling them addicts and I don’t see anyone else doing that except you. It appears you are creating these strawmen, Amanda in order not to engage with the actual arguments. But even if I’m totally wrong about the regularity or otherwise, like Pony says, if bigotry only happens once in a while does that make it any less bigoted?
-
delphyne says:
There’s a good article about the extent of male porn use here:
-
Violet says:
There’s a myth that to look at porn at all is to be an addict, but like gambling, most users are not habitual.
Well, I wasn’t using “need” in the sense of an addict; I was using it to refer to the way so many men seem to need to look at visual imagery to whack off. That’s just a puzzle to me personally.
-
Mandos says:
As an OT aside, here’s one for the Juju file:
An anti-feminist troll says something jujuically revealing.
-
cicely says:
That apart, I’ll be with Cicely talking about something else.
Speaking of the All Blacks, Richard, did you know that the kiwi women’s rugby team - the Black Ferns - recently won the Women’s Rugby World Cup for the third time?
Not being allowed to carry on playing rugby with the boys at lunchtimes at school (through the 1960’s) after age 11 was one of my biggest early disappointments about being a girl in this world. Born too late. No girl’s sports offered an opportunity to carry the ball and run like the wind without restraint, weaving and ducking and fending. (I loved playing ‘British Bulldog’ too.) Hockey was a very poor substitute, although I came to enjoy it in a more limited way.
I’m glad for the girls today that they can now play what is known by insiders as ‘the game they play in heaven.’
-
cicely says:
That was meant to be ‘born too soon’, obviously.
-
Violet says:
Delphyne — where did the definition of pornography come from? It evolved culturally. It’s not something that’s been handed down by the Concept Gods, obviously; pornography is a layperson’s term that has a general agreed-upon meaning. That meaning has been fluid over time, and it hasn’t always involved pictures of women being sexually degraded. In the 1930s Mary Astor’s private diary, when published by a newspaper that obtained it, was deemed “pornographic.”
The point is that wherever or however the current definition came to be — “explicit material designed to sexually arouse” — that is the most widely accepted definition. Many antiporn feminists define it as material designed to degrade, but outside antiporn circles that definition raises eyebrows. It sounds like begging the question.
So what happens when an antiporn feminist starts not from commentary on how real porn is working in the real world, but with a high-level statement like “The purpose of sexual imagery is to degrade women”? What happens is that people are distracted by this definition, which seems to assume a conclusion that is at odds with how people think about sexual imagery (that it can theoretically be neutral). People start asking about imaginary situations, such as a future non-sexist utopias and so forth, in order to define the terms. This is standard procedure in philosophical debate: using hypotheticals to explore the concepts and test the logic. That’s why talk about the existence of God will involve teapots orbiting the Sun and naturally-occuring Swiss watches found in the wild. When antiporn feminists make conceptual statements that sound like they’re saying “imagery is inherently degrading,” those are the kind of hypothetical debates you’re going to get into. It’s not specific to pornography; that’s just how abstract concepts are nailed down.
So why keep getting into that debate? Does it matter? I don’t think it does. I think anti-porn feminists should be focused on how pornography looks and behaves in this world. You can easily do that without recourse to abstract theories about the nature of images.
You can talk about how Playboy normalizes a world where men are sophisticates and women are pliant sexual servants, evaluated purely in terms of their T and A.
You can talk about how the pornification of culture brings lad mags to children’s eye level in supermarkets, thus saturating the world with images of women-as-anonymous-fuckbots.
You can talk about the astounding misogyny inherent in BangBros stuff. About rape pron — what the fuck is that? About racist porn and pedophile porn.
You can talk about the real stories of women abused and coerced in the industry, and ask why people accept this as the price of jacking off.
All that can be talked about without ever invoking a theory that imagery by its very nature is demeaning. And you will find many, many people who would be put off by the hypothetical imagery argument, but who will hear what you’re saying about how real porn works and share your concerns.
-
Isobel says:
delphyne,
You think we fanfic writers don’t get off on each other’s erotica? Let me assure you, we do. Sure, we talk about how we like our sex scenes to build character and/or be artistic, and many of them even do, but hell, half the time the emotional content is put in and the writer takes care to keep the characters in character because in the eyes of the average fandom member it makes the story hotter! It’s at least one of the motives of writing a sex scene, and probably the primary one in what we call the PWP, which stands for either “Plot? What Plot?” or “Porn-Without-Plot” depending on whom you ask, or which they are a lot. Sure, some members of fandom’s highbrow end look down upon them, but others see it as a challenge to write 10,000-word PWPs involving ten characters where there’s enough character development that they remedy the label to Plot? Maybe-a-little-plot”(I’m not kidding! And it was very stimulating too). You’ll have to condemn us with the rest.
-
delphyne says:
Oh my God Isabel. DO YOU?
I’m not condemning you. Pornography is writing about whores. That’s its etymology, that’s why it is created, so men can achieve sexual excitement from the degradation of women’s (and sometimes other people’s) bodies. I have *no* idea why so many people, women especially want to add their sexy stories to the category. The only thing I can think of is that there are a few male partners in the background who look at real porn so their female partners, to make themselves feel better, pretend that what they have is porn too. It isn’t. Either that or maybe it makes you feel a bit edgy to be writing “porn”. You’re not.
Here’s some porn for the naive and ingenuous amongst us. It’s the same list that Robert Jensen referred to when he wrote about the sadistic content of porn -
-
delphyne says:
cont/
http://www.avn .com/index.php?Primary_Navigation=Charts&Secondary_Navigation=Top_60_Pro_Am_Rentals
Top 20 US ProAm Rentals
1 My Friend’s Hot Mom 5 N
2 Jenna’s American Sex
3 Her First Big Cock 5
4 Big Breast Amateur Girls
5 Teen Tryouts 48
6 Cherries 48
7 Bang Bus 10
8 Casting X 64
9 Well Hung Amateurs 3
10 Gang Bang Squad 7
11 Homegrown Video 684
12 More Dirty Debutantes 358
13 Naked College Coeds 56
14 My First Sex Teacher 5
15 Deep Throat Virgins 20
16 Big Mouthfuls 10
17 More Dirty Debutantes 357
18 Natural Bush 32
19 Real Tokyo Amateurs 5 & 6
20 Girls Hunting Girls 20I think this confusion and refusal to acknowledge what porn actually is has something to do with the denial surrounding the whole issue. It’s not unlike the people on Amanda’s thread who seemed to think that criticising porn is a criticism of sex and masturbation.
-
Amanda Marcotte says:
Thanks, Violet. If I sounded a bit short, it’s because I was frustrated by the insinuations at my blog comments that anyone who indulges in porn viewing on occasion is a de facto out of control woman-hating pervert.
-
delphyne says:
They are misogynists Amanda, one of these days you’ll see it. Just like Ampersand with his “review” links to BangBros.
-
delphyne says:
Do your male friends watch the sort of porn listed in Adult Video News charts, Amanda? Or do they stick to arthouse cinemas watching women being raped and then murdered by being drowned in a bucket? That was you that went to see that film wasn’t it? I hope you walked out when that scene came on screen.
What kind of a person goes to see a film like that anyway?
-
Isobel says:
delphyne,
And here I tried to write me entry specifically in then definition you’d given: “Material created for masturabatory purposes.” If you are going to go switching definitions on me like that(should’ve heeded the warnings from other people, but thought I might give it a chance), we can’t have much of a debate, can we?
-
Laila says:
delphyne–
I don’t know what went on in the Pandagon comments between you and Amanda Marcotte, but you ARE arguing from a tautology. It wasn’t just Marcotte’s attempt to sound educated. It was a valid description of your tactics. “Begging the question” would also be a good was of describing it. You’re saying “pron is bad for women because the word ‘porn’ means degradation of women”–which does not answer the question of whether or not any sexually explicit material designed for sexual arousal has to be degrading.
When Violet and others have pointed this out, you’ve switched to the argument that all material meant for sexual arousal is inherently degrading to women. And this is an extremely weak claim. Which is probably why, when people like Violet have attacked claim, you don’t actually defend it–you just defend the empirical proposition that pron is usually bad for women. I think, and Violet would probably agree, that most of the material meant for heterosexual men’s sexual arousal is degrading. That’s an empirical argument. But conceptually, logically, there’s no reason why it necessarily has to be that way. There’s nothing inherently misogynistic about sexual arousal through images.
-
Laila says:
Pornography is writing about whores. That’s its etymology, that’s why it is created, so men can achieve sexual excitement from the degradation of women’s (and sometimes other people’s) bodies. I have no idea why so many people, women especially want to add their sexy stories to the category.
Because most people neither know nor care about the etymological roots of the word “pron.” The colloquial meaning of “pron” is just a nude picture. I’m not sure why the use of the word in feminist theory is automatically more valid than the use of the word in everyday conversation.
We’re all agreed that degrading women’s bodies for men’s sexual pleasure is extremely prevalent and completely wrong.
The only question seems to be, is masturbatory sexual material that isn’t patriarchal (or is much, much less patriarchal, if you don’t believe we can eliminate patriarchy from any media) automatically wrong? And should it be called “pron”? For example, should lesbian erotica created for masturbatory purposes be called “pron”?
Because most people would call it “pron”. Why should feminists try to stop them from calling it that?
-
Infidel says:
I think it should be called pron.
-
Violet says:
Laila: excellent try.
-
Jimmy Ho says:
Pornography and prostitution do not occur only in English-speaking countries or cultures. For a “modern” Greek, ‘porne’ (πόρνη) means “(female) prostitute”, ‘pornia’ (πορνεία) “prostitution”, and a ‘pornio’ (πορνείο) is a brothel, so the link to “pornografia” (πορνογραφία) is as evident as the one between ‘prosopo’ (face) and ‘prosopografia’ (portrait).
It is generally the producers and publishers who try to erase those ties by using words like “adult entertainment” or whatever. Most “pornstars” don’t hesitate to say that what they do is prostitution on film (at least here in France: I’ve heard actresses like Tabatha Cash or Brigitte Lahaie say it and laugh at the concern of sexbiz people who wanted to gain respectability by calling it “le hard”).
-
delphyne says:
“You’re saying “pron is bad for women because the word ‘porn’ means degradation of women”–which does not answer the question of whether or not any sexually explicit material designed for sexual arousal has to be degrading.”
No I’m not that’s a complete distortion of what I’ve said here. I’m arguing that the contents of pornography (material designed for the sole purpose of *masturbation*, not just sexual arousal) is degrading to women. I’ve already explained how that mechanism works on the Pandagon thread which was where this started, so pop over there if you are interested and I’m not going to go through it again. Just ask yourself how you’d feel about appearing in it, or maybe your family or friends. You know the people you care about, rather than porn performers who are just there for pornsturbators to wank over.
I used the etymology of porn to demonstrate the disingenuousness of the people who are insisting that it just means naked pictures and support my assertion that porn has always meant degradation. You decided to pick on that one part of my argument and pretend that is all I’ve said. Read the thread at Pandagon, read my posts here and you’ll see I’ve made a much larger argument than that.
And yeah, I think lesbian porn should be called porn. Just because it’s made by women (even “feminists” ha, ha, ha) doesn’t make it any less offensive and degrading to and objectifying of the participants.
I get the feeling people in trendy circles like talking about “porn” even when that isn’t really what they are talking about. I’ll stick with Andrea Dworkin’s and other anti-porn feminists’ definitions as they actually knew what they were talking about.
-
delphyne says:
“The colloquial meaning of “pron” is just a nude picture.”
See that’s just bullshit - the reason why the Venus de Milo isn’t called pornographic, despite having naked breasts, or Spencer Tunicks crowds don’t merit the description even though they have are naked, but lads mags do get described as pornographic although most of the models they use are only topless is because of the degradation involved in porn.
I simply don’t believe that you think all pictures of naked people are pornographic.
-
delphyne says:
“The only question seems to be, is masturbatory sexual material that isn’t patriarchal (or is much, much less patriarchal, if you don’t believe we can eliminate patriarchy from any media) automatically wrong?”
Well Violet never answered my question despite her fulsome descriptions of the utopia she is planning, so I’ll ask you - who will you get to appear in this non-degrading masturbatory material given that most porn performers have either experienced sexual abuse or rape? It appears to be the number one qualification to enter the porn industry. Nobody should be using people who have already had their sexuality hurt and abused for masturbatory purposes. So if you rule out them there’s not much left to wank to.
The point is using another human being as a sexual object in voyeuristic fashion (I can’t believe that nobody has talked about the voyeurism involved in looking at porn) with no regards to their feelings is degrading to them. Which is why men like to do this to women as it helps them maintain their superior position to us.
-
Laila says:
I’m arguing that the contents of pornography (material designed for the sole purpose of masturbation, not just sexual arousal) is degrading to women.
I know you’ve said this. I don’t see how that’s true, though, which I’ll get to in a moment.
I simply don’t believe that you think all pictures of naked people are pornographic.
I don’t. I’m talking about the colloquial definition, which translates to something like “nude picture that does not appear in a fancy-schmancy museum.”
My definition of porn would be “nude picture created to sexually arouse the viewer(s).” I would define the purpose as sexual arousal generally and not specifically masturbation, because some of what’s called “porn” is used by couples. But, even accepting your definition that “porn” means nude pictures meant for masturbation, I don’t see how it would necessarily be degrading. It’s usually degrading in a patriarchal society, but I think it could occur in a non-degrading fashion if the context changed.
who will you get to appear in this non-degrading masturbatory material given that most porn performers have either experienced sexual abuse or rape?
Firstly, isn’t it the case that most women have either experienced sexual abuse or rape? How is porn unique in this regard?
And who will I get to appear in this non-degrading masturbatory material? Well, some of it would be for personal and non-commercial use. One half of a couple might take nude pics of himself/herself for the benefit of the other half of the couple. For commercial porn, I think you’d have to seek out people who don’t particularly mind being seen naked or people with exhibitionist tendencies–they do exist. I really wouldn’t mind someone I know doing this if I was sure they weren’t being pressured/forced into it and that they were okay with it–in short, if we lived in a completely different society.
The point is using another human being as a sexual object in voyeuristic fashion (I can’t believe that nobody has talked about the voyeurism involved in looking at porn) with no regards to their feelings is degrading to them.
This is the point of my disagreement with you, then. Because what does “no regard to their feelings” mean? Because there are people who don’t mind being looked at in a voyeuristic fashion. So you’re not disregarding their feelings if you look at them that way. I suspect, perhaps wrongly, that you would say that voyeurism is degrading even if it’s done to someone who doesn’t mind it or even downright enjoys it. I can’t agree with that. I can agree that the porn industry has to be fought because it’s so saturated with patriarchy, and that most porn actresses are exploited and abused. I disagree, however, with that theoretical part of the anti-porn argument that says voyeurism in and of itself is degrading.
-
Jimmy Ho says:
To illustrate this early comment of mine about “phone sex”, here is a timely post by Charliegrrl (via Witchy-woo): if you click to aggrandize the picture, you will clearly see that these are all “phone sex” advertisements. They clearly do have a very “visual” effect and anyone familiar with contemporary pornographic imagery can see the relation. I recommend reading Charlie’s description of people’s reaction when those pages are exposed in the shop where the magazines are sold.
I actually stopped buying a certain Greek newspaper (standard daily paper, not a “lads’ mag” or even a tabloid) because its “Classified” section was full of such ads, along with “massage” personals which advertise openly prostitution “services”. -
Infidel says:
So Jimmy an advertisement for a candy bar is a candy bar. And you can taste it and have to account for all the calories by watching the advertisement. I’m sorry but phone sex is not visual. Sorry.
-
Jimmy Ho says:
What are you comparing the candy bar to?
-
Infidel says:
A product that is advertised.
-
Jimmy Ho says:
So, in your example,
Product= candy bar
Ad image= candy bar.How does the comparison with “phone sex” ads like the ones pictured in Charliegrll’s post work? What are the respective “product” and “image”?
-
Infidel says:
Let me put it this way. On page seventy-one of Mario Puzo’s “The Godfather” there is Sonny banging away with one of the brides maids. In my youth I “enjoyed” this bit of literature. I am not sure of the mechanisms and the envisioning involved but I’m pretty sure that there was no visual stimulation.
All I’m saying is if I were to “enjoy” phone sex I don’t think there would be anything visual about it.
But if I must- Ad image=candy bar
Charliegrll’s post Ad image= Ad image
Enjoying candy bar = eating candy bar
tasting candy bar = eating candy bar
looking at Ad image of candy bar = visual stim.
Visual stim = something that stimulates optically -
Jimmy Ho says:
I know that scene; The Godfather was the first English-language book I read entirely. Interestingly, I hadn’t seen the movie when I first read it, so I imagined it based on Puzo’s rather detailed description. However, when I reread it after seeing the film, it was pretty hard for me to not picture it the way Coppola had represented it. This is what I am trying to say: commercial “phone sex” is a part of a larger industry that puts a heavy weight on what you call “visual stimulation”. How many men who call those services have never seen one of those ads that apparently tell them that they will experience “something”, hard to tell what, with the women pictured (this is not as clear-cut as a candy bar ad, hence my question about defining precisely the “product” advertised and how it relates to the visual incentive)?
The idea that commercial “phone sex” can be experienced without any contact with the key elements (many of them of visual nature) of mass market pornography seems very naive to me. It is about money, after all.
-
Jimmy Ho says:
How many men who call those services have never seen… or heard: the “sensual voices” in the radio ads play along the same stereotypes.
-
Mandos says:
This I found rather interesting.
Ignore the disclaimer. People who’ve made it this far in this thread will find the article quite tame as such. It’s another programme like Dubhe’s. I found the implications and language used quite interesting.
-
Violet says:
You’ll have to explain what you see as being so noteworthy.
-
Mandos says:
Well, for starters, she elects to reinforce the paranoia of Christian readers about thought purity:
He (deliberate pronoun not normally used) can read your thoughts at any time of the day or night, even when you secret away to wank off with porn. Do you really think He is going to let you into fluffy-clouded Heaven with those disgusting, dirty little thoughts?
-
Violet says:
I thought that was hilarious. She begins: “To get through to the Christians, here it is.” Followed by subsequent references to the Big Sky Fairy who can read your thoughts and won’t let you into fluffy-cloud heaven. What exactly are you objecting to? Mockery? You’re unhappy that she’s not more respectful of Christians’ childish views about a Big Sky Fairy?
-
Mandos says:
So, I don’t think that the intended audience would take it as a joke. I wasn’t sure it was a joke, myself: maybe she was using this as a way to Get Through To Them. I’m not sure that she realizes that she risks reinforcing a certain thought pattern, if she really did mean it as a joke.
I mean, yes, it’s true that any Christian reader should know that he’s being mocked for his beliefs by a feminist. But nevertheless, there’s an earnestness behind it…or something that can plausibly be read as earnestness under the mockery.
Not sure that I’m being very clear here. If you don’t take this form of religion as Serious Business, I’m not sure how to convey it.
-
Violet says:
I read her post as this:
“What’s wrong with pornography:
1. For you Christians, it’s because…BOO!
2. Okay, for the rest of you with functioning brainstems, here’s the real argument…”
-
Mandos says:
Yes, but *what* BOO! she chose is *significant* and it reinforces itself in later sections. I mean, she could have said that it hurts women and increases the temptation to fornicate or something, but she focused on the God Is Reading Your Dirty Dirty Thoughts…
The language later, as a kind of therapeutic treatment, fits in very well with the whole purity of mind business she uses with the Christians. When you have a dirty, dirty thought, quickly substitute it. Suppress the thought.
Now, it may be that this is an effective treatment. But half the argument about porn is the nature of dirty, abusive thoughts and the effectiveness of suppressing it. I remember BD snarking about how Spinster Aunt Twisty somehow managed to write about sex all the time but never, ever seemed to express an inconvenient desire. Some people believe that inconvenient (and perhaps exploitative) desires are part of the human condition and that antiporn discourses use the language of suppresion.
-
Mandos says:
So, here’s something that I have to get off my chest, for once.
It’s no coincidence that the people on either side of the antiporn/antiantiporn divide are the same people on either side of the original BDSM schism that happened at Twisty’s way back when and is the original instigator of this round of the Sex Wars: Blog Edition.
So, BDSM skeeves me out, a little bit at least. Alon attempted to draw an analogy between it and eating spicy food. Now, I love spicy food. I lick hot sauce sprinkled on my palm, that’s how much I love spicy food. But for me, spicy food is a “closed loop” of pleasure/plain confusion. It’s something I inflict on myself. Pleasure/pain (or control or whatever) conflation in multiperson sex seems to me too fraught with other…issues…that I can’t really sympatize with it at all.
BUT, there’s a line I haven’t figured out—whether my “skeevedness” is principled or whether it is just my conservative, in certain senses, upbringing and personal predilections that makes me fail to appreciate something that others seem to build an identity around. I mean, they’ve built an identity around it: there’s clearly a *there* there. And I can’t help but suspect that some people are taking the same discomfort that I feel—at which they might have arrived via a much more painful route—and extending it into a very grand and ambitious cosmognomy whose basis might be a little suspect.
-
Violet says:
The language later, as a kind of therapeutic treatment, fits in very well with the whole purity of mind business she uses with the Christians. When you have a dirty, dirty thought, quickly substitute it. Suppress the thought.
I’m sorry, I must say I think you’re overreading. Or misreading. She’s ridiculing Christians. The subsequent therapeutic advice has nothing to do with “purity” or “dirtiness” but with unlearning associations. As she says:
“You have to retrain your brain to think in different ways, using a variety of techniques (distraction, substitution, and reprogramming).”
Please point out the “dirty sex” part of that advice. It isn’t there. To be honest, I think you may be giving far too much credence to the arguments of some extreme porn apologists who believe, mistakenly, that the only reason people oppose pornography is because they’re puritans who are icked out by sex. I’m aware of that rhetoric and it’s silly. It’s just wrong. But people who insist on reading all anti-porn discussion through that lens are going to see precisely what they expect to see.
Stormcloud’s discussion of the harm of being psychologically addicted to modern pornography has nothing to do with puritanism. It’s all grounded in modern studies of how pornography affects men (reducing their ability to empathize with women) and how it can damage relationships between couples.
Obviously some couples do fine with pornography, but many women are deeply unhappy with their partner’s addiction to the stuff. And Stormcloud is obviously addressing men who have found porn to be harmful in their relationships and who want to stop using it.
-
Mandos says:
No, you focused on the “dirty” part that I used for rhetorical effect but didn’t really mean. I meant the “reprogramming” part. I am not accusing her of being a prude. I’m sure she has no problem with sex as such. However, she clearly has a theory of exploitative desires, a theory of the harm they cause, and a technique to remove them. And a belief that her theory is universal.
See, when you say,
Obviously some couples do fine with pornography, but many women are deeply unhappy with their partner’s addiction to the stuff. And Stormcloud is obviously addressing men who have found porn to be harmful in their relationships and who want to stop using it.
It’s clear who she’s addressing, but it’s even more clear to me that she believes that *everyone* should find it harmful in their relationships.
This is not stormcloud, so I can’t attribute it to her, but it’s definitely the company she keeps. There is no quarter given to the possibility of the *expression* and *eroticization* of exploitation, not just exploitation itself. The people who object to antiporn ideology—whom I would take seriously—are not so stupid as to make a blanket accusation of prudery, but instead they make an accusation of excessive universalism.
-
Mandos says:
And that theory and technique connects back to how she addressed the devout Christians—even in mockery. What of Christianity she chose to invoke in her “joke.” I don’t think think I’m reading too much into it by saying this.
-
Violet says:
We’re cross-posting, but this is my reply to your
penultimatecomment 132:And I can’t help but suspect that some people are taking the same discomfort that I feel—at which they might have arrived via a much more painful route—and extending it into a very grand and ambitious cosmognomy whose basis might be a little suspect.
I’m sure there’s intellectual dishonesty and self-delusion on both sides of the pornography divide, as there is with most issues. And it is important to try to distinguish between one’s own predilections and cultural critique.
My own observation is that the the porn apologists are strangely adamant in refusing to believe that anyone could have a problem with pornography other than because they’re secretly a fundie puritan. It’s a little bizarre to me. Pornography is a billion-dollar industry with countless numbers of women and boys being horribly abused; studies show that the more men watch pornography the less empathetic they are to women and the more tolerant of violence against women; young women are increasingly reporting that pornography is harming their relationships; and the fact that humiliation-porn is the fastest growing segment of a porn industry that is already the number one form if entertainment for men should be enough to provoke serious questions about misogyny in our society. Yet porn apologists ignore every bit of this and just mock the anti-porn people as being puritans who are squicked out by “dirty sex.” Talk about intellectual dishonesty.
-
Mandos says:
triple post!
See, it all connects back to the concept of “degradation”. If you believe that certain acts are universally degrading (BDSM, sex for money, etc), than the desire to perform these acts are degrading desires, and the consumption of representations of such is a degrading consumption.
-
Mandos says:
My own observation is that the the porn apologists are strangely adamant in refusing to believe that anyone could have a problem with pornography other than because they’re secretly a fundie puritan.
So there are “limp” liberal apologists for all kinds of things all the time. I don’t take those people seriously. I don’t think that’s the argument that BD and antiprincess and all those people are making, if you actually ask them.
-
Violet says:
Well, I don’t know about “all those people.” I’ve seen too many instances now of a very thoughtful post about problems with pornography being mocked over at some soi disant sex-pos feminist site with inane, juvenile foolishness. But hey, there are twits all over. There are definitely some anti-porn twits. Definitivement.
-
Mandos says:
Yes, so, antiporn is a minority position, as we know, so you’ll have a massive flock of naively pro-porn twits show up all the time. I usually simply ignore 90% of the noise out there and listen for the signal. And there is signal there. Right signal, dunno. But signal.
-
Violet says:
Mandos, I want to reply to your citation from sparklematrix but want to make sure I’ve got the right comment. It’s the Professor Fifi comment?
-
Mandos says:
Yes, it’s Fifi.
-
Violet says:
Well, I read through the whole thread anyway. There are some good nuggets in there I would agree with in terms of commenting on how pornography has become ubiquitous, increasingly brutal, and seems to be warping so many relationships. But those nuggets are mixed in with some ideology I disagree with.
My problem, Mandos, is that I’m not a good ideologue. See, what I do in my life is try to understand human societies. Mostly in the past, but also our current situation. I’m obsessed with truth, and with understanding how things got to be the way they are. So for decades now my mind has been attuned to nuance, to gray areas, to sorting past black-and-white statements to the real, messy, confusing reality underneath.
In all honesty, the porn debate often seems to me like it’s being conducted on a cartoon level. On both sides, really.
There is truth and value in the antiporn critique of how modern pornography functions in our culture. Actually I’m working on a post on that right now. That’s kind of the meta-view, the cultural critique view: big picture, what’s going on with our society?
In terms of the personal experience of pornography, though, the antiporn argument that it’s always wrong, always degrading, and always has been — well, that’s not exactly nuanced. What is pornography anyway? Were turn of the 20th century Japanese engravings pornography? Are the illustrations of the Kama Sutra pornography? Is a cheesecake photo of your girlfriend pornography?
And people’s responses to it are clearly varied. Personally, I am one of those women who has never been willing to “share” a man with pornography. If a man’s sexual energy and fantasy is directed towards another woman, even a woman in a magazine, then he’s not my partner. That’s not a feminist critique but really a much more instinctive sort of response. And so I’m deeply sympathetic to women who feel that their porn-whacking men are ‘cheating’ on them somehow, and who feel soul-wounded when their men want not to look into their eyes and make love, but act out some freaky mess they saw in a porn video. The fact that most American men now are habituated to that kind of stuff just makes me sad for young women of dating age.
On the other hand, some people — including some women — say they find pornography healthy and empowering. They love it. Who am I to doubt them?
-
Mandos says:
“What is pornography anyway? Were turn of the 20th century Japanese engravings pornography? Are the illustrations of the Kama Sutra pornography? Is a cheesecake photo of your girlfriend pornography?”
All of this is easily subsumed under patriarchy and the Male Gaze. The “What Is Porn” arguments are thrashed out regularly on radfem blogs.
You have trouble seeing it that way because, as you seem to suggest, you’re not really big on these ideologies/cosmognomies, maybe.
-
Violet says:
Yes, Mandos, I’m aware of the arguments. I’m just saying that I think the Male Gaze thingamajob is like many ideological statements: it’s too narrow for the goopy messy reality that keeps slipping out over the sides.
There are some central truths in the Male Gaze argument that are valid, but it is always a mistake to assume totality when all you’ve really done is identify a goodly portion of something.
-
Violet says:
you’re not really big on these ideologies/cosmognomies, maybe.
Interesting that you would pair those two. Modern cosmogonies, at least, are empirically derived, so you could class them with other empirically-based theories on how stuff works. Ideologies, on the other hand, may have begun life as empirically derived theories but function as top-down interpretations of How Things Are.
The reason this caught my eye is because I think a weakness of the anti-porn argument is its transformation from theory to ideology. When Dworkin was analyzing pornography 30 years ago, she was drawing conclusions based on her observations. This was back when feminists were busy discovering the bars of the cage, sorting out just how it all worked and what it was made of. Dworkin wrote from experience, from observation, from reflection; through that she developed keen insights into how pornography functioned in the world she knew, how it was part the social machine that kept women the sex class. A lot of what she said was really quite accurate and revelatory.
What I think has happened in the past three decades is that that theory has been codified into ideology. Ideology does not take in new information, it’s not a theory to describe empirical observations. It’s dogma about what reality is. What’s lost sight of in the anti-porn rhetoric is that while the Dworkinesque theory works well to describe much of the phenomenon, it does not explain the totality of human sexual response to imagery. Nor, I submit, was it designed to.
This is unfortunate on many levels, not least because when anti-porn theory is made to act like a Total Ideology and then fails, it undermines the valid stuff at the center, the great important insights about sexuality and sociology.
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
[quote]If a man’s sexual energy and fantasy is directed towards another woman, even a woman in a magazine, then he’s not my partner. That’s not a feminist critique but really a much more instinctive sort of response.[/quote]
I disagree that this is just an ‘instinctive’ response. I think most women ‘understand’ at some level or another the entitlement that men feel over women’s bodies. It’s hard to ignore that a large part of masculinity is constructed on the basis of objectifying the female body. Objectification/sexualizing women is a imperative to male bonding and development. Sexual teasing happens at an early age. Women recognize this and often resist in various ways. Unfortunately, it is becoming more acceptable to women for various reasons, whether it’s due to internalized sexism or a ‘coping’ strategy. Afterall, many women are first introduced to porn through their male partners.
I do not deny that women can find pleasure in pornography after they’ve viewed it. However, I am saying that women who do not want to ’share’ their man with pornography are not acting solely out of instinct.
To further illustrate this example, women in the emerging economy of India are experiencing globalization (aka American Cultural Imperialism) at exponential rates. Conservatism is something that is a large part of the lives of upper class/middle class hindus in India, however, upper class hindus also tend to own a lot of the means to enjoy satellite TV/internet connections etc… Like muslims, many hindu women in India cover their heads. Many/most of these women are essentially married off at an earlier age (in their 20s) and expected to breed, take care of the children and manage the household without any real public duties. Unfortunately, with this new form of cultural imperialism - porn is becoming an increasing problem amongst these women’s marriages. Many of these women (many of my relatives) have never known what it’s like to enjoy an orgasm. Now, they’ve gotta worry about their husbands enjoying multiple internet orgasms with their friends on the weekend.
These women know what their duties and obligations are, they know they don’t have much of a choice in who they marry and leaving their husbands is not really an option. So seeing how their husbands consume pornography is just another added realization of their lower status in society. They recognize this, as do most women when they ‘instinctively’ are averse to porn.
Interestingly when the Taliban were in charge of Afghanistan, small ‘cinemas’ were still available to men to get together and collectively jack off to American porn… How does porn affect women’s image of themselves GLOBALLY?
When American television was introduced to Fiji, feminists in the 90’s were quick to study and analyze and FIGHT against the negative effects of american television on the bodies of young fijian girls and women. Women started hating their bodies. I have yet to see ANY feminist question or even ADDRESS HOW PORNOGRAPHY IS ANOTHER FORM OF AMERICAN CULTURAL IMPERIALISM.
We see massive anti-porn protests in Indonesia happening, yet because it’s predominantly a Muslim nation - we dismiss this as an act of ‘fundies’ rebelling on freedom. Yet, we can also view this as an act of resistance from American cultural imperialism.
Like thier ‘liberal-feminist’ predecessors pro-porn advocates IGNORE the affects of how pornography affects women globally.
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
Another theme that continually runs througout these threads is the idea of ‘feminist utopia’.
I think it’s safe to admit that no one really knows what an actual feminist utopia would look like.
However, I would imagine it to be a place where I could run around topless (I’m an anti-porn socialist fem) without having to worry about fear of sexual harassment, without having to worry about men staring at my boobs and measuring them against pamela anderson’s or worse taking illicit photos of them and distribute them amongst their friends without my consent, without having to worry that they aren’t the right size/shape/colour.
But this essentially would require that women’s breasts were actually THEIR OWN. I.e. not the visual property of men. So with that in mind, a feminist utopia/post patriarchal utopia would be one that would not be ‘conducive’ to a tits and ass mentality that is pervasive in the commodified porn paradigm. Tits sell… hefner figured it out a long time ago. But the reason tits sell (and I guess this is where I actually AGREE with pro porners) is because ‘pornography’ (or mainstream at least) is about ’sex being dirty’. So, men get off on women’s degradation (this is where I disagree with pro-porners and agree with delphyne/rad fems).
Degradation in this sense is essential to pornography and for it to exist, because women in everyday interactions must be clothed - so to unclothe women is not an act of ‘beauty’ but that of a ‘dirty’ woman. So both ‘pornography’ and ‘much of hetero sex’ is used as something to ‘degrade women’ by and at the sametime reify masculinity. This can be examined by simply looking at the way porn is marketed and advertised, it’s all about ’slut-shaming’.
Of course there are those who can’t imagine a world where women would not have to pay for their rent by renting their bodies - but I guess for me that isn’t any different than the current paradigm - so if that’s utopia, fuck that shit. What I’m saying is women’s bodies would not be commodities in my utopia, women’s bodies would be their own. Free from BOTH capitalist commodification and conservative morality. Both of these require the direct control of women’s bodies.
Additionally, I do disagree that taking a photos of each other in a relationship is the same as ‘porn’. As primarily a socialist feminist - I do believe that the main problem with the current pornography frame requires a JOHN (Porn consumers) and a PIMP (porn distributors, makers, web portals/sex worker mags - in the case of women who are ’self-employed’).
I also think it was disingenuous of Jack Goff to say that he would actually use the photos of his gf to jackoff too…I also think it was a very deliberate attempt to derail the thread. He may look at the pics - but having already had sex with his gf, I’m sure he may be slightly aroused by the pics and then proceed to fantasize about their actual previous encounters together… Therefore the photo doesn’t really ‘fit’ into either definition of porn that is being used here.
But at the sametime one has to wonder why people exchange photos with each other in the first place, when they could just revert to using their memory of the experience.
——————————
Using ancient artifacts to justify the present industry is useless. If you take into context women’s limited rights throughout history - and the fact that most works of art/sexual manuscripts depict courtesans [READ: women who were of lower social and economic standing] we are actually looking at the sexual exploitation of lower class women.
most Italian nudes were commissioned for men’s private bordellos/veiwing cabinets for their own viewing pleasure. If you see the movie ‘the girl with the pearl earring’ - you’ll see how those power dynamics play out.
Impressionists were unapologetic about using prostitutes as models.
Most ‘religious’ type paintings portrayed nudity as either sin/innocence before god. Many times the religious models were men - and then breasts were just kinda ‘imagined’ onto their bodies.
Anyways - point being, yeah, the kama sutra paintings and sculptures are pornography… they operate on the john/pimp paradigm - and require the exploitation of lower class women (i.e. a system of courtesans/devadasis) who were the direct property of the king/landowner.
The writing itself - reveals a bit about courtesans as well. And anyways, when we think of such things, and as we examine such things in the present - we need to take into the total context of women’s lived reality/status in society.
-
ehj2 says:
i must have been traveling or hiking when this conversation began. having, in a sense, been invited to participate, i apologize for my tardiness, and the babbling which follows.
~~~
being photographed does not diminish us. but “accepting” the place of a commodity — purposively — in a photograph diminishes us. being willing to be used as an object diminishes us. this is different from being willing to be useful. being caught on film being our authentic selves does not diminish us — even if that authenticity is expressed in “acting” as a different kind of “souled” being (not an object). being an object, in any of the myriad ways one can be an object, diminishes us. we’ve touched on this conversation in the arena of sports and football. to the owners, players are well-paid objects, traded and used and discarded when their utility as objects is sufficiently diminished.
our culture teaches us to be objects, to sell our time, our creativity, our labor, and even ourselves to make a living. we’re told our value is in being good objects. it’s hard to be sufficiently conscious of this because it is the water we live in.
a good deal of what occurs “out there” in the real world is compensatory and unconscious, and the closer the activity is to deep natural drives, the more unconscious it is. if we think of “power” as efficacy and competence at self-mastery and agency, and look at the world across a realm of time, we see masculine mastery savaged and diminished by corporatism across the globe. the drive toward wholeness in each psyche will demand some form of balancing — compensating — activity.
the sine qua non of masculinity is mastery. a man’s self-worth is tied up in his competence and agency in the world. what is he good for? what is he good at? what is his level of independence and justifiable confidence? yet everywhere we look, he is an object — rarely even valued as a servant — working for a faceless and mindless machine culture that strips him each day of more and more agency for less and less return. it’s not called “the rat race” for nothing.
pornography is compensatory, illusory mastery of what has already slipped away, but as a symptom is utterly revealing and poignantly precise in what has been lost.
men degrade women “out there,” reenacting “out there” the degradation and objectification of the feminine “in here.” a man has to ignore and partially kill a part of himself to be an object, to be a rat. the nature of pornography won’t improve, and can’t improve, until the feminine in men is given nurturance and sanctuary. this doesn’t mean give men more power, it means giving the feminine in both women and men more honor and relevance and open expression in the culture “out there.”
the word pornography is too inclusive here. the sin, the psychological error, is commoditization. to “be” an object, to “use” an object for an end. it is not the photograph that diminishes, but the way the photograph is engaged. a beautiful man or woman is not diminished by being beautiful (or by being photographed as an expression of beauty), but the viewer is diminished if the frame through which beauty is viewed — “male gaze” — says “object” and “other” to be used and exploited in any way.
beauty is never really “out there.” it is projected from “in here.” if we “use” our projections “out there,” psychologically we are only using ourselves, the projections of our deepest hopes and highest dreams. to degrade our own heaven, to ignore and kill off our own dreams by using and exploiting and discarding them, is to make our own hell. this is what is diminishing. to accept that this is all we are and all we can be and all we can have.
we are aware that certain edifices cannot be built without a scaffold. including temples. and this means temples “in here” as well as “out there.” human sexuality is too intimate with all forms of psychological creativity to be handled simply with a one-answer-fits-all. if a photo inspires, it moves beyond the realm of object. to be “inspired” is to be “breathed” by something beyond oneself. how one seeks to be inspired and “moved” says where one’s treasure is, what one’s god is, what one is servant of.
is desire our servant? or are we servant of our desire?
do we ride the horse of our instincts? or are we ridden?
how we look at beauty, or feel beauty, or think about beauty, says how we hold the holy.
a photo can be a scaffold that stops one and makes the temple around us suddenly apparent. again, we are talking about projection, but when we’re experiencing the temple within “out there,” we’re on holy ground … and what we do then on this holy ground says what kind of priests we are in the temple of our own heaven.
the participants here tend to be academic thinkers and precise writers who relish organized thought and clarity of expression. in a sense, then, their master is thought. i suspect that few of the readers here would willingly be made “dumb” for anything, even heavenly bliss. they do not understand those whose principle frame of experience is sensing, even though conscious sensing is just as holy as conscious thinking. but sensors are not going to give up their frame, nor the scaffolding that holds and supports their world.
i’m an extreme intuitive. it’s easy for me to stop both thinking and sensing for long periods of time. i lose track of my body easily and move through the world without “worded” thoughts, and am often only pulled back into it by its demands for food or rest. my point is that none of us are going to exchange positions voluntarily, and lacking substantive awareness of each other’s frame, we each have difficulty understanding the others’ appetites and needs. plato said it well, “one man’s meat is another man’s poison.”
allow me for a moment to move to another side of this issue. women’s anger with men in general is also mostly compensatory and unconscious. most men, individually, do not wake up each morning wondering how they can be more monstrous and patriarchal. and women, knowing men individually, continue to love and marry them and struggle with them. but our culture (that we have all made together with our myriad micro-decisions and micro-actions), with its unconscious obeisance to the masculine focus of efficiency and productivity at all costs, is monstrous. we have made a machine that enfolds the planet, and made ourselves its servant and those who refuse to be servants, outcasts. this is what we all feel at some deep level. and this is what must be addressed.
pornography — as we are discussing it here — is just one of many symptoms of the imbalance between the masculine and the feminine in the world. and both men and women support — unconsciously — the extremes of productivity and efficiency and objectification of beauty and human/spiritual values.
we have to be willing to give up being faster, more beautiful, smarter, more productive, more efficient, having more and deeper orgasms, and cooler cars and sweeter or richer food. we have to be willing for the moment to be enough.
we have to be willing for the moment to simply open and reveal the heavens within.
/ehj2
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
Oh yeah, I wanted to clarify why I think we have to stop assuming female partner’s reactions are ‘instinctive’ and a ‘knee-jerk’ reaction and use that as a dismissive point.
Women’s views on pornography are important and as I’ve explained they are not ‘merely instinctive’ but a ‘conflicted’ ideas/realizations/thought processes.
And when women usually try to counter / combat their partner’s use - they usually have to fall back on a biologically reductionist argument in order to try and rationalize this behaviour despite their discomfort.
We need to both ’study’ women’s responses to porn, make their voices heard against it (i.e. take women seriously) and finally to empower women with the knowledge that they don’t need to fall on biological reductionism.
Those three points 1) female partners responses to porn 2) american cultural imperialism 3) john/pimp models are things that are rarely if ever brought up in pro/anti porn discussions and that’s what makes these dialogues incredibly 2D.
-
Violet says:
AradhanaDevindra, I’m going to have to come back to your very interesting comments a little later (the reification argument is one I share and that I think is the most productive one for anti-porn), but I do want to clarify what I meant about my reaction to pornography being instinctive.
My point was that while my attitude may very well be feminist, it didn’t result from feminist analysis. I didn’t read feminist works and then decide, based on those arguments, that I resented a partner’s use of pornography. My refusal to tolerate pornography comes from the gut, or maybe from the solar plexus. And I’m certainly not being dismissive of my own response, which is completely authentic and valid. I was just trying to make clear my feeling isn’t based on intellectual argument.
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
Hi Violet,
I understand that you mean to say there is a ‘difference’ between feminist intellectual analysis and between ‘women’s reaction’ to porn.
But what I am trying to illustrate is that I don’t think the two are separate. I know I haven’t done a terribly good job of explaining how women in countries where their public access and status is ‘overtly’ lower than mens status women are ‘aware’ of their lower status and women are directly aware that women in porn are being ‘objectified’ and there is a connection between their lower status in society and men’s porn use.
Many idioms and sayings in Indian society depict women’s realization of the ‘burden’ it is to be a woman. So - what I mean to say is when women object to porn, they do so because it’s a ‘conflict’ between what they are told to believe i.e. that relationships are equal and that relationships are supposed to be about ‘love’ and then the realization that those ideals are not ‘respected’ this is where the conflict arises.
It’s like when someone asks me when I was a feminist, I never really called myself a ‘feminist’ formally until I was 23, but I always respond to these questions that I was ‘always’ a feminist - I just never had a label to justify my feelings of outrage and society would justify my feelings for me (because feminism is sooo unacceptable).
So, going back to the whole argument…..
I guess I’m just saying “the personal is political” ;) -
Violet says:
I understand that you mean to say there is a ‘difference’ between feminist intellectual analysis and between ‘women’s reaction’ to porn.
No, I’m sorry, I’m still not explaining clearly. I was just saying that my attitude stemmed not from feminist reading but from an instinctive reaction. Actually we can easily go on from there and talk about how instinctive reactions like this are profoundly feminist, even if the woman in question has never read a feminist book in her life or ever heard of feminism. But that wasn’t the point I was trying to make.
To put it another way, I was answering this imaginary question, “Where did you get the idea that you should resent a man’s looking at porn? Did you get that from Dworkin?” And my reply is, “I didn’t get it from anybody, I didn’t learn it from any intellectual argument. It’s instinctive.”
-
delphyne says:
“My problem, Mandos, is that I’m not a good ideologue.”
I think you are Violet, you just don’t like to admit it. You’re a liberal who likes to pretend you are above the fray, and that nothing touches you. That’s an ideology, one that serves power very well indeed, as it never challenges it.
“See, what I do in my life is try to understand human societies. Mostly in the past, but also our current situation. I’m obsessed with truth, and with understanding how things got to be the way they are. So for decades now my mind has been attuned to nuance, to gray areas, to sorting past black-and-white statements to the real, messy, confusing reality underneath.”
You know I’ve never understood this strong attachment to nuance and complexity. They are certainly very useful in some circumstances but isn’t it a bit black and white to demand that that approach should taken in *every* circumstance? Some things are black and white: slavery is wrong, rape is wrong, prostitution is wrong, pornography hurts women, I’m sure you get the idea.
“In all honesty, the porn debate often seems to me like it’s being conducted on a cartoon level. On both sides, really.”
Well once again that allows you to set yourself above everybody else as the final arbiter, rather than somebody who is actually brave enough to take a position. It’s probably a comfortable postion but is it a particularly useful one?
………“In terms of the personal experience of pornography, though, the antiporn argument that it’s always wrong, always degrading, and always has been — well, that’s not exactly nuanced.”
Is it correct though? That’s the more important question. Attachment to nuance is an aesthetic judgement not a ethical or even logical one.
“What is pornography anyway? Were turn of the 20th century Japanese engravings pornography? Are the illustrations of the Kama Sutra pornography? Is a cheesecake photo of your girlfriend pornography?”
You’d think that this one would have been laid to rest by now. An inability to define pornography on your part doesn’t appear to stop you making categorical statements like this one -
“Pornography is a billion-dollar industry with countless numbers of women and boys being horribly abused; studies show that the more men watch pornography the less empathetic they are to women and the more tolerant of violence against women; young women are increasingly reporting that pornography is harming their relationships; and the fact that humiliation-porn is the fastest growing segment of a porn industry”
You don’t appear to be hamstrung by semantics there, tripping over yourself worrying whether you are talking about Japanese engravings (because we know you’re not) in fact you are quite direct.
“And people’s responses to it are clearly varied. Personally, I am one of those women who has never been willing to “share” a man with pornography. If a man’s sexual energy and fantasy is directed towards another woman, even a woman in a magazine, then he’s not my partner. That’s not a feminist critique but really a much more instinctive sort of response. And so I’m deeply sympathetic to women who feel that their porn-whacking men are ‘cheating’ on them somehow, and who feel soul-wounded when their men want not to look into their eyes and make love, but act out some freaky mess they saw in a porn video. The fact that most American men now are habituated to that kind of stuff just makes me sad for young women of dating age.
On the other hand, some people — including some women — say they find pornography healthy and empowering. They love it. Who am I to doubt them?”
Probably for the same reason you wouldn’t believe a slave if they told you they loved their master and didn’t want to be free, or an abused women who said her the man who beat her really loved her. Do you always take people at their word rather than looking at the wider context? That’s not a very nuanced approach.
-
delphyne says:
“The reason this caught my eye is because I think a weakness of the anti-porn argument is its transformation from theory to ideology. When Dworkin was analyzing pornography 30 years ago, she was drawing conclusions based on her observations. This was back when feminists were busy discovering the bars of the cage, sorting out just how it all worked and what it was made of. Dworkin wrote from experience, from observation, from reflection; through that she developed keen insights into how pornography functioned in the world she knew, how it was part the social machine that kept women the sex class. A lot of what she said was really quite accurate and revelatory.
What I think has happened in the past three decades is that that theory has been codified into ideology. Ideology does not take in new information, it’s not a theory to describe empirical observations. It’s dogma about what reality is. ”
So what date did Dworkin’s analysis of porn stop reflecting reality and become an ideology and dogma Violet? Can you narrow it down? Was it in 1972 when Deep Throat came out? How about some time in the eighties when Debbie Did Dallas? Maybe the 1990s after Jenna Jameson had been raped and gang-raped a couple of times and went on to a career in porn. Maybe it was at the beginning of the noughties when Max Hardcore choked women on film and flushed their heads down toilets, the Bang Bros got hos in their van to rape and then toss out on to the street and Lara Roxx got Aids from having not one but two penises inserted in her rectum.
“What’s lost sight of in the anti-porn rhetoric is that while the Dworkinesque theory works well to describe much of the phenomenon, it does not explain the totality of human sexual response to imagery. Nor, I submit, was it designed to.”
You’re right. Dworkin’s analysis is about pornography as is other radical feminist anti-PORNOGRAPHY analysis, not the totality of human sexual response - that would have been Kinsey who made that claim when he used paedophiles to abuse children and then record their reactions then called it a study into human sexuality.
“This is unfortunate on many levels, not least because when anti-porn theory is made to act like a Total Ideology and then fails, it undermines the valid stuff at the center, the great important insights about sexuality and sociology.”
I think what you are really complaining about is that I said that blokes taking sexual photos of their female partners are inspired by porn (monkey see, monkey do) and that the photos are pornographic. You appear to be arguing that we can go so far but not all the way in our analysis. I’m hearing the liberalism again. Of course if that wasn’t direct at me I’d love some examples of that Total Ideology you are claiming exists.
-
Violet says:
Delphyne, I’m sorry you’re upset with me, but do you really think I’m your enemy? In attacking me, you’re not attacking a pornographer, a user of pornography, a porn apologist, a pro-porn feminist, or even a porn-neutral feminist (just to run through the continuum). You’re attacking a feminist who’s basically anti-porn, just not quite as anti-porn as you are.
-
Mandos says:
Violet! You are a running-dog shill of the patriarchal exploiter! Splittist!
Seriously, though, I partly agree with delphyne on the nuance business. I find invoking nuance and aloofness over political matters as a value in itself to be ideologically a little suspect. Though it doesn’t mean to me that there *isn’t* nuance, but invoking it as a principle is problematic.
-
Violet says:
Mandos, you know I didn’t invoke nuance as a political principle (and where the fuck did “aloofness as political principle” come from?). I was explaining how my mind works. When I study a question I tend to study it from all angles, I look at shades of meaning, and try to grasp the variety of human experience.
-
delphyne says:
“Dworkin wrote from experience, from observation, from reflection; through that she developed keen insights into how pornography functioned in the world she knew”
I’m sorry to keep hammering away at this but seriously Violet, what on earth do you mean “the world Dworkin knew”? Was that any different to the world the rest of us know? Dworkin was saying the same things right up until she died at the early age of 58 a year and a half ago. The way you are describing her you make her sound like some kind of anachronism safely in the past who was saying nothing relevant to us young things living in the modern age. That’s so off-base I don’t even know where to begin with it.
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
Right, and my argument is that those ‘instincts’ ‘develope’ because of the conflict between your expectations of a relationship and the reality of/dismissal of those expectatioins.
And unlike thoughtful people like you (us), society generally uses this to dismiss women’s views on porn. It’s interesting because in this paradigm - women’s ‘instincts’ arise from a biologically reductionist argument (i.e. as instincts) and the countrer-argument (the predominant one at least) is that men’s use of porn is due to their ‘visual’ nature… so it’s the hierarchy of the biologically reductionist arguments.
Anyways, I digress. I would like it if feminists took and talked about how female partners views of porn are legitimate and how these women are affected by their male partners use of porn just as we take women viewing/reading ‘women’s fashion magazines and television’ seriously.
But these things are usually avoided and if we are going to move forward with finding new ways to talk about anti-porn we need to do what we do with other feminist causes. We need to assess it from women’s perspectives and how it affects them as well.
-
delphyne says:
Violet, I look at what people say, not at their self-descriptions. In your jabs at Dworkin and other anti-porn feminists you definitely aren’t positioning yourself on our side.
If you think I’m going to be happy having my position described as one half of a cartoon debate (something not to be taken seriously, something to be laughed at) you are sorely mistaken. If you think many radical feminists are going to agree with you that Dworkin’s criticisms of porn were of their time and somehow have no application to pornography right now, again you can probably expect some strong disagreement.
Thank you for the clarification about how your mind works. My interest in arguments is whether they are correct or not, not whether they display the requisite amount of nuance. That’s how my mind works.
-
cicely says:
What I think has happened in the past three decades is that that theory has been codified into ideology. Ideology does not take in new information, it’s not a theory to describe empirical observations. It’s dogma about what reality is.
Your whole comment around this speaks to me, Violet. I was just thinking about it today as a matter of fact - in the context of a certain repetitiveness and/or lack of imagination I was observing in a particular feminist debate. There seems to be a lot of ‘received wisdom’ around, and not enough original thought. (I’m waiting to take delivery - quaint term, eh? - of Janet Halley’s book ‘Split Decisions - How and Why to Take a Break from Feminism’ - partly because I’ve seen written about it that it initiates a paradigm shift…) I wonder whether any individual would like to be perceived by others as an ideologue, as in, would it always be an insult or would some people take pride in it? Conformity always offers belonging, after all, but maybe people can disguise that urge, even from themselves at times.
Ok, apologies for the slight diversion, just wanted to say….
-
delphyne says:
So funny to talk about conformity with regards to radical feminists. We’re probably one of the smallest political minorities in the world. Dismissing radical feminists, misrepresenting our positions and generally having nothing good to say about us ever, puts you in a much larger group.
Then again you could stop worrying about conformity and look at the actual arguments - whether you think they are right or wrong, but that wouldn’t allow space for digs and the jibes.
-
Violet says:
Delphyne, you’re misreading me. Really.
Violet, I look at what people say, not at their self-descriptions. In your jabs at Dworkin and other anti-porn feminists you definitely aren’t positioning yourself on our side.
What jabs at Dworkin? I think she did tremendous work. And my jabs at anti-porn feminists are the same as my jabs at pro-porn feminists: there are a few twits on both sides who muddy the debate.
If you think I’m going to be happy having my position described as one half of a cartoon debate (something not to be taken seriously, something to be laughed at) you are sorely mistaken.
Again, my reference to the “cartoon level” of the debate is referring to the way certain people on both sides muck things up with sloppy arguments (or juvenile foolishness, which is particularly the case with the pro-porn people).
If you think many radical feminists are going to agree with you that Dworkin’s criticisms of porn were of their time and somehow have no application to pornography right now, again you can probably expect some strong disagreement.
I didn’t say that Dworkin’s arguments were solely “of their time.” I mentioned how she arrived at them, through empirical observation of the world she knew. And where do you even get that I think they have no application to pornography today? I’ve never said that, nor do I think that.
-
cicely says:
Some things are black and white: slavery is wrong, rape is wrong, prostitution is wrong, pornography hurts women, I’m sure you get the idea…..My interest in arguments is whether they are correct or not, not whether they display the requisite amount of nuance. That’s how my mind works.
A few comments have come in while I was writing my last - and I guess mine would invite the accusation that I’m a liberal ideologue too. Anyway - you’re certain that you’re right about all the above, delphyne. I have no such certainty that, while they both contain great wrongs, either prostitution or pornography are ‘wrong’ perse - end of story. To you, therefore, I’m just wrong while you’re correct. To me - you and I have different beliefs.
-
Mandos says:
So,
My problem, Mandos, is that I’m not a good ideologue. See, what I do in my life is try to understand human societies. Mostly in the past, but also our current situation. I’m obsessed with truth, and with understanding how things got to be the way they are. So for decades now my mind has been attuned to nuance, to gray areas, to sorting past black-and-white statements to the real, messy, confusing reality underneath.
Among other things, delphyne is asking whether or not this is a good thing or merely just another political ideology. I’ve had this argument with a lot of people from time to time.
-
Violet says:
It isn’t a political ideology at all.
-
Violet says:
I’m going to pick up these things as I can, but I wanted to respond to this:
Using ancient artifacts to justify the present industry is useless.
I’m not sure if you were referring to my mention of Japanese engravings, etc., but if you were, my purpose in mentioning them was not to justify the present industry. Justifying the present industry is about as far from my intentions as possible. What I was touching on was the ongoing dispute about what’s porn and what isn’t, a dispute that has derailed a number of discussions — needlessly, I think. My remark was brief because it was just me and Mandos at that point and I figured he got the references.
-
delphyne says:
“What jabs at Dworkin? I think she did tremendous work. And my jabs at anti-porn feminists are the same as my jabs at pro-porn feminists: there are a few twits on both sides who muddy the debate.”
It’s called damning with faint praise in the way that you pretended that Dworkin’s work was somehow “of its time” when actually its time is right now. I wasn’t joking when I asked you to pinpoint when Dworkin’s analysis stopped being accurate and became dogma. Please could you elaborate on which parts of her work this happened to and when it did. What changed?
“Again, my reference to the “cartoon level” of the debate is referring to the way certain people on both sides muck things up with sloppy arguments (or juvenile foolishness, which is particularly the case with the pro-porn people).”
Something I *keep* seeing you doing Violet is trying to paint both sides as bad as each other. As if this was indeed a cartoon fight over something that doesn’t matter very much rather than a serious battle over women’s identities and bodies and ultimately our freedom. One side is right, the other side is doing everything it can to stop us, including using liberal tactics of complaints about lack of nuance and complexity and accusations of cartoonishness. If you think an argument is sloppy, point out its weakness (and no lack of nuance does not necessarily equal a sloppy argument).
“I didn’t say that Dworkin’s arguments were solely “of their time.” I mentioned how she arrived at them, through empirical observation of the world she knew. And where do you even get that I think they have no application to pornography today? I’ve never said that, nor do I think that.”
*What* is this world she knew? It’s the world we know Violet. Do you live in a different world to the one Dworkin lived in when she was alive because I certainly don’t? And again, I’d like an answer to that question if possible. Please can you provide some examples of what you actually mean. Saying that she started writing thirty years ago isn’t an example - most current political thinkers have careers as long as that.
-
cicely says:
So funny to talk about conformity with regards to radical feminists. We’re probably one of the smallest political minorities in the world.
That may be true - but I’m reporting something I’ve noticed in the feminist blogosphere. Sometimes it looks to me like there’s a ready made radical feminist template from which all discussion stems for some - and the same old arguements go round and round and round again. They start from ‘this template is right’ and they end up there too. Often personal attacks then take the place of the discussion - because discussion has become impossible. I’m ready to concede irreconcilable differences at some levels, or on some subjects, and I think 30+ years on that this may be a sensible thing to do. It won’t stop me thinking though.
Then again you could stop worrying about conformity and look at the actual arguments - whether you think they are right or wrong, but that wouldn’t allow space for digs and the jibes.
I do look at the arguements, and respond to them too, but I think I can also be permitted to wonder whether or not I think a person saying ‘This is..because I say and believe it is’ might be an ideologue. They do exist.
-
delphyne says:
“Anyway - you’re certain that you’re right about all the above, delphyne. I have no such certainty that, while they both contain great wrongs, either prostitution or pornography are ‘wrong’ perse - end of story.”
I know you don’t Cicely. I’ve seen you defending prostitution a number of times on this blog. The point I was making to Violet was that it wasn’t always necessary to be nuanced to be correct. Nobody complains about lack of nuance if someone states that rape is wrong. Most people are happy enough to agree with that statement.
-
love2all says:
Alright, I’m not completely engulfed into this conversation so I apologize for not hitting all the points.
I do believe that some things are black and white, but very few. I also realize that what I believe is black and white is not so to some people. In some cultures, incest is not wrong, for example. And I like looking at porn (some of it IS degrading to women, I admit, but certainly not all porn. Heck, some porn doesn’t even involve women!). And I have friends who’d argue that prostitution is not wrong.
Generally, I see things as mostly gray. You have to keep that in mind, I think, when discussing matters with people. If an argument is soundly structured and logical (despite whether or not I agree with their point), I still think it’s an argument worth considering.
Anyway I just wanted to make a few comments and I KNOW didn’t hit on the main topic but just wanted to say that.
-
delphyne says:
“This is..because I say and believe it is’ might be an ideologue. They do exist.”
You know I’m not up on all the latest arguments because they don’t interest me that much, but I’m pretty sure I’ve heard voiced abroad the idea that we all operate from an ideological position whether we like to admit it or not. All human beings use belief systems to operate in the world because we’d probably find things pretty difficult if we didn’t. Perhaps ideologies are more structured and consistent and visible belief systems, but I thought that postmodernism had helped to chuck out the old “I’m objective - you’re a raving ideologue” claim.
Anyhow radical feminists aren’t ideologues going by your definition Cicely because we base our analysis and thought in women’s own lived experiences.
-
Violet says:
Delphyne, the reason I can’t answer your questions about Dworkin is because I didn’t say what you think I said. You’re insisting that I elaborate on an imaginary statement.
In my original comment, I was contrasting Dworkin’s empirically-derived theories to top-down ideologies. Most younger people have no idea that Andrea was a veteran of sex work herself and had contact with hundreds of abused women who relied on her to tell their stories. She knew that world first-hand, up-close, she knew that women were being hurt terribly by pornography. She was not some moralizing ideologue in an ivory tower who decided, ex recto, that porn was wrong. She saw it. She knew it. She developed her own profound analysis of pornography herself based on a close observation of the world.
The transition from theory to dogma happens in the minds of believers.
As if this was indeed a cartoon fight over something that doesn’t matter very much rather than a serious battle over women’s identities and bodies and ultimately our freedom.
Indeed, the very reason inane debate infuriates me is because the real stakes are extremely serious.
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
I’m not sure if you were referring to my mention of Japanese engravings, etc., but if you were, my purpose in mentioning them was not to justify the present industry.
Okay, I understand. But many people do use this to justify the antiquity of ‘pornstitution’…now I am clear that this is not what you were trying to do.
However, I think that my definition of pornography (as I have tried to explain above) is slightly different then.
I don’t view pornography as something that is solely for masturbation or titilation or degradation…
But rather I think things become and ARE PORNOGRAPHIC (regardless of whether they are directly labelled pornography) when a degrading version of women’s sexuality is commodified and reifies male sexual privilege (i.e. is exchanged) while women’s overall social and economic status is not on par with that of men.
Or something of that sort. And no, I am not for ‘feminist’ porn either, because like I mentioned before much of porn making depends on the sexual exploitation of women of lower social/economic standing. Let’s say Jenna Jameson decided to be in a feminist porn movie, really - is it still ‘feminist’ porn? There’s a lot of crossover. And anyways - most feminist porn makers have to shut up about the rest of the porn industry anyways, i.e. they can’t speak up against it.
I guess this is slightly more in line with radical feminist ideas of pornography. However, under my definition as I have tried to explain most art (like venus of urbino, most impressionist paintings, the kama sutra etc…) are pornographic.
I.e. if women weren’t allowed to vote/own property and yet they were allowed to be ‘professional sex workers’ then there is obviously something wrong.
so if those things aren’t pornographic then really why are we really fighting this fight? We need to and must address not just how there are other women’s rights wars to be fought VS pornography, as though it is separate from women’s lives. BUT RATHER we need to shift the focus to making connections between our bodies/our physicality/perceptions and how those feedback in general.
Likewise, if rape and sexual violence are prevalent in society (and women’s bodies are being used as a weapon during wars - i.e. raping women is as much about attacking the ‘enemy’ as it is about sexual sadism) then most things of a sexual nature become / are pornographic when they depict women nude (I recognize very rare occassions where women’s nude art IS subversive).
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
To add, if women’s reproductive rights in the US especially, are being stripped away - and yet, pornography is rampant.
What does this say?
To me it says, women’s bodies are being controlled every which way that patriarchy (conservative and capitalistic) can maximize to it’s benefit.
That is why it’s vital that in our definition of pornography we take into account women’s overall social and economic power. As I’ve tried to account for in my definition…
-
Violet says:
As I’ve tried to account for in my definition…
Actually I’m not clear on your definition of pornography. I’ve re-read your comments above and I see the importance you place on the social status of women as the sex class, the reification of our sexuality, the pimp-john model, etc., but I missed a clear sort of summary “pornography is…” definition.
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
I don’t have a clear-cut definition of “pornography”, because there are plenty of things that are not defined as PORNOGRAPHY, but I consider them to be Pornographic and/or contributing to pornographic culture. Such as maxim, UK lads mags, the Kama sutra sculptures on temples, Boob jobs and vaginoplasty etc… For discussions such as these when people play the ‘what’s porn’ game… it’s important to take into account all of the above.
I guess to summarize ….
Things ARE PORNOGRAPHIC (regardless of whether they are directly labelled pornography) when a degrading version of women’s sexuality is commodified and consequently reinforces male sexual privilege while women’s overall social and economic status is lower than that of men.
-
Infidel says:
as “one of the smallest political minorities” what good is your definition of a word used universally. Does Websters or Funk&Wagnels or Wikepedia define pornography as anything to do with women’s overall social and economic status? Are those definers of words so steeped in patriarchy that they don’t see the real definition…I think so, and I thank all of you for making it so clear, and I apologize but what am I gonna do?
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
I don’t know what you want to do…. I’m not entirely clear on what you’re saying either.
Anyways, less than 2 decades ago, both virgin and whore were gender specific in Webster’s.
I.e. virgin was a female, a whore was a female.
Obviously those definitions have changed, but I don’t think their current ‘gender neutrality’ affects their usage that much.
I guess there is also a difference between a working definition and a static definition. I don’t know what the static definition would be (I would obviously prefer my own) but in terms of a working definition - I would like to see more feminists work towards ‘opening’ up discussions about pornography and making more connections between things that have not been discussed in the past. And I’ve tried to highlight some of those things that would be nice to discuss instead of playing the ‘your porn/my porn’ game.
If we can look at body image issues, gendered violence etc… why aren’t we looking at the implications/impact pornography has on women as well (and not just women who are porn stars).
And call me naive but I think pro-porn feminists who do see mainstream porn as harmful can help in this as well. I.e. critique the porn industry…
-
delphyne says:
My definition is the one the pornographers use, porn users use and even Violet was using until she remebered that she had to pretend that the Kama Sutra was pornography. It is not a limited definition. Wilful refusal to accept the commonly used (and correct) definition of pornography only ever comes up in conversations such as this one where the anti-porn position is actually being represented. If you tell your mother, Infidel, that you are off to buy some pornography, she won’t be thinking that you are about to bid for a selection of Japanese engravings at auction. If you announce to your male friends that you are addicted to pornography they won’t think you have a well-thumbed copy of the Kama Sutra on your bedside table. In the last porn discussion I was in people tried to include Nancy Friday and temple paintings. What they wouldn’t do, not even once, was to own up to the fact that porn is actually Cumstains 8, or Fetish Fanatic 4 (sorry for the crudity but that’s porn for you).
I also agree with AradhanaDevindra about things that are pornographic that aren’t necessarily *pornography*. It ought to be possible to use “pornographic” as an adjective without people automatically assuming that what is being described must therefore be porn.
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
My definition is the one the pornographers use,
That is very true delphyne.
However, I do think parts of the Kama sutra (not the entire thing) including the paintings and sculptures that illustrated the Kama sutra are ‘pornography’.
They relied on the socio-eco exploitation of poor women.
And that is a fundamental part of what I consider porn to be.
-
delphyne says:
“Most younger people have no idea that Andrea was a veteran of sex work herself and had contact with hundreds of abused women who relied on her to tell their stories. She knew that world first-hand, up-close, she knew that women were being hurt terribly by pornography. She was not some moralizing ideologue in an ivory tower who decided, ex recto, that porn was wrong. She saw it. She knew it. She developed her own profound analysis of pornography herself based on a close observation of the world.
The transition from theory to dogma happens in the minds of believers.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if I was older than you Violet, so perhaps you should keep the “most younger people” remarks to yourself. I don’t know who the hell you think you mean when you talk about “moralizing ideologues in ivory towers”. You are of the academy aren’t you? I’m not and most radical feminists I know aren’t either. If you are I can’t believe you are throwing that one out.
I’ve seen porn. I know it. Which is why I know that Dworkin is right. I have seen how porn affects and has affected women’s lives, including my own so you can’t imagine the relief when I read her and she said everything that I had felt but hadn’t quite been able to put into words or a coherent argument.
Anyhow, I think it’s probably time to go because I’ve just found you incredibly insulting about anti-porn feminists. Maybe I should be glad that you aren’t including Dworkin in the dogmatist camp, just her “believers”. That’s a nasty double bind you’ve set up for us (and for her too) - anybody who thinks Dworkin has a point is immediately cast into the mould of “believer” or dogmatist. Anyhow Andrea Dworkin wrote about someone whose arguments rather closely resemble your own, in certain ways, back in 1990 so I thought you might like this -
“We are seeking for the analytical tools - rules of discourse that are enhanced rather than diminished by ambiguity. We value nuance. Dogma is an anathema to the spirit of inquiry that animates women’s biography. The notion that *bad* *things* *happen* is both propagandist and inadequate. We want to affirm the spirtual dignity and the sexual bonding we seek to find in women’s lives. We want a discourse of triumph, if you will pardon me for being so rhetorically elegant. I have heard the Grand Inquisitor Dworkin say that, as we are women, such discourse will have to be ambiguous. She is a prime example, of course, of the simple-minded demagogue who promotes the proposition that *bad* *things* *are* *bad*. This axiom is too reductive to be seriously entertained, except, of course, by the poor, the undecuated, the lunatic fringe that she both exploits and appeals to.”
-
Violet says:
Delphyhne, I’m really starting to wonder if there’s something wrong with your head. I AM an antiporn radical feminist, I think the world of Andrea Dworkin and have always praised her work, and as far as I know the only disagreement I’ve had with you is over the way you define pornography — a definition that a number of other antiporn feminists right here on this thread have also expressed difficulty with.
Either you have me confused with someone else or you’re just hallucinating, but either way this is ridiculous.
-
Violet says:
And call me naive but I think pro-porn feminists who do see mainstream porn as harmful can help in this as well. I.e. critique the porn industry…
If you’re naive then so am I, because it’s my continuing hope that we can find common ground with other feminists on this. I actually think it’s possible, but finding “new ways to talk about porn” as I think you put it is part of it.
Things ARE PORNOGRAPHIC (regardless of whether they are directly labelled pornography) when a degrading version of women’s sexuality is commodified and consequently reinforces male sexual privilege while women’s overall social and economic status is lower than that of men.
I like the clauses on “commodified” and “reinforcing male privilege while women’s overall status is lower.” Those are very key to me in why pornography is bad. What I do, though, is split those things out as reasons porn is problematic, not as part of the definition of pornography.
So my argument goes something like this:
Pornography is sexually explicit material designed to arouse — that’s just the basic definition that most people go with. No need to quibble over that. The question then is, what’s wrong with it? What’s wrong with it is that, among other things, it reinforces misogyny and our status as the sex class in a world that’s already lousy with misogyny and where we’re very definitely The Sex Class. Where women’s bodies are owned, reified, commodified; where control over our own bodies isn’t even a right we have in law. Theoretically, in a different kind of world, a non-sexist world, there could be non-sexist pornography.
What this does is shift the focus from whether naked pictures could ever be non-exploitative and into a discussion of how pornography is functioning in the real world. Like many other antiporn feminists I’ve talked to, I’m personally ready to grant that in a non-sexist world, there might be non-sexist porn. We can’t really know, can we? I’m also ready to grant that there may be pockets of “good” porn now, most likely in the lesbian erotica, that sort of thing. I’m ready to grant that the simple human desire to look at images of sex may be just that: a simple desire to look at sex. An exploration of one’s own sexuality, rather than a conscious desire to exploit.
We can grant all of those possibilities, and we haven’t lost anything at all (and when I say “we” here I mean those of us who are concerned about porn). What we’ve gained, in fact, is the ability to move past the theoretical abstractions and the minority cases, and into a real-world analysis of what is mostly going on in our existing pornified world. And I have found that even pro-porn feminists are quite ready to see that the existing abuses and reinforcement of sexism are problems.
This is why my current belief is that the best thing for us to do is focus on real-world things we can point to — and I think I mentioned them above but I’ll reiterate:
1. The way pornography reinforces misogyny and women’s status as the sex class;
2. The harm done to women and boys in the industry — rapes, coercion, abuse;
3. The fact (demonstrated in studies) that viewing pornography renders men less empathetic towards women and more tolerant of violence towards women;
4. The damage done to personal relationships by the normalization of men’s use of pornography and the strain this places on women.It is ironic in the extreme that Delphyne thinks I’m somehow disposed to undercut antiporn arguments, when in fact I’m searching for ways to enlist other feminists and ultimately most of society in addressing these problems.
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
No disrespect Violet, but this is the definition that I just can’t buy:
Pornography is sexually explicit material designed to arouse — that’s just the basic definition that most people go with. No need to quibble over that.
I think it’s imperative for these types of discussions to take into account a gendered definition of what pornography is / what pornographic content is especially if we’re talking about it from a feminist perspective. I don’t know I guess I just tend to do that with most of the ‘definitions’ I use. I’m working on my thesis about domestic violence - and I opted to use the more specific term “woman/wife abuse” instead of domestic violence.
It just makes sense to use women-centred definitions in feminist discourse. And my main beef with such discussions is that we don’t have one. We have one for body image, we have one for rape, we have one for woman abuse…. but we don’t have one for porn. Gender neutral terminology just doesn’t seem useful to me. As men are affected differently by things than women are….
Maybe my explaination of it doesn’t seem quite right, but I can’t be bothered with “it’s titilating material” because for thousands of years it’s been titilating material at the expense of women and continues to be so.
Additionally, like I said - in my feminist utopia my breasts wouldn’t be objects - they would just kind of be … well breasts. Therefore it would be pretty hard to offer ‘titilation’ and it would be pretty hard to market such porn if well… breasts didn’t have any extrinsic value besides resting on a woman’s chest (likewise for other body parts)….
I think both my definition of porn (i.e one that is gendered and takes into account women’s socio-eco status) and my vision of utopia are in unison.
-
cicely says:
Anyhow radical feminists aren’t ideologues going by your definition Cicely because we base our analysis and thought in women’s own lived experiences.
I wouldn’t say that categorically. I’d say that at some point *some* radical feminists begin or began to base their own analysis on *interpretations* of womens’ lived experience as presented to them by other radical feminists. Many individual women - myself included - reject certain RF interpretations of our own lived experience and this is what provides a lot of the heat in debates. We don’t feel ‘listened to’ by feminists who claim to be acting and arguing for our own best interests - as if we can’t decide for ourselves what our own best interests are.
Maybe this is the ‘Women as class’ vs ‘Women as individuals’ thing. RF needs women to ‘act’ as a group so it’s very important that as many women as possible are reading from the same page.
I take your point that none of us can be completely objective, but I submit that RF is the minority it is precisely because it is too often too ideologically rigid for more women - feminisms constituency - than not.
-
Violet says:
Maybe this is the ‘Women as class’ vs ‘Women as individuals’ thing. RF needs women to ‘act’ as a group so it’s very important that as many women as possible are reading from the same page.
I’m pretty sure we’ve had this discussion before, and I think this is not an unresolvable tension. I consider myself a radical feminist in the old tradition, radical meaning going to the root of, analyzing patriarchy and sexism as complete social systems that need to be challenged, and that can’t just be fixed with a set of equal-opportunity laws (as if!).
The tension between women as a class and women as individuals is there, but it’s bridgeable. It always has been for me. That’s why in very contested issues like the porn debate, for example, I focus on the systemic problems that we can all recognize and try to avoid telling women how to interpret their own experience when their experience deviates from the systemic problems we agree on.
-
Violet says:
I think it’s imperative for these types of discussions to take into account a gendered definition of what pornography is / what pornographic content is especially if we’re talking about it from a feminist perspective.
Maybe it depends on what “these types of discussions” are! Actually in this thread we’ve bounced around from theory to activism and so forth, but it’s my thinking right now that in terms of activism — by which I include discussion with everyone outside of antiporn feminism whom we’re trying to persuade — it’s simplest to go with the most generally used definition.
Over the past 25 years or so I’ve seen feminist attempts at clear definitions, like the Dworkin-Mackinnon formulation, which was necessary for legal implementation, and the Russell formulation, which is necessary for framing her sociological research. But what I’ve noticed is that none of these definitions “take.” Instead people say, “oh, you mean bad porn?” Or, “oh, you mean misogynistic porn?” The underlying meaning of “porn” doesn’t change.
So at this point I’m thinking it would save time and confusion to stop fighting the common definition. The argument is still very quickly going to get to the “what’s degrading about it?” part, whether we put the “degradation” in the definition or list it in the causes.
Don’t know if that made much sense! I’m a bit sleepy.
-
Mandos says:
Additionally, like I said - in my feminist utopia my breasts wouldn’t be objects - they would just kind of be … well breasts. Therefore it would be pretty hard to offer ‘titilation’ and it would be pretty hard to market such porn if well… breasts didn’t have any extrinsic value besides resting on a woman’s chest (likewise for other body parts)….
This goes back to questions of the image and visual stimulation that were brought up, wayyyy up. Do you mean to say that the sight of the body should not a site of sexual enjoyment? How can our bodies—and parts of our bodies—as such be sexually neutral?
Twisty comes outright and says it: the image of people having sex, in the postpatriarchy, would evoke the same reaction as amoebas dividing. Thence, you might say, that a women’s breasts would not be an image of sexual titillation but have all the status of, I don’t know, a baby’s bottle. Then would Fabio’s pecs be sexual or nonsexual?
Forgive me for being a little skeptical, but it doesn’t even sound like this is part of most *straight women’s* lived experiences as I have heard it told.
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
We don’t feel ‘listened to’ by feminists who claim to be acting and arguing for our own best interests - as if we can’t decide for ourselves what our own best interests are.
I empathize, but when it comes to pornography MOST women aren’t being listened to (i.e. women who don’t really participate in the porn industry but rather are affected by it in multiple ways). And though Violet did not intend to bring up that ‘women’s responses to pornography are instinctive’, I think that’s partly the problem.
We assume that women’s responses to porn are ‘instinctive’ and ‘from the gut’ when in fact - they are no more from the gut than wanting to look like a super model. If you asked a woman “hey lady, are you intellectualizing while you’re wanting to look like scarlett johannsen in the latest issue of cosmo?”
Well, obviously - the woman would say no. She’s acting on ‘impulse’ to want to look like scarlett johannsen. But as feminists, we assist with ‘filling in those blanks’. We see the consequences of women’s mags on women’s bodies. And we know that though women don’t ‘intellectualize’ about women’s mags - they DO FEEL DEPRESSED AFTER VIEWING THEM. And well, in my world - that matters.
Likewise, we need to consider women’s views regarding pornography in the same light. I.e. “How do you feel when your bf/spouse masturbates to porn before he cums in you?”…
I hate to say it - but many of the pro-porn arguments come from a very few number of people who end up making a hell of a lot of noise.
We need to treat pornography and its affects on women the same way we treat any other feminist issue. And that means by talking to women and getting them to think rather than assuming that ‘their opinions are instinctive and therefore invalid’.
When Spain recently increased the BMI acceptance level for their models… feminists unitedly supported it. Who was asking the models if they were happy with this? No one really… Why is it that it comes to sex work, so few people usually end up answering for so many. Why aren’t we happier when we find out that the porn industry isn’t allowed to produce certain types of porn…Instead we have a handful of people who rush to say “it’s obstructing our freedom of expression”….
I’m sure models feel that their freedom of expression is being limited… why aren’t we defending their rights? Why are we caring that “Yippeee an industry standard has been set in place”.
These are sticky areas and I am not claiming to know the answers, I am just asking that pornography be treated like most other feminist issues. That it be dissected the same way and theorized similarly.
-
Mandos says:
“These are sticky areas and I am not claiming to know the answers, I am just asking that pornography be treated like most other feminist issues. That it be dissected the same way and theorized similarly.”
It’s complicated by the fact that it was “dirty” for women to want sex, to see sex, and to relate to sex the way men relate to it—ie, as something they’re “entitled” to as much as any other sensual pleasure. It’s not quite the same thing as models.
-
Mandos says:
AD: So there’s more than one interpretation for women’s response to porn that you rightly suggest may come from some place other than some inchoate instinct. Your opponents in this debate would say that, yes, it does come from somewhere nontrivial: the fact that in most of the world’s cultures, there’s a HUGE patriarchal megalith defining sex as dangerous and evil for women to enjoy as such, and hence ANYTHING associated with sex is going to have psychological consequences for women.
Hence, under this interpretation, the few Western women who manage to *like* it are simply women who’ve taken advantage of favorable conditions to lift this megalith and experience sex (and images of sex) the way men do. That there are consequences for other women is not denied by this argument: but part of the consequences stem from the very fact that they continue to live in the world that stigmatizes female sexual enjoyment and creativity. And by a patriarchy that has defined the word/thought “degradation” to suit itself.
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
mandos, many societies have had in women walking around topless, i.e. non commodified.
Pick up any colonial anthropology type ‘cultural’ investigation of ‘primitive tribal’ cultures documentary type crap ala national geographic circa 1980’s and you will be informed. Boobs galore and no picture taking and pornography making by the ‘natives’… This is not to say that ‘objectification’ did not ‘exist’ and that ‘rape’ did not exist.
I think it would be safe to say however, that rape and objectification would occur at far less rates and that they would be fundamentally “different”. As it stands women’s bodies are regulated by both conservative morality and in that continuum by hyper-capitalism. (I.e. because porn exists because women’s bodies are ’supposed to be covered’).
A large aspect of ‘titilation’ exists in the commodification of boooooobies…Peek a boo–beee… I mean it would be like saying that if we lived in a society where women’s faces were hidden, we’d have ‘face fetish’ calendars. And I wouldn’t think that’s entirely improbable you know.
I like men, I like the way they look - some are hot, some are not - but seriously - I would be pretty duh to believe that masculinity and what I like to see men wear/ look like/ possess certain features/ groom is not partially due to my conditioning/what’s currently in vogue.
For example, I like fairer men than darker. It’s obvious why that is - internalized racism on my part, I live in a white society - and whiteness is beautiful & powerful. In the past especially it was like I had a ‘colour meter’ in my head where my level of attraction to men was ranked by light to dark.
Ask most south asian women who were born and raised in North America and grew up in white neighbourhoods “who’d you find hotter when you were growing up?” - most would say they found white men more attractive than south asian men.
I’m guilty of the same - until I started university and actually came into contact with other south asian men and my ‘ethnicity’ became forced on me. I.e. most universities where I live are ‘ghettoized’ by race (both due to external pressures, cultural pressures, parental pressures etc…).I realized from these experiences that South asian men were probably always hot, it was more my ‘attitude’ towards them that inhibited me from being attracted to them. I hear these kind of statements all the time, I see them come from other women of colour too. Now, it’s odd cause I’d say I am far more attracted to men of colour than white men (and again that would be more because of ‘my retraining my attitude’ more than ’subjectively’ being attracted to ‘physical appearance’). It’s funny cause when grunge was in - I liked the grungy kinda guys, when hipsters and meterosexuals were in - I liked meterosexual kinda guys… Now grungy guys just seem like they’d smell bad too (I kid). But seriously, capitalism …. blah blah blah dictates blah blah blah - I’m sleepy, I think you get what I’m getting at anyways.
I’m not talking about ‘objectification’ as all or none. I do believe ‘harmless’ forms of objectification/attraction can exist, just not in the current paradigm and to me commodification and distribution/exchange is a fundamental aspect of porn and in combination with women’s lower socio-eco status… zzzz….
-
Mandos says:
“mandos, many societies have had in women walking around topless, i.e. non commodified. ”
I’m very aware of this. I am a South Asian man—second-generation Canadian desi Muslim living in the US temporarily—and not at all hot ;) My father comes from a part of southern India where there are nontrivial topless-women cultures, although he was definitely not a part of these cultures.
HOWEVER, even if you leave something naked, it can still be sexually objectified.
Nevertheless, I’m glad you clarified your remarks, It’s the differential consequences of sexualization for each gender that are the issue here, one way or another—it seems you agree. Nevertheless, clearly some radical feminists do not believe that the sexual objectification door cannot be opened even one crack without letting in the flood.
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
Oh man….dos….
You just crossposted, and I am a sucker.
So anyways…. not my points man… sorry. quick response.
It’s complicated by the fact that it was “dirty” for women to want sex, to see sex, and to relate to sex the way men relate to it—ie, as something they’re “entitled” to as much as any other sensual pleasure. It’s not quite the same thing as models.
Sure, if women were the ones who created/controlled and defined pornography sure. But you know from ancient times to now - women have been the ‘product’ vs. producer…
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
Damn it - I’m canadian too - :P
-
Mandos says:
I crosspost all the time.
Sure, if women were the ones who created/controlled and defined pornography sure. But you know from ancient times to now - women have been the ‘product’ vs. producer…
So the point is—how do women move into the producer’s role, so to speak? A lot of the anti-anti-porn argument from certain women says basically takes this form.
1. Men have defined sexual expression.
2. Part of women’s liberation is for women to define sexual expression and pleasure on their own.
3. Since men have defined the culture, anything in *any* endeavour that women do will necessarily pass through a male-defined filter (be it financial success, intellectual success, moral success, sexual success, etc).
4. All forms of liberation will thus, at the beginning at least, be fraught with aspects of the patriarchy.So these women claim that, in the relative liberation offered by Western life, they are beating an (imperfect) path to women’s pleasure and to putting women in the “producer’s” chair, so to speak, and they’re doing it in a real-world context that is patriarchal and imperfect, and that this is as much a necessary part of liberation as helping poor women escape bad situations, even if it has some negative consequences…
-
Mandos says:
For a similar argument in the domain of Western women’s financial success, see this Twisty Faster thread. It starts as a complaint about women’s costumes, but eventually turns into an argument over reformism starring someone calling herself “octogalore”. Octogalore argues that a necessary route to women’s liberation is professional and financial success on, yes, some of the patriarchy’s existing terms. By extension, she argues that there are aspects of a radical position that are ineffective or counterproductive when taken as a palliative dogma.
(I hold a parallel discussion about womb envy, but that’s not quite relevant here.)
-
delphyne says:
“the only disagreement I’ve had with you is over the way you define pornography”
All those cracks about “believers”, dogmatism and cartoon fights were just in my head then were they? Whatever.
You’re not an anti-porn radical feminist. You’re an anti-porn liberal feminist, which is fair enough as it is probably possible to find some common ground for political action. I’ve said this already but liberal feminists look to reform patriarchal insitutions, for example in the way you think pornography could possibly be non woman-hating in a far-off utopian future. Radical feminists seek to destroy those patriarchal institutions, like pornography, recognising that they have been created for the purpose of the oppression of women and the elevation of men.
You still haven’t answered when Dworkin’s work stopped being applicable to pornography and was reduced to simply dogma in the minds of her “believers”. If you can’t name a date perhaps you can provide some examples.
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
Mandos - your whole “what’s a non-patriarchal occupation anyways” argument is only relevant if you think all occupations are the same. If women benefit from all types of work equally. If you think Condi rice is a feminist (I’m not utilizing her to equate her to feminist pornographers, that’s too extreme). etc…
Much of feminist porn utilizes the same producers/production alliances, requires publication in the same magazines as mainstream porn, does not really critique mainstream porn, has men all happy-slappy that women have their own porn etc….
When in fact, men and women are both visual and both emotional. And as I’ve provided using personal examples, with an ‘attitude’ adjustment men can reform their own perceptions of what is ’sexual’ and that could be like many women who believe ’sexual’ is more ‘emotional’.
It would be silly to say that soldiers and CEOs face the same kind of stress under patriarchy/ or that they benefit the same way under patriarchy from their occupations.
We’d say a fundamental requirement of being a soldier is to be poor, under educated and vulnerable.
Of course we don’t have a mad rally of men trying to state a counter-argument about this, when in fact a few men & women from middle/upper class families belong to the army.
Likewise, for pornography class status is essential to both production and performance.
And that is why my definition would take into account women’s socio-eco status into this.
-
Violet says:
Your opponents in this debate would say that, yes, it does come from somewhere nontrivial: the fact that in most of the world’s cultures, there’s a HUGE patriarchal megalith defining sex as dangerous and evil for women to enjoy as such, and hence ANYTHING associated with sex is going to have psychological consequences for women.
Actually there’s somewhere even more nontrivial, even older, even more ubiquitous, and even more keenly experienced: sexual jealousy. Many many people (men as well as women, actually) essentially consider the porn image their partner is fantasizing over to be “the other woman/man.”
-
Violet says:
Mandos, here’s my question: I can grant everything in your comment 198, but everything in MY comment 185 still stands. You know? Okay, porn feminists, good luck with making woman-centered porn. Now, can we talk about the main industry?
-
delphyne says:
Well my copy of “Pornography” by Dworkin finally came today after much tussling with Amazon and finally the publishers (it turns out it is out of print in the UK, so I had to get it second hand). Anyhow, she provides a definition of pornography, which I thought might be of interest here (especially as I my arguments appear to be in agreement with much of what she says) -
“The word *pornography* derived from the ancient Greek *porne* and *graphos*, means “writing about whores”. *Porne* means “whore,” specifically and exclusively the lowest class of whore, whcih in ancient Greece was the brothel slut available to all male citizens.
The *porne* was the cheapest (in the literal sense), least regarded, least protected of all women, including slaves. She was simply and clearly and absolutely, a sexual slave. *Graphos* means “writing, etching, or drawing.”
The word *pornography* does not mean “writing about sex” or “depictions of the erotic” or “depictions of sexual acts” or “depictions of nude bodies” or “sexual representations” or any other such euphemism. It means the graphic depiction of women as vile whores. In ancient Greece, not all prostitutes were considered vile: only the *porneia*.
Contemporary pornography strictly and literally conforms to the word’s root meaning: the graphic depiction of vile whores, or in, our language, sluts, cows (as in: sexual cattle, sexual chattel), cunts. The word has not changed its meaning and the genre is not misnamed. The only change in the meaning of the word is with respect to its second part, *graphos*: now there are cameras - there is still photography, film, video. The methods of graphic depction have increased in number and in kind: the content is the same: the meaning is the same; the purpose is the same; the status of the women depicted is the same; the value of the women depicted is the same. With the technologically advanced methods of graphic depiction, real women are required for the depiction to exist.
The word *pornography* does not have any other meaning than the one cited here, the graphic depiction of the lowest whores. Whores exist to serve men sexually. Whores exist only within a framework of male sexual domination. Indeed, outside that framework the notion of whores would be absured and the usage of women as whores would be impossible. The word *whore* is incomprehensible unless one is immersed in the lexicon of male domination. Men have created the group, the type, the concept, the epithet, the insult, the industry, the trade, the commodity, the reality of women as whore. Women as whore exists within the objective and real system of male sexual domination. The pornography itself is objective and real and central to the male sexual system.
……The fact that pornography is widely believed to be “depictions of the erotic” means only that the debasing of women is held to be the real pleasure of sex.”
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
Actually there’s somewhere even more nontrivial, even older, even more ubiquitous, and even more keenly experienced: sexual jealousy. Many many people (men as well as women, actually) essentially consider the porn image their partner is fantasizing over to be “the other woman/man.”
Do you really think men getting jealous by women watching porn is the same as women getting jealous by men watching porn? It’s rare that men get jealous of female partners watching porn. Because most of the men are ugly in porn and because most of the focus in het porn is on women. In fact, most men introduce the porn watching in the bedroom, not the other way around.
Women’s “jealousy” can also be broken down further - and I don’t think this ‘jealousy’ is ‘instinctive’:
1) women are supposed to be jealous of other women because of ‘patriarchy’s divide and conquer rule. I.e. ugly girls are jealous because of pretty girls and pretty girls are never pretty enough.
2) like every other type of media, women are made to feel inadequate and never good enough, and porn does that.
3) women’s jealousy helps to facilitate men’s power - and that’s why men use women against each other so well.
4) women are aware of men’s ‘entitlement’ to other women’s bodies and when the whole “I’m with you only cause I love you only” thing doesn’t pan out like it’s supposed to, you do get ‘jealous’.
5) women are already made to feel insecure about men’s commitment toward them. Porn watching makes that ‘insecurity’ a ‘reality’ because men watch porn and then expect real sex from their partners while the porn reel is the real cause of arousal (not their partners). Women are aware of this.
Their “jealousy” is not a ’separate’ entity unto itself.
PORN facilitates this jealousy.
So jealousy itself is not a longer running discourse, it’s gendered as well. And there is a ‘patriarchally approved thought process’ behind jealousy.
-
cicely says:
I consider myself a radical feminist in the old tradition, radical meaning going to the root of, analyzing patriarchy and sexism as complete social systems that need to be challenged, and that can’t just be fixed with a set of equal-opportunity laws (as if!).
This takes me back to when I first came to this blog. Under your definition, Violet, and even under Heart’s in her post to Alas back then, I’m also a radical feminist! An anti-anti porn one though. If I had to explain this or argue it all the time it’d soon wear me down, but. I’ve decided I just have to say what I think on a given topic, and why, in the moment, and never mind the bollocks.
I hear you, AD, that the feminist defenders of pornography are much smaller in number than the women who are harmed in and by the sex industry. I don’t dispute that. I just don’t think this can be an either/or situation. I agree with Mandos that everything occurs in the currently existing social/cultural system, and with Octagalore (twice removed) that:
There are aspects of a radical position that are ineffective or counterproductive when taken as a palliative dogma.
I was just saying to a friend - again! - how sick and angry I get with all the fictional women victims - brutalised and mutilated and murdered in tv shows - to entertain us all of an evening. My friend is addicted to those ‘real life’ crime shows and they at least seem to show a balance of male and female victims, she says. Probably more male victims in fact. We can’t get rid of the television industry, but I’d sure like to find a way to draw attention to women’s feelings and objections to the way we’re portrayed - ALL THE TIME - as victims for entertainment. Like, name a day - or on white ribbon day (November 25th) - refuse - worldwide - to watch any show other than the news involving a female victim of violence. See what that does to the ratings as well as publicise that we do in fact object.
I don’t share my home with a man but I’ve often wondered about the different responses of a hetero-sexual couple living on this diet, sitting side by side on the couch. I think I’d want to hit him every time a woman screams, just because.
Just saying - I think we have do a lot of things about cultural perceptions - at once - and we can’t isolate pornography, if it’s not actually always harmful perse, which, as everyone knows, I don’t believe it is.
I like the assertively sexual and sexually autonomous character (Angela?) on the show ‘Bones’, for example. (Still too many women victims though) If more feminists had careers in tv production etc, etc, you see what I mean. Things like that, feminists of all ilks can probably agree on. Probably talking out of my ass or whistling in the wind with the tv program protest, but, yeah, I’d like to see a bridging of the gap between feminisms and a united approach wherever possible to create change.
-
delphyne says:
If you want a united approach Cicely you can get behind the two radical feminist proposals which take a liberal approach of using the law as a remedy - firstly that people who have been damaged by pornography should be able to sue pornographers or distributors as per the MacKinnon/Dworkin Civil Rights Ordinance and secondly that prostitutes should be decriminalised whilst paying for sex or profiting from someone else’s prostitution should be made a crime. The latter would knock out vast swathes of the pornography industry if it was applied as most pornography is simply prostitution on screen.
-
Violet says:
AD, my point was that basic sexual jealousy, aside from patriarchy, is also a factor. It does exist, you know — there’s a pair-bond impulse that causes people (not all people, but many) to resent an interloper. This occurs even in non-patriarchal, gender equal societies: lovers feel possessive, get jealous, etc.
In a patriarchal society such as ours, of course, that jealousy is gendered and structured in the ways you say. Much of it is actually an artifact of patriarchy itself — women competing over resources and pitted against each other. That’s exactly what makes the analysis of human behavior so complex. But if you were to say that in a purely non-sexist, non-patriarchal world, there would be no jealousy at all, I would disagree. Mbuti and Moso lovers feel as much pain over a partner’s betrayals as any human being in love.
As for men, you are of course right that porn-using men seem to actually encourage their partners to look at porn and obviously experience no jealousy. I was actually thinking of cases I know of involving non-porn-using men who react with hurt and anxiety to the news that their partner, say, has been looking at gay porn and likes the men in it. Of course there may be all kinds of reasons for that (there goes that complexity again) depending on the person: a jealous response, a patriarchal you-belong-to-me response, a threatened male-ego response, etc.
-
Violet says:
It’s complicated by the fact that it was “dirty” for women to want sex, to see sex, and to relate to sex the way men relate to it—ie, as something they’re “entitled” to as much as any other sensual pleasure.
Hence, under this interpretation, the few Western women who manage to like it are simply women who’ve taken advantage of favorable conditions to lift this megalith and experience sex (and images of sex) the way men do.
People who make this argument are making several assumptions:
1. Pornography is sex.
2. Men’s sexuality under patriarchy is “natural,” while women’s is not.
3. Thus if we get rid of sexism, women’s sexuality will look just like men’s.
4. The main reason women don’t like porn is because they’re not liberated.Guess what I think of those assumptions.
-
henderson says:
I am a female and this may not have anything to do with this. But it seems men and women are very different. I’d say most men and most women. There’s always exceptions to the rule. There are things out there for women. Those ‘romance novels” for example. Very sexy stuff. But I don’t think men will go out and buy a romance novel. Or while men buy lad mags and the like, I don’t hear about that many women buying those muscle men magazines to masturbate to. It’s just not in most women’s way of thinking. Or the Calvin Cline underwear ads. I look at them and feel attracted. but I don’t make a hobby of it the way men do with Victoria Secret ads, and I have no sexual reaction to them. Simply think they are nice looking. But that’s it.
Also, you were talking about places were men and women go around naked all the time. It’s true. I grew up in such a place. And I must be odd or something. But i have no sexual reaction to seeing either male or female nudity. I do not associate nudity with sex in my mind. It is discontected.
In a perfect world I think that would be nice if everyone was like that. but it’s not a perfect world. and men and women are different. It’s just a fact. And culture has something to do with it too. And upbringing.In the culture I live in now, a women cannot breast feed her baby in public. Why? Because of the simple fact that for a woman, it’s a natural thing. But for men walking by and seeing it, it’s changed into a horny thing. Even the men who say it’s not- they are not honest. So a woman must go find somewhere to do it were men cannot see because they will objectify her and act of feeding her baby into something sexual. A sex object. Men are pervs for the most part. It’s tough on a woman in this culture and any other for one reason or another. Men’s way of thinking is hard on her. But she has to marry them, fall in love with them- have babies with them, put up with their hurtful ways.
-
Mandos says:
First of all, delphyne’s responses to Violet fall back on reasserting the historical and technical definitions of pornography, whereas Violet chooses to use the popular-conception one. So for the sake of conciseness I’m going to use p-pornography to refer to Violet’s definition and h-pornography to refer to delphyne’s definition, and hopefully short-circuit confusion and quibbling.
So, (1) is a bit of a strawman. It’s irrelevant to the argument whether p-porn is sex or not. P-porn is created to excite in the manner analogous to the way that sex excites. And men have the liberty to excite themselves that way. Actually, it begs the question to criticize this assumption (if it is being made). Anti-anti-porn argument would say that the whole question is about how to define our experience of sexual pleasure itself and who gets to do so: if p-porn is not sex for some, it may be for others.
(2) is also a strawman. None of serious anti-anti porn folk say that anything is “natural” as such. The male relation to sexual imagery exists. It has nothing to do with nature: men are liberated to choose it in a way that women are not liberated to choose it.
(3) and (4) are more substantial. Suffice it to say that women’s sexuality must necessary look more like men’s during the process of liberation, because liberation can only occur in present contexts, and the only template we currently have for a (more) liberated sexuality is the sexuality of straight men. Now, this is not static, and part of the feminist project is to reduce, obviously, the harmful aspects of the normal form of the latter. But they’ll exist, and women, not being benign in themselves, must be given the option to adopt them if they are to be truly human and free. Then maybe we can work towards a utopia or something.
Assuming a definition of what “negative” is. Another part of the argument is that h-porn was defined by men under the same system that labelled things “dirty” and “degradigng”. You can either agree with the definition and abolish h-porn following that definition or examine whether you want to accept these definitions as such. There’s an argument for either.
-
Violet says:
Sorry, Mandos, try again.
Number 1 isn’t a strawman. It’s the assumption in every statement you’ve made about how patriarchy makes “sex” dangerous for women. And you don’t get 4 without it. The way pro-pornists make the argument, actually 4 should read “women don’t like porn because they’re not liberated to enjoy sex.”
Number 2 isn’t a strawman; it’s the assumption that leads to 3. Can’t get 3 without it.
Suffice it to say that women’s sexuality must necessary look more like men’s during the process of liberation, because liberation can only occur in present contexts, and the only template we currently have for a (more) liberated sexuality is the sexuality of straight men.
More groundless assumptions.
-
Mandos says:
Number 1 isn’t a strawman. It’s the assumption in every statement you’ve made about how patriarchy makes “sex” dangerous for women. And you don’t get 4 without it. The way pro-pornists make the argument, actually 4 should read “women don’t like porn because they’re not liberated to enjoy sex.”
It’s not the assumption—as even antiporn radfems sometimes point out, it’s the issue itself. Was my point.
Look, we really now need to have a Clintonian discussion on the meaning of “is”. No one is saying that p-porn = sex where = is the set-equivalence operator. But anti-anti-porn people are saying that p-porn is *part* of the sexual experience—yes. A proper subset. That’s the question here. Anti-porn people are saying, no, there’s only h-porn, and there’s no reason why it should even be a subset of sex. That’s the issue.
“More groundless assumptions.”
Oh? Why is it a “groundless” assumption to say that liberation still only happens in existing contexts and reflects existing contexts? Few revolutions are free of the ills of the former regime—it’s not even obvious that all of the ills are curable ills as such.
-
henderson says:
Also,
I read that the divorce rate in England has gone up dramitically. By as much as 1 third and the #1 reason cited on the divorce papers was due to internet porn usuage by the male partner. I do not know if this is true. Or if it does not take into account other factors. I just read it, that’s all. Lot of broken hearts and broken relationships out there due to this business.
Jealousy is a real and powerful emotion. it may even have some reason for it even being there. But I don’t know.I also read that 2 thirds of all murders in the world are commited because of it- jealousy. 90% of which are commited by males.
My utopia is not one where women become more like men. I do not concider that liberation. I would like it more if men would come a little more to the female way of being and reacting to things.
-
delphyne says:
I think it’s pretty offensive to call women who end relationships with partners who are addicted to pornography jealous. The deceit, the lack of connection and the frequent degradation required by porn users in sex are the more usual reasons cited. Jealousy is a very superficial way of describing these complex interactions. I think there might also be a character judgement involved. Some women would not be able to morally stomach being with a man who looked at bestiality or rape pornography for example. I think if you found your partner looked at stuff like this you would probably reconsider what kind of human being he was and whether you actually wanted to share a life with him.
Men who kill women normally do so because they are sexists and they hate women, not because they are jealous, henderson.
-
henderson says:
Yes, you’re right. There’s alot more to it than that. I think that calling it jealousy is probably not the right way to put it. It’s much more complex than that. But it is a common reaction of females to their partners “need” for porn. Even regular porn.
But I don’t think jealousy is a bad word nor do I think it’s an illegitimit feeling. I don’t understand the feeling. But I certainly know what it feels like. And it’s awful, powerful and real.
-
Violet says:
There are so many assumptions bundled into the following that starting “suffice it to say” is, well, insufficient.
Suffice it to say that women’s sexuality must necessary look more like men’s during the process of liberation, because liberation can only occur in present contexts, and the only template we currently have for a (more) liberated sexuality is the sexuality of straight men.
Assumptions and assertions and other messes:
1. The sexuality of straight men in a patriarchy is “liberated.” Liberated from what? Patriarchy? You’re kidding, right?
2. If women’s sexuality is liberated from patriarchy it will look like, in fact will NECESSARILY look like…straight men’s sexuality under patriarchy. What? Why? Oh, because of number 1, and also…
3. There is no chance that women have their own unique womanly sexuality that might emerge free from patriarchy; men’s patriarchal sexuality (which is “liberated”!) is the only way they can go.
4. Women’s sexuality is wholly informed by social models, so a “liberated” woman will have to imitate the template of those those “liberated” men under patriarchy. Okey dokey. I guess that means that if a girl grows up withoutsinglestraight (correction — V.S.) men to imitate, she won’t want sex at all?This kind of argument is why you get pro-porn feminists saying that if you’re a “liberated” woman then of course you want to dress up like a man’s dominatrix fantasy and whack off to rape porn! It just naturally follows! And those of us who have been happily enjoying robust, uninhibited love lives without the latex and the porn, well we’re just not “liberated.”
I think what you probably want to do is re-phrase your argument so you’re saying that in the process of challenging patriarchy, some women’s sexuality is going to take the form of the existing patriarchal male models.
-
Violet says:
But anti-anti-porn people are saying that p-porn is part of the sexual experience—yes. A proper subset. That’s the question here. Anti-porn people are saying, no, there’s only h-porn, and there’s no reason why it should even be a subset of sex. That’s the issue.
I don’t think that’s the issue. What happens, repeatedly, is that pro-porn people say “you don’t like porn because you don’t like sex.”
“Anti-porn people say there’s only h-porn”… The whole purpose of the h-porn definition is to define the kind of porn that’s bad. Obviously, if you’re defining a subset then there is a superset…
-
henderson says:
I only said that about murder and men because it illustrates that men do feel that feeling too. While women, who get cheated on way more than men do. While women have to put up with alot more hurtful things in general than men do. They don’t go out and murder over it. Generally speaking.
You never see gangs of females roaming the streets looking for a man to rape and murder. You don’t see gaggles of females hanging outside a whorehouse waiting for their turn in the back room with some guy.
This is not because females are less liberated sexually than males, it is because women are more decent inside their heads. You don’t see females doing or reacting to things the same way men do.So my utopia is where men react to things more like females- not the other way around. Less porn, less rape, less rape? more like -no rape, little murder, and much, much less of many other serious pests that the world of males has to offer.
-
Mandos says:
So I mean liberation in a relative and literal sense, ie, more options, fewer penalties. I think it’s undeniable that men have more options and fewer penalties on the whole, right? At least under patriarchy.
I don’t agree that what I said implies 2 and 3. Yes, 2 and 3 would require that I was saying that all women would be liberated in the same way and choose to do so. But I never said anything about ALL women. BUT if SOME women can choose it, that’s a part of liberation, yes.
Who said anything about “wholly” or “imitate”? Wha?
I think what you probably want to do is re-phrase your argument so you’re saying that in the process of challenging patriarchy, some women’s sexuality is going to take the form of the existing patriarchal male models.
I would live with this formulation, except that it seems to make it sound like the fact “some women’s sexuality is going to take the form of existing patriarchal male models” is an accidental possible by-product, instead of a necessary component, which I suspect it is.
-
Violet says:
The problem here is that this is where the pro-porn argument insists on keeping the discussion — the personal experience of pornography as part of one’s sexuality. Who cares? If a feminist woman feels pornography is a valid part of her personal sexual experience, fine. What I want to talk about is the Big Picture.
The world is now wall-to-wall with pornographic imagery of women as fuckbots. We’ve been the sex class for several thousand years now, and we’re currently fighting tooth and nail to transcend that. In most of the world we don’t even have the right to our own bodily integrity. Sex trafficking, sex slavery, grotesque sexist oppression — that’s the world we live in.
So, questions: is the wall-to-wall imagery of women as fuckbots helping this situation? After all, the wall-to-wall imagery isn’t of empowered women; the imagery is almost wholly male-produced and shaped to fit the patriarchal model. If you think this is somehow helping to free us from patriarchy, please tell me how. I honestly can’t see it. It looks to me, in fact, like it’s a constant reinforcement of our status as the sex class.
Another question: is the billions of dollars worth of rape porn and humiliation porn being consumed by men privately, via internet, helping to liberate women? When men increasingly whack off to more and more degraded images of women, is that helping somehow? What is it doing?
What about the evidence that the more men fixate on this stuff, the less empathetic they are to us as human beings? Is THAT helping? How can it be?
What about the industry itself? What about the horrible abuses?
How about the normalization of porn-use as another warping effect on relationships? Most of the time we feminists are talking about freeing ourselves from men’s expectations: to be thin, hair-free, barefoot, pregnant, ready with dinner on time, whatever. Yet now we’re supposed to say it’s okay for men’s pornographic demands to be the norm, so that even a woman who hates pornography feels compelled to go along?
You see, I think these are the things we need to be talking about as feminists. Even if we agree that an individual’s personal experience of pornography may be useful for her, even if we agree that pornography has the potential to be ‘better,’ we ought to be able to talk seriously about the existing situation.
-
Infidel says:
we ought to be able to talk seriously about the existing situation.
Very much so you all are. This is it. People have to read this type of discourse. Men have to read these debates, discussions, blogs. Pornography has exploded with Internet, Cable, and Phone- who’s fighting it? who understands why it must be fought? How can you see it for what it is without delving into these issues? Shit…my brain is humming….
-
ehj2 says:
this is a short piece of thread that i offer to the huge tapestry of this conversation. it’s a part of a view at the million-foot level. i acknowledge it doesn’t help much at the 10,000 foot level.
~~~
the prevalence of pornography is a symptom. the presence and nature of a symptom will become greater until the root cause is released.
people are story tellers. they live in a narrative and look for reasons and meaning in the chapters of their lives. like an individual, a culture lives its story — its myth — either consciously or unconsciously.
joseph cambell said this really well. if you do not live your myth consciously, it will live you.
its easy to find people around us who seem trapped in a story that they relive over and over. cultures do the same.
the nature of a symptom always gives a hint about the nature of the root cause. pornography is about sex, and sex is about creation and procreation.
and creation itself is about destruction and reorder.
birth itself is in part about pain.
these symbols are all related in myth and narrative, in psychology and culture.
if a tremendous number of people — men and women included — are unconsciously living out or expressing or engaging with symbols of creativity and destruction in dark, distorted, or obsessive ways, we have a hint about something struggling to be.
i suspect the nature of a huge painful creation is imminent. the world is on too many brinks. small adjustments to “the world order” will be insufficient. some huge new birthing of ways of being is required.
if we fail in this creation, there will be massive death and destruction. if we fail to give birth to what must be birthed, civilization itself will be at risk.
people “give” themselves to these symbols (in pornography or choice of halloween costume) because they are close to the forces they know unconsciously are needed to move forward in this era. this isn’t to say this is healthy or conscious and that we should support it. it is to say this is a symptom and we are invited to be conscious of what the symptom is pointing to and help awaken and support that.
huge creativity unleashed. the destruction of archaic ways of being. a revision to the capitalist model that puts human needs before machine needs. a political model that puts people before property. a true forwarding of the human spirit.
sex is tied — intimately — with religion and taboo because creation is the power of the gods. and the power of sex is here invoked in an unconscious effort to invoke the creativity of the gods.
we are looking at a symbol of stifled creativity lived out on a massive scale. we’re seeing deep unconscious frustration and need being played out. we know what we have isn’t working. we can’t see a clear path to any clear solution. we’re afraid to destroy the stability we have until we can see where we’re going. we’re dying in place and the whole world is going with us.
“creative destruction” is a mantra of the republicans and corporatists, but only in limited economic ways that advantage them. conservatives are actually terrified of cultural creative destruction, because they fear the loss of power (and stability) that will ensue with the ending of old orders. they will hold on tenaciously to the end.
we could say we are at the time of chrysalis. there is no simple way for the caterpillar to become a butterfly. there are no short steps between the current world order — that savages the planet and most of its human inhabitants (not just the women) — and a sustainable one. the caterpillar has to end, and be melted, and the forms reordered. only then is the butterfly possible.
we might wonder if the caterpillar resists in the last moments the falling darkness, the beginning of the sleep that we may imagine presages melting and reordering.
there is cause for optimism.
if we were successful as a species it was inevitable that we would arrive at this point in history. while our rise in consciousness has been slow, it has been progressive and certain.
now we’re simply at the crisis that we had to come to. we are sufficient in number and ability to remake the planet’s weather and exhaust its resources.
what we do next as a species decides whether we proceed further or not. in my mind, we can remain the caterpillar no longer.
assign me to the category of radical feminists; i’m among those who work to change everything.
/ehj2
-
Violet says:
Well, my questions in comment 221 aren’t rhetorical. Those are exactly the things I want to talk to other feminists about, particularly pro-porn feminists.
I’ve been thinking today about why it’s so rare for pro-porn feminists and anti-porn feminists to publicly agree with each other even on the things they actually agree on — like, say, the abuses in the industry, the unavoidable fact that most porn is sexist, etc. I think it’s because pro-porn feminists believe that antiporn feminists have an ultimate goal or philosophy they don’t share — goal being to rid the world of all sexual imagery, philosophy being that all sexual imagery is necessarily and always degrading. This is obviously a deal-breaker for feminists who see imagery as a key part of sexual freedom.
But the thing is, antiporn feminists are actually not monolithic on the imagery/objectification thing at all, despite the prominence of certain bloggers (and really I think the intertubes are skewing perceptions in this area). Many, like me, believe that imagery is not intrinsically demeaning nor is it evil to want to look at sexual imagery; the problem is with the kind of imagery and the context of women’s oppression.
Would a better approach be to envision positive goals we can all share? Can pro-porn and anti-porn feminists start imagining a non-patriarchal, non-oppressive world of truly liberated sexuality? What would that world look like? And if we can agree on our ideal, could we then look at how the current situation falls short, and evaluate to what extent the current situation is either moving us toward the goal or keeping us stuck in the patriarchy?
-
Violet says:
Whoops, cross-post. Sorry about that, ehj2 — sounded like I was dissing your comment!
-
ehj2 says:
dear doctor,
i’ve been following this conversation closely all day. the reason i was able to enter again with a comment [my 223] was because at comment [221] you pulled us all back up again to the 500,000-foot level.
may i take this opportunity to compliment you on your patience and the tremendous amount of work it requires to steward and sustain such a comfortable sanctuary for this kind of discourse. i know i couldn’t do it and have the highest regard for those who can.
/ehj2
-
Mandos says:
I wrote a long response earlier today, but a glitch killed my little opus. Oh, well. shrug
-
cicely says:
Would a better approach be to envision positive goals we can all share? Can pro-porn and anti-porn feminists start imagining a non-patriarchal, non-oppressive world of truly liberated sexuality?
Good questions, Violet. Large ones. We can’t avoid talking about sexuality itself, can we…if we hope to really get anywhere.
This goes straight to the issue of ‘power analysis’, I think. Power is involved in sexuality. The giving over and the taking of it. People who either never or only once in a blue moon look at porn still have fantasies. (This is why Dubhe and others talk about ‘responsible fantasising’.) These fantasies very, very often involve the giving and taking of power - they might involve humiliation - even degradation - whatever. The power exchange could be emotional only, or emotional and physical - but the thing is - it’s fantasy. Some couples act out these fantasies. Some people like to see pictures depicting them. Some like to read about them.
In the first flushes of attraction, the thrill of the attraction itself is enough. It has its own power.
So, before I start going on and on, and because I’m not sure where I’m going with this - maybe I should ask a couple of questions. What do others believe we would be left with if we take ‘power’ out of human sexuality?
-
delphyne says:
“Good questions, Violet. Large ones. We can’t avoid talking about sexuality itself, can we…if we hope to really get anywhere.”
I’d say the opposite. We can’t hope to get anywhere if we keep our minds stuck firmly on abstractions and future utopias rather than focusing on the material reality of porn. It’s not like pornography has always been with us, it’s really only in the past thirty or so years that it has exploded (and if anyone starts mentioning ancient cave paintings I’ll scream very loudly - we now have the situation where people are able to sit at home and masturbate to pictures and film of REAL women being degraded in the most horrible ways with hardly even the slightest social disapproval - ten thousand years ago they’d have to trudge to the nearest cave and then stand in the dark and the damp).
“This goes straight to the issue of ‘power analysis’, I think. Power is involved in sexuality.”
Only if you are a patriach or a patriarchy supporter. Those people can never get past power relations and somebody having to be the boss (sorry I mean the man having to be the boss).
“The giving over and the taking of it.”
Yup, patriarchal men taking power from women whenever they can.
“People who either never or only once in a blue moon look at porn still have fantasies. (This is why Dubhe and others talk about ‘responsible fantasising’.) These fantasies very, very often involve the giving and taking of power - they might involve humiliation - even degradation - whatever. The power exchange could be emotional only, or emotional and physical - but the thing is - it’s fantasy.”
What has fantasy got to do with porn? Everything that human beings have ever created are fantasies if you want to use that reasoning given that they started off as a thought in someone’s head. And the power exchanges that exist currently in sex between men and women are real, not fantasy.
“Some couples act out these fantasies. Some people like to see pictures depicting them. Some like to read about them.”
Some people like to act out assualts on gay people or Jews. Some people like to see pictures depicting them. Some people like to read racist and homophobic material.
“In the first flushes of attraction, the thrill of the attraction itself is enough. It has its own power.”
So once we get past that boring mutual admiration stage, we can get to the more exciting woman on the bottom used as a man’s fucktoy stage. Some people even just go straight to that.
“So, before I start going on and on, and because I’m not sure where I’m going with this - maybe I should ask a couple of questions. What do others believe we would be left with if we take ‘power’ out of human sexuality?”
A nice time and a freer world.
-
Infidel says:
Take power out of human sexuality and the diplomacy, the observation and practice and negotiations of mutual respect are not needed. Even in conversation one relinquishes and grants the power to be the talker or listener. Imagining an encounter with another being without the presence of power is unthinkable.
-
delphyne says:
Is this going to be another of those conversations where the subject is stretched into meaninglessness? When cecily is talking about “power” she is talking about “power over”, the current state of male-female relations where men hold power and steal women’s from us.
It is quite possible for people to meet as equals treating each other with mutual respect, without any of that nasty oneupMANship that characterises so many interactions. However people have to be brave enough both to be vulnerable and also to trust the other person that they won’t take advantage of that vulnerability.
The best conversations I’ve ever had have been where people are interested in both listening and talking and aren’t concerned with who has “power” at any particular moment. They were characterised by co-operation and productivity.
Male power means something in this world. It means male access to women’s bodies and exploitation of our energy. To try and stretch that meaning all the way to conversations (although men very often try to steal women’s power in those too) is simply ridiculous.
-
Infidel says:
I yeild all the power over framing the debate and defining all the words to you delphyne, now, but in a meaningless way it requires learning, I am ignorant of power meaning power over, using that…
Pornography Prevelance
Male dominance
Sexual Exitement
Meat vs. Being -
ehj2 says:
i’ve been waiting for someone to introduce the term “power.” i was beginning to think the term would be left out of this particular exploration. and i was pondering why. is power really the elephant in the room that we no longer even see?
conversations about pornography tend to use male pornography (and rarely include the female pornography of romance novels where men are clearly success objects) “too largely.” to make male pornography about too many things. to attempt to stuff too many ills into its small frame.
the real frame we’re looking for is power. the opposite of love is not hate, but a kind of cold unrelated indifference married to power. the nature of love is “relation,” and we can only hate what we are in strong relation with. hate is when we need or want (love) something to be different than it is.
we’re indebted to carl jung for the following — where there is power there is not love.
here’s the challenge, and it will have to be lived individual by individual. we can’t win out over power with power. thinkers tend to believe they can use intellectual power, the power of inarguable argument, the power of clear reality clearly expressed, to win over the power of ignorance or the power of physical dominance and even over the strange distorted thinking of religionists.
we tend to think of power itself as neutral, like electricity, that it can be used for good or ill, and that the trouble with bad pornography is that it is about “power and sex” rather than about “romance and sex.” how often have we heard the expression, “porn is not about sex, it’s about violence”? the reason power is visible in this realm and not others is because this is the one realm where we are aware, at least unconsciously, that power does not belong.
the following is my key paragraph:
and the very reason the psychology of our masses is living it out there — where it obviously does not belong — is in an effort to make visible and conscious the fact that we are oblivious that we have invited it in to so many other places where it equally does not belong.
where there is power there is not love.
the larger problem is not pornography, but the unconscious misuse of unbalanced power all around us, and the attempts to garner and use different forms of power to overcome power. there’s celebrity power, beauty power, intellectual power, economic power, suave persuasive power, and all sorts of physical power. the reason women still want to be beautiful and buy billions in magazines and cosmetics and clothes to be beautiful is not because they want to be sexbots for patriarchs but because they want to have sufficient beauty power to have agency in the various realms of their lives. some women, generally those with more than average non-beauty power, opt out of the cosmetics and “women’s magazines” game and achieve relative personal success living on their intellectual or academic power. to truly opt out now, for a man or a woman, is almost impossible.
in the course of industrialization, we’ve made having and pursuing power the sine quo non of self agency and worth. we’ve driven families out of the wilderness and off of farms and forced men to work (more and more like objects) for other men. in the last decades, we’ve put women to work in factories as we’ve defined greed as good and unleashed the barely-fettered power of economic entities to grind down the entire world.
our invisible challenge is the unbalance of power in all its manifestations. we’ll have to balance it, moment by moment, interaction by interaction, with its true opposite — love. greed for any form of power simply enhances the imbalance. even to have a sustainable world now, we’ll have to be willing to be less and have less. men as success objects and women as beauty objects will have to stop being objects and simply “be” human beings.
labor laws to protect the people? how about not just in the pornography industry but in every industry? so let’s support unions, which after all are simply people. how did we decide that corporations should be allowed to organize and collude and own the levers of political power and the media, and that people, for whom the corporations should serve, cannot organize? why are we one of the few countries in the world with no labor party but two parties that are simply slightly different versions of the corporatist party?
i would offer that the perfect (a masculine or intellectual ideal) is the enemy of the good. gandhi was “instrumental” in organizing an unarmed people in non-violent ways to take on a relatively benign empire. martin king also allowed himself to be an instrument of the people and is one from whom i’ve learned salient and practicable truths. it’s one thing to savage the accomplishments of those who have made small successes in the world. it’s another to recognize that the energy in that savaging is itself a form (and potentially a misuse) of power. it’s hard to build a railroad. it’s relatively easy to put rocks and debris on railroad tracks and stop a train.
it’s likely impossible to be a perfect man. in this time it’s hard to be even a mediocre flawed man. i don’t really think we can afford to throw all the flawed people away while waiting for an angel to lead us out of the wilderness. the best we may be able to do is be “instruments” of the best dreams flowing within us and through us into the world.
love is about relationship. perfection is a masculine ideal, an ideologue’s ideal. an ideologue is someone who puts ideas before people and chants “stay the course” for an ideal no matter the consequences for real people in their real lives. love’s goal is simply to be related. to have common ground. to steward and protect common ground. to hold things together — like families or communities — even if its messy and almost everyone is damaged and half mad.
i love being here. this is my time. i know what i’m here for and nothing can stop me from the task burning inside me. i may be no more than a flawed grain of sand on an endless beach of humanity, but that’s all i need to be. that is enough inner wealth to make me happy and even sometimes blissful. the world itself is simply the way it is.
i’m old enough to have adopted and taken to heart some of the phrases from my hippie youth. i’ll end here with one of my favorite salutes.
love and peace,
/ehj2
-
delphyne says:
I don’t understand what you are trying to say Infidel.
******
Carl Jung, slept with one of his very young female patients. Ghandi used to sleep (literally) with various young women to prove he could resist temptation (what they got from the experience is another story). Martin Luther King, a big old sexist I hear.“and rarely include the female pornography of romance novels where men are clearly success objects”
I know Violet doesn’t like trying to define pornography but this is a classic example of why we have to be accurate about pornography and what it is. Romance novels aren’t women’s pornography, they are propaganda aimed at women to tell us that only being with a man can make us happy. Men aren’t degraded in romance novels, they aren’t called sluts and whores and have their bodies used in horrible ways, they aren’t raped. They are set up as superior beings who women should suck up to. But that old piece of illogic “if men do it then women must do it too” always comes up. The male equivalent of women’s romance novels is dick lit - Tom Clancy, Wilbur Smith and the like - neither genres are pornography or pornographic.
-
Mandos says:
No one entirely understands Infidel, and I’m not entirely sure I believe in him anyway.
-
Infidel says:
In my mediocrity I revel in notoriety. It’s like being on a talk show with Noam Chomski, Gore Vidal, Gloria Steinem, Hillary and Bill, and Andrea Dworkin, and I’ve got a seat at the table.
I apologize.Can ehj2 square “Where there is power there is no Love” with “the power of love”?
I try to be in keeping with delphyne’s Power=Power Over.(Mens Power Over)
I’m being bounced around, and I’m trying to keep these thoughts and ideas squared, balancing, pitted against each other in some sort of juxtaposition. I value and cherish good and cogent thought, eloquence and rightness.PORNOGRAPHY what a waste of internet. The time and effort and damage to humanity. Unlike rape, I can attest to a complete ignorance of the non-sexual nature of pornography consumption on the part of the partaker. It may be that I was reveling in the “power over” aspect but I thought I was enjoying the tingly orgasm. And that is not to say the other didn’t exist or even that the “true” nature was one of dominance and patriarchy and not sex. I only begin to understand how and to what extent it even exists.
It makes me wonder if rapists realize they aren’t raping for sex and moreso to assert their power and dominance and manifest their hate of women in a patriarchal society. -
ehj2 says:
infidel [comment 236],
embedded as i am in a culture that has only a single word for love, and little knowledge of it or respect for it, i’m not foolish enough to pretend i can define love.
but i do know that love has efficacy — it can do things. it brings and holds things together.
the term “power of love” is what it feels like from the standpoint of power. only an opposing power could “win” against power.
by way of an example used frequently in zen, water is the softest of things. but it grinds away the hardest and most enduring of things, mountains. not by being harder, but by being itself — endlessly patient that it will find its way.
notice that the obverse is also true. from the standpoint of love, power can look like love. like desire amplified beyond description. like “want” that will know and honor no barrier. or exactly like a success object in a romance novel, a captain of industry or a beautiful pirate who so needs a woman of his dreams that he navigates all stormy seas and beyond all protestations and wins her. and then it is called, appropriately, “the love of power.”
/ehj2
-
Violet says:
The purpose of this conversation right now — and it’s my blog, I get to decide — is to see where there might be a middle ground between anti-porn and pro-porn feminists, an area where the dialogue could become fruitful and eventually lead into a shared agenda.
So, before I start going on and on, and because I’m not sure where I’m going with this - maybe I should ask a couple of questions. What do others believe we would be left with if we take ‘power’ out of human sexuality?
My own preference is to pull back from the micro-analysis of sexuality and go for the macro approach. A couple of reasons:
1. Sexuality is a black box. It’s one of the most complicated, if not THE most complicated things about us as individual humans. God knows what drives us individually, what layers of psychology and biology and childhoood experiences and whatever is in that brew, but the result is so complex that it’s impossible to analyze completely. And even if it can be analyzed, it can’t really be changed. I can’t analyze why I prefer green beans to English peas, and even if I could I doubt I could change my preferences.
2. Although the personal is the political, feminism works best when it concentrates on large-scale social expectations and avoids dictating to each woman how she should feel, whether she should love a particular man, whether she should cook his dinner, etc. I’ve seen this time and time again, though it’s a lesson we have to keep learning. But we’ve navigated the tricky shoals between women-as-a-class and woman-as-individual before, and we can do it again. Yes, it’s tricky, but it can be done. (Example: I want a world where “wife” isn’t a job description and being married doesn’t automatically obligate a woman to cook and clean. In the past 30 years we’ve come pretty far at least in the U.S. in upending that social expectation. But I’m not interested in telling an individual woman that she mustn’t cook for her husband.)
So when I talk about blue-skying a feminist world of sexual liberation, I’m not talking about dictating how two people get on in bed so much as I’m talking about the large-scale social pressures on women.
-
Infidel says:
If I don’t want, then I have no need for power.
If I want that tingly feeling I might actually be feeling a need to have power over.
If I want power over I might pretend to have a want for that tingly feeling which I might pretend requires a power over which is actually what I want in the first place.
Fuck it, I think I’ll just go over to Reclusive and read some stuff. -
Infidel says:
I totally apologize as I have cross-posted.
-
henderson says:
Romance novels are just very sexy, adventure stories. I don’t see them as pornographic. The romance novels I’ve read usually have the strong heroine. With the males as either good guys or bad guys or whatever. With love usually coming out in the end. I don’t know which romance novels you guys are talking about- must have missed those. Anyway, I threw that out there because I was trying to show the differences between the average ( i mean average, run of the mill guy/gal on the street- not all the intellectuals in here of course) males and females minds.
Anyway, has nothing much to do with what you guys are talking about.My utopia is not one where men read romance novels nor one where women feel they must enjoy Debbie sux cox Galore. It is one were men cool it a bit and grow up. And toughen up. it’s very weak in my eyes to be obsessed with porn, whores, their dicks, and can’t look at boobs without giggling or getting a hard on.
-
henderson says:
So for me- like with racisim- not in my presence. If a guy is acting stupid in my presence he gets to hear it, change it, or get away from me. I’m not going to celebrate, go along with or over look that kind of behaviour.
-
delphyne says:
“It may be that I was reveling in the “power over” aspect but I thought I was enjoying the tingly orgasm.”
Power feels pleasurable, why would sexual power over someone feel any less pleasurable? I think you need to read this Infidel. I don’t think it’s possible to open your eyes about how pornography really works in a few posts on the internet, but perhaps this essay might help -
-
henderson says:
Ghandi used to sleep (literally) with various young women to prove he could resist temptation
Ah now THERE’s a romantic story! How lovely. Wish i hadn’t heard that. and yet another bullshit male thinking. Sleeping with young girls to resist temptation. Oh brother!
Good luck trying to change the world blog ladies. But you know– I think you just may pull it off a little. Just a little, every year, one guy at a time. You see, I think the patriarchy is real, rotten and stagnate and very dick centered ( is that called operating from the lower Shakra?- well beats me- somebody will let us know), and could use a little shaking up. Good luck.
-
cicely says:
So when I talk about blue-skying a feminist world of sexual liberation, I’m not talking about dictating how two people get on in bed so much as I’m talking about the large-scale social pressures on women.
Oh, it’s probably a good thing I seem to have accidentally left the room having only previewed and not posted the comment I wrote earlier then.
Fair enough, Violet, I see your point.
As I think I’ve written before - I’d like the word ‘whore’ not to carry any more weight as an insult than ‘actor’, ‘psychotherapist’ or ‘masseuse’. Sex and sexuality will be de-stigmatised. Since women bear the brunt of the current stigmatisation, this will improve our standing dramatically. The only people providing any kind of sexual services ( pornography, prostitution or anything else) would be volunteers (careerists even) who have chosen this work over other available options. It will be well understood that sex workers are quite as able as other workers to detach themselves from their professional role and sustain healthy and happy private lives, enjoying fulfilling relationships with their significant others.
-
Infidel says:
…”can’t be personal solutions to political problems.”
Thanks delphyne
“It Hurts”
I did not allow myself to know that, not how, or how much.
and thanks Robert Jensen.
Was sex ever so good as when there were no words for gender? Like before language, way before codes. -
Violet says:
Sex and sexuality will be de-stigmatised.
It’s my observation that the more sexuality is de-stigmatized, the more porn producers create ever more extreme forms of pornography in order to re-create the thrill of stigma.
A hundred years ago, or even 50 years ago, sex and nudity were sufficiently stigmatized that pornography consisted of nothing more than naked pictures. That was thrill enough.
A couple of decades ago people starting saying pornography was a response to the stigmatization of sex, so if we de-stigmatized sex then the taste for demeaning porn would go away. The opposite has happened: sex is more open and de-stigmatized than it has ever been in Western society; the changes just since I was a young woman are astonishing. And pornography is more hideous and demeaning that anyone ever dreamed would happen in the mainstream — it’s Marquis de Sade stuff.
Rather than social stigma driving pornography, it seems clear to me that pornographers and porn users are seeking out stigma, striving to come up with things that are more and more outrageous. So if we de-stigmatize the sex acts currently popular in porn — rape and animal torture — then what’s next? Snuff films? I don’t doubt it. Got to keep pushing the envelope.
It’s entirely possible that an urge to privacy is universal in human sexuality even where sex is not stigmatized (consider the Mbuti, who are sexually liberated but choose to make love in private, like almost all humans). If that’s true, then the thrill of titillation is always going to be a part of sexual fantasy. And we need to re-think the idea that demeaning porn exists just because some godbags are still preaching that sex outside marriage is wrong, and that the answer is to de-stigmatize demeaning porn.
-
delphyne says:
Sexuality isn’t stigmatized. Women’s sexuality is stigmatized. There’s a huge difference. Heterosexual men gain power from their sexuality - the more women they have sex with the more power they get. That’s why a group of men in Iran can stone a woman to death for being a prostitute when many of them have probably used her themselves. That’s why biographers of de Sade think he was a hero. The women he raped and tortured - lying whores. Women are still whores according to most men, they are just more open about it than they ever have been.
Until it is understood that pornography is one of the mechanisms that male supremacy uses to keep women in our second class degraded position and that it’s not just sexually arousing pictures, it’s not possible to change anything about it.
I notice you’ve been ignoring my posts Violet. Fair enough, maybe nothing I say speaks to you, but what do you think about what Dworkin had to say about what pornography is? Does she persuade you any better than I managed about porn’s meaning and reality? You said you were a big admirer.
-
Violet says:
Elaborating on my comment #247, the reason I bring up the issue of stigma is because it seems to play a large part in pro-porn arguments. At least that’s what I hear: sex is stigmatized and women’s sexuality is stigmatized and that’s the problem, so more porn is better.
I want to chase that down, so I’m going to put aside for the moment the other ways of analyzing pornography and its current explosion (women as the sex class, men’s power, etc.) and just talk about this theory of stigmatized sex with porn as liberation.
The underlying mechanism that’s being referenced goes like this: Western patriarchal society covers sex with shame, which is why people find sex titillating and are turned on by “dirty” sex, etc. More porn gets sex out in the open, which will make the stigma go away.
It’s certainly true that Western society has traditionally been quite icked out about sex, particularly women’s sexuality. But Western society is not the same as the human race, and not all human societies are patriarchal.
Yet as far as I know, ALL human societies treat sex as something private and a bit embarrassing. Even the most sexually liberated, gender-equal, devil-may-care societies think lovemaking should happen in private, and giggle and blush when they talk about it. Why? Maybe it’s because of the psychological and physical vulnerability that sex creates in us while we’re doing it. Who knows. But whatever the reason, it seems quite possible that this sense of privacy and slight embarrassment is universal and is quite independent of patriarchy. This could mean that humans will always be predisposed to develop a psychological link between sexual excitement and secrecy, hiddenness, and privacy.
If that is the case, then it could be that a sexually healthy world will require that sex be imbued with a certain degree of privacy. The pro-porn mantra that more porn will lead inexorably to healthier attitudes towards sex may not be working at all, and in fact may at this point be defeating the purpose. A great deal of the traditional Western stigma over sex has already dissipated. Just in my lifetime, since I was a young married woman, people have become amazingly more open about sex. So at this point, what is porn doing? Is it really helping to get rid of old stigmas? Or is it defeating an inchoate human craving for hiddenness, and thus actually warping sexuality by driving people (men) to seek ever further for something that still feels “secret”? And is that seeking after hiddennes, tied as it is to our extant patriarchal woman-hating ways, just perpetuating a sense that the only way sex can be good is if it’s really sick and nasty and the woman is really degraded?
Porn now is like an arms race — sicker and sicker videos, more and more “amateurs” being abused on camera, freakier and freakier shit. And of course the victims of this freaky shit are mostly women, who are already the sex class and already the bearers of every sexual burden. Rather than this explosion of porn leading to a de-stigmatization of sexuality and women’s sexuality, is it not possible that it’s backfiring?
-
Violet says:
Delphyne, as I said in comment 238, I’m interested right now in finding out where feminists on both sides of this issue might find common ground, or at least a common language to speak.
-
delphyne says:
The problem is Violet that some people allegedly on the same side of the argument can’t even find common ground.
I’m deeply suspicious of the “why can’t we all get along?” schtick that I keep hearing. I don’t see that really being the most important issue here. Unlike the wider population, pro-porn feminists have actually heard the anti-porn arguments and have chosen to ignore them. Why waste energy on trying to get along with them? I don’t really see the issue here as finding common ground - if they want to get behind the the two radical feminist solutions regarding porn and prostitution I mentioned here then great, otherwise there is a much larger audience to persuade than a handful of pro-porn feminists on the internet. I’ve been pro-porn myself, so I know from first hand experience that the argument is illegitimate and that any nod towards it is simply a move to sell out women.
It’s weird the way feminist politics are singled out like this in a way that I can’t think happens to any other political movement. Are environmentalists supposed to find common ground with oil company employees? Probably not, but the sight of women disagreeing with one another seems to give everybody a fit of the vapours.
“I want to chase that down, so I’m going to put aside for the moment the other ways of analyzing pornography and its current explosion (women as the sex class, men’s power, etc.) and just talk about this theory of stigmatized sex with porn as liberation.”
And I just can’t see why you would want to do that. No-one wants to discuss the sexism involved in pornography so you are just aligning yourself to the mainstream with that action. It’s like trying to discuss apartheid without mentioning racism. Pointless, and leads to questions like this -
“Rather than this explosion of porn leading to a de-stigmatization of sexuality and women’s sexuality, is it not possible that it’s backfiring?”
It would only be backfiring if the motivation of pornography. had been to lead to destigmatization of sex, but, and I’m sorry to keep repeating it, the motivation behind pornography is to degrade and debase women. So no, for the producers and consumers of porn, it hasn’t backfired.
Do you know what I saw today? I was doing a little activism in a newsagent in my town centre, opening up the lads mags so people could see what was really in them and what was in this one was an article “How I lost my virginity to a porn star”. With photographs. So in a magazine, sold in a family newsagent, with no age restriction so even a 12 year old boy could buy it if he wanted (and he probably will) is porn, pictures of this young woman being used by the writer (lots of pictures of him having sex with her taken from his point of view) and by the magazine production team. It made me angry and it made me depressed - this is young men’s sexuality these days (because these magazines have a massive readership) - sexually using women in the coldest way possible, in order that they can boast about it to other men.
-
delphyne says:
I will go this time, because I realise I’m just repeating myself, but I’m wondering if part of the problem here is that you haven’t actually seen much porn Violet. I’m not actually recommending you do so as your natural repugnance to it has acted as a protection from being exposed to it and is worth paying attention to (Mackinnon and Dworkin when they once taught a college course on porngraphy together found that some of their students actually suffered mental trauma from the exposure and I also find it very disturbing to see it now). Seeing it though does actually give you an understanding of what it is really about. A bit like visiting a country rather than just reading a guidebook.
Mind you, you can read Henry Miller, DH Lawrence and Norman Mailer to get a flavour of it.
-
henderson says:
I still haven’t waded through all the stuff on amandas site. But delphyne- you sure are one persitant girl. I admire it. I get what you are trying to say, agree with you. and it didn’t fall on deaf ears. Count me on the anti porn side. Not sure i like the actual nomenclature being used- but what the heck. pro porn makes it sound like they are for every kind of porn no matter how harmful weee haaaa! and anti porn makes it sound like the person has no sexuality or something. and then theres the debate about what the definition of porn is. and so on. To me it’s just obfuscation. Avoiding the point. White noise. Not quite on the up and up.
BUT… I get you.
Interestingly, and separately- sort of. I stopped reading those romance novels 20 years ago. And do you know why? The oddest thing. it was because I realized one day that they were affecting negatively the way i looked at males in my life. None of the males I knew or dated could live up to the ones in the novels. They weren’t as handsome. They weren’t as brave. They didn’t love as wholely. They weren’t as sincere. As exciting and so on. I compared males in the fantasy to males in real life and I didn’t enjoy them as much. I was missing out by reading those silly novels. Of course I was very young- but still.
I wonder- no- I know -that the veiwing of porn for average Joe has the same effect on their minds. They won’t say so- well, some will, but there it is. And it’s tough on average Jane. For me- it’s average Jane that matters. She my girl. my sister. my mom. my gramma- my pal. She’s my heroine. Average Jane.
-
cicely says:
Boy - (and yes, this is the word that popped into my head) is this one of those times when I wish conversion of thought from my head to a key-board wasn’t such a stop-start affair! I want to use my mouth!!!
Where to begin…
First then - Has sex been de-stigmatised? Certainly I agree with delphyne that *women’s* sexuality has not. It’s when this actually happens that we will see changes in pornography to reflect it. What we currently see in the worst pornography is a reflection of the stigmatisation of womens’s sexuality in the broader society, rather than pornography being the cause of it. At least, that’s something that I think needs to be explored. “She’s gagging for it” with an animal, with a bottle, with whatever - reflects disgust that women desire sex at all. Ok for men to - what man is insulted by the suggestion that he might want sex badly?
Rape, on the other hand is depicted in porn as something born of an insatiable *male* desire for sex, and an inaliable (spelling?) right to have it with any passing woman. He is entitled to his sexuality. She is not entitled to hers. She can say neither “yes” nor “No” to sex with a man. Men own all women’s sexual responses. Women are nothing.
What if a woman in court in a rape trial was to say ” I went out that evening looking for a man to have sex with. I wasn’t looking for a relationship, just a casual encounter. I left my two children (who have different fathers) with a babysitter. I dressed in what I believed to be quite sexy clothing. I decided to have a few drinks to loosen up a bit so I went to a local bar. I was alone because I didn’t feel like company on this excursion - since I would be abandoning any company once I met a man I was intersested in. Also, I wanted to be able to communicate directly and solely with men while I was making my selection. I didn’t want any distractions. The man I left the bar with appeared to be a genuinely nice guy. We went to his apartment and had one more drink, but I definitely wasn’t drunk and neither was he. Suddenly, in the middle of conversation, he lunged at me, started calling me a whore and a slut and telling me he was going to give me what I deserved right now. He wasn’t playing. I tried to fight him off, but he was strong - his eyes were all glazed over and I was just like a ragdoll to him. I could have been any woman, and *how* I might have wanted to have sex was completely irrelevant to him. That I wanted sex at all seemed to grant him permission to treat me anyway he chose to. He proceeded to rape me.”
How many rapes go un-reported because the woman knows that if *she* goes on trial - which all rape victims do - the real events surrounding the crime will be unacceptable, and she’s likely to be caught out in a lie?
The motivation behind porn, delphyne, is to make money by exploiting societies existing attitudes to women’s sexuality, but porn isn’t the cause of the debasing and the degradation, it’s the effect. Sex will always be depicted in pictures, movies, whatever, and some of it will always appear degrading to some people, but I don’t believe the worst aspects of it will be eliminated in any other way than by granting women our right to full sexual autonomy without judgement.
-
cicely says:
Yet as far as I know, ALL human societies treat sex as something private and a bit embarrassing.
Violet, one of my long term lesbian partners had a very high libido, and we had a polyamorous relationship. Well, she was poly - I can only be attracted to one woman at a time - but I actually enjoyed her ability to engage sexually with others. It was kind of a turn on for me that other women (and the odd man) found her irresistable, and I’ve even seen her seduce people in groups! Her sexuality was of a gently - even humourously - assertive type but with none of the ‘whore and slut’ stuff - just innuendo, open, fresh, smiley, respectful, sensitive - HEALTHY seduction! It’s possible! Some people surprised themselves with their ability to respond and to enjoy guilt and shame free pleasure with this woman. They considered themselves more private than it turned out they were, under unexpected circumstances. They weren’t damaged by the experience either - because my partner didn’t regard these episodes as ‘conquests’ - it was all about the pleasure, both for her and for them.
I have to say that my relationship with this woman opened my own eyes to possibilities I didn’t previously know existed. Seeing and experiencing is believing. I think human sexuality has wonderful possibilities for both women and men, and the distortions of it in our society are positively heartbreaking.
-
Violet says:
First then - Has sex been de-stigmatised? Certainly I agree with delphyne that women’s sexuality has not. It’s when this actually happens that we will see changes in pornography to reflect it. What we currently see in the worst pornography is a reflection of the stigmatisation of womens’s sexuality in the broader society, rather than pornography being the cause of it.
I agree that women’s sexuality has not been completely de-stigmatized, but I do aver that it has been de-stigmatized to a large extent. Just in my lifetime we’ve gone from pre-marital sex being a scandal to being not only acceptable but expected. To women and girls talking openly about sexual desire and their lovers in a way that was truly inconceivable in the 1970s, when Dear Abby was still fielding columns about the horrors of pre-marital sex and my parents were frantic for me to get married before I had sex with my boyfriend.
Yet over this same time period pornography has grown ever more extreme and degrading. If pornography just reflects the stigmatization of women’s sexuality, why is it that the obvious decrease in the stigmatization of real-world sex has been accompanied by an obvious increase in grotesque porn? That’s the reverse of what should be happening.
-
Violet says:
Cicely, re your friend — of course there are individuals in every society who are a bit exhibitionistic, or into group sex, etc. That’s natural human variation and nothing wrong with it. And I’m sure you’re right — under better circumstances most of us would find ourselves a bit more open than we might expect. But the large-scale behavior pattern all over the world is for most people to feel rather private about sex.
I think of the Mbuti, who relish sex and start having lots of partners as soon as they’re able — the elder women in the village guide a young girl and her boyfriend through their first experience, provide contraception advice, etc. Yet these joyously sexual people, like most all humans it seems, generally prefer to make love away from the eyes of others.
-
Violet says:
What we currently see in the worst pornography is a reflection of the stigmatisation of womens’s sexuality in the broader society, rather than pornography being the cause of it…
Sex will always be depicted in pictures, movies, whatever, and some of it will always appear degrading to some people, but I don’t believe the worst aspects of it will be eliminated in any other way than by granting women our right to full sexual autonomy without judgement.Cicely, I would summarize your argument above as: Porn is awful now because it reflects women’s stigmatized sexuality, and will only get better when women’s sexuality is not stigmatized.
Is that correct? If so (and tell me if I’ve got it wrong), I want to ask about this. I’m asking you because you’re my favorite non-anti-porn feminist.
Here’s the bit I don’t understand: how can women’s sexuality become de-stigmatized when the single biggest representation of our sexuality, the multi-billion dollar wall-to-wall porn industry, is perpetuating that stigmatization? That’s what I don’t get. Why the hands-off attitude towards pornography? I mean seriously, porn is most men’s number one source of information now about women’s sexuality. It’s not just a mirror. No modern media is. It’s culture. Just because it comes through in digital form doesn’t make it any less part of the culture.
How can we possibly hope to de-stigmatize our sexuality when it’s constantly being represented in this grotesque way?
-
cicely says:
Maybe there’s a critical point of de-stigmatisation that has to be reached.Things get worse before they get better. Men have this window of opportunity (technology) to try and hold and enforce the status quo. (Plus people can make a lot of money) We’re still a long, long way from the ideal in general. See my rape case scenario. The male bonding we’ve talked about - in gang rapes -etc - (no privacy required there) it’s still about not allowing women to be fully human - it not mattering what a woman’s desires - or not -are (don’t rapists often accuse their victims of enjoying it, or make them say they are?) and men communicating that to each other - and gang rapes have occurred since long before porn reached the state people are saying it has. (I don’t know what percentage of men look at the worst stuff) There’s been no evidence that porn *causes* rape (long discussion on that at Alas recently) - even if there appears to be some that porn decreases men’s empathy for women. What comes first, the chicken or the egg?
I’d agree that broadly speaking most people will probably always prefer privacy around sexual intimacy, most if not all of the time, while some might be more open some of the time under different circumstances.
Don’t know how clear I’ve been in this response - I’m being rushed out the door at this moment to do other stuff….
-
cicely says:
Ok, I’m back and wasn’t as clear as I could have been, plus wrote some superflous stuff.
My hands off pornography attitude probably comes largely from a civil liberties non-censorship position, with a good dash of sex-positivism thrown in. That is not to say that the worst stuff doesn’t offend me greatly. It does. (not that I see it - but I don’t need to. I remember the infamous ‘Hustler’ cover with the woman being put through a mincing machine plus I have enough imagination to know how bad it can be.) I think it diminishes men as well as women, but obviously it’s much more harmful to women in the context of male entitlement and expressions of misogyny outside of but influenced by it.
Unfortunately, censorship gets us into a position of ‘who decides what’s offensive?’ In Canada, as I’m sure you know, when legislation was passed based on the ideas in the Dworkin/Mackinnon ordinance, one of the first items to be targeted was Dworkin’s own book on pornography. Also, gay and lesbian publications and consensual BDSM stuff. Obviously this is not ideal.
I mean seriously, porn is most men’s number one source of information now about women’s sexuality.
I have some doubts about this. I think the real women in men’s lives probably have a far greater level of influence than is allowed for in these discussions - overall. I think television and movies and books also have more influence than is allowed for, and when these present women as full, autonomous human beings, and particularly autonomous *sexual* beings, with the absolute right to be so, far more clearly and more often than they do, the worst pornography will be shown up in sharper relief for the women-hating crap it really is. It will become the last bastion of the desperate, deluded and socially retarded men in society, having fuck-all to do with real life. So, what I’m saying I guess is that the de-stigmatisation of women’s sexuality has to come from a range of other culturally defining/reflecting media, set up in opposition to the worst excesses in pornography - as well as from people within the pornography industry itself.
I don’t think legislation can be more powerful than these types of change processes in reality. It would just be another hopeless ‘war’, like the ‘war on drugs’. There’s too much money in it - it’s not going away, it’ll only go underground - the worst of it anyway. Alongside more accurate and visionary representations of women in all media I think we have to trust people, in their own homes, in their own lives to learn to recognise what’s what, and conduct their actual lives accordingly.
-
cicely says:
Alongside more accurate and visionary representations of women in all media I think we have to trust people, in their own homes, in their own lives to learn to recognise what’s what, and conduct their actual lives accordingly.
This last bit sounds a bit wishy-washy, I realise. So, just want to re-iterate that I do realise the depth and extent of the problem - and get plenty angry about it too. I’ve even been known to feel hopeless and helpless in the face of the intractability of men’s inhumanity to women. I just honestly can’t see, in relation to pornography, for all the reasons I’ve given, that censorship is the best way to deal with it.
-
Violet says:
My hands off pornography attitude probably comes largely from a civil liberties non-censorship position, with a good dash of sex-positivism thrown in.
I’m sorry, I should have been more clear. You’ve given a good reply about censorship, but I guess I assumed you remembered that I also oppose censorship. Well, no reason you should remember all the billions of words on this blog, but anyway — yes, I oppose censorship.
But censorship is not the only way to protest. When I say “hands off,” I mean that pro-porn feminists treat pornography as something not to be criticized. That’s what I don’t understand. And it would really help me if I could understand it.
We (feminists) protest everything else in the culture that demeans us. Feminists have been up in arms about that asswipe mufti who compared women to meat. But they didn’t say “abolish Islam” or “censor Muslim speech” — they just protested loud and long about his misogynistic godawful crap.
In fact that’s how most feminist change has been effected — not through law but through hearts-and-minds persuasion and protest.
Yet with pornography…silence. Isn’t that part of the sexist culture? Of course it is. Rather a huge part. I don’t understand why pro-porn feminists say privately, yes, most of the stuff out there is sexist, but then refuse to publicly criticize it or oppose it in anyway. It’s like it’s sacrosanct. Why?
-
Mandos says:
Yet with pornography…silence. Isn’t that part of the sexist culture? Of course it is. Rather a huge part. I don’t understand why pro-porn feminists say privately, yes, most of the stuff out there is sexist, but then refuse to publicly criticize it or oppose it in anyway. It’s like it’s sacrosanct. Why?
So I find that a lot of the anti-anti-porn people seem to be influenced by both theoretical and therapeutic psychology considerations, to put it euphemistically. A lot of arguments about Real Existing Porn still center around taking apart people’s psyches, and some people are very wary of hacking into other people’s psyches with a completely unsympathetic chain saw, which is how they see a lot of antiporn radicals. That chain saw, they seem to believe, can sometimes tend to be a recapitulation of patriarchy in film-negative. The Feminist Gaze, as it were, and hence not all that radical.
Which brings us back to stormy’s post, of course.
-
Violet says:
No, it doesn’t bring us back to Stormy’s post.
My question is why pornography is exempted from cultural critique. Cultural critique is the mainstay of feminism, the main engine of change.
Feminists do not shy away from addressing every form of culture that perpetuates misogyny and sexism — every form, that is, except pornography. Other forms of media aren’t exempt: the TV and movie industries Cicely mentioned have long been the object of feminist critique, and justifiably so. Yet pornography is off-limits.
This is even stranger when you consider that pro-porn feminists feel that porn will only get better when women’s sexuality is no longer stigmatized. Yet pornography is a large part of how women’s sexuality IS stigmatized — if it’s not the most important source of information, it’s obviously a big part of the culture. It’s constantly perpetuating the theme that women are degraded, that they want to be raped, and so on.
I mean, if Vanity Fair ran an article saying that women are all sluts who want to be raped, feminists would protest. When a Muslim mufti says women are meat who are responsible for their own rapes, feminists protest. When Hollywood churns out movies depicting women as sexbots rather than thinking humans, feminists protest. When sexist male novelists depict all prostitutes as shiny clean whores who love their work, feminists protest. Yet this billion-dollar porn industry that is pretty much Misogyny Central for perpetuating the most stigmatized, degraded view of women’s sexuality — that’s fine.
-
Mandos says:
So it depends on the form that the criticism takes, of course.
I mean, did you miss the makeup warz? That apparently drove Kaka Mak off the web? Rarely does a feminist critique of a women’s mag as such get reflected onto the consumer of the women’s mag, but critiques of porn often involve highly personal dissections of the porn user, even as an archetype, and prescriptive pronouncements on repairing the deficiency of the user (straight women included, lesbian women included…).
Also: since dissections of porn often turn into dissections of our response to sexual imagery, it’s not a stretch to expect that it would arouse (cough) more (cough) passion (cough). These things relate to things that are deep inside us.
Either way, this dissection might very well be necessary. The question, again, is one of instrumentation. Some people see the radfem instrumentation as a Hothead Paisanly chainsaw, a satisfying thought but insufficiently fine-grained to do more than spill a lot of blood and brain bits. IIRC, when BD attempted to use a finer instrument in an analysis of rape porn and what it may be satisfying in the psyche of some men, she was accused of apologizing for it: only chainsaws allowed.
So I still do think that we’re back at the point where I posted to link to Stormy’s blog.
-
Violet says:
No, we’re not back to Stormy’s blog. I realize that fascinates you, the whole thing you have about thought control, but I’m actually interested in patriarchy and sexism as social systems and in discovering the right form of cultural critique to address their pornographic manifestations.
If pro-porn feminists reject the more psychological and personal aspects of the existing antiporn argument — which they obviously do — why not come up with their own critique? There’s nothing stopping pro-porn feminists from developing a robust cultural critique of existing pornography as a medium of sexist stereotype. Nothing. There’s absolutely no reason the BB/Dubhe-type argument (if you’ve represented it correctly) has to be the only way to address problems with pornography. (It’s not the approach I use myself, as I’m sure you must have noticed by now.)
I’m not the only one to notice this lack. Amanda in her worm post said as much: we all know most of this shit is horrible, so why don’t we talk about it? Her belief is because the Dworkin legacy has made pro-porn feminists afraid to even touch the issue for fear of being called censors. There are other possibilities, too, like the simple human desire not to be seen as unhip and out of it, since the massive public acceptance of pornography has made it very uncool to not like the stuff. People will make fun of you and call you a prude.
But that’s what feminism is about: banding together as women for the whole strength in numbers thing. If we don’t do that then we’re just individuals at the mercy of sexist expectations. Until feminism became a movement, individual women who tried to buck the system were ostracized and ridiculed. That hasn’t changed.
-
Violet says:
BTW, Mandos: This Earth by Brin? Totally blows. Huge ones.
-
Mandos says:
I thought so—I’ve never read it but it never attracted me. Also avoid The Practice Effect. But do read his Uplift books, especially Startide Rising. Also, while I’m telling you that you’ll be mad at him if you were to read Glory Season, it’s actually not a bad story as such—you’ll just be mad at him.
Brin is a very hit-or-miss writer. Either amazing or awful, depending on his current idée fixe.
-
delphyne says:
Just can’t stay away -
“I just honestly can’t see, in relation to pornography, for all the reasons I’ve given, that censorship is the best way to deal with it.”
Well you’ll be able to get behind the MacKinnon/Dworkin Ordinance then because it has (I’ll shout here so maybe people can actually hear this time) IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH CENSORSHIP. Censorship is prior restraint, enacted by the state, the Dworkin/Mackinnon Ordinance is a civil rights ordinance which allows people who have been harmed by pornography to sue pornographers and distributors in civil courts. In other words, the plaintiff has to prove to a court’s satisfaction that she or he has been harmed by some way by porn. Calling it censorship is like saying that consumer action suits against corporations who have sold a damaging or dangerous products are a restraint of free trade. Trade is free up to the point you start damaging consumers or other members of the public or your employees (see Linda Lovelace or Lara Roxx).
And that stuff you said about Canada - lies and misiniformation created by a PR firm that was hired by the pornographers to discredit Dworkin and MacKinnon (they also spread the lie that they were in bed with the right). Canadian pornography laws have nothing to do with the MacKinnon/Dworkin Ordinance. Canadian laws are obscenity laws.
It’s a shame that the pro-porn side can’t even get simple facts right.
Hands up here who is still going to call Dworkin and MacKinnon censors after reading the above.
-
Mandos says:
We’ve extensively dealt with the ordinance on this site, at least in terms of the short form on Nikki Craft’s pages. The quibble about prior restraint is not really relevant: see so-called SLAPP lawsuits. Using a civil suit end-run around the expression issues doesn’t really cut it.
-
Jimmy Ho says:
Delphyne, thank you so much for posting Andrea Dworkin’s definition of pornography. She is dead, but Larry Flynt, Hugh Hefner and the other successful white male proxenets are well alive and wealthy. I live in a country where you can’t find a single translation of Dworkin’s work, but you can buy the local edition of Hustler and Playboy (as well as Hot Video and other “adult entertainment” publications) at every corner.
What “middle ground” are we talking about? Are we still supposed to “discuss” with people who agree to blame “mainstream porn”, but keep mentioning an invisible “feminist porn” of which they are unable to list even one single example (can you tell me with a straight face that Candida Royalle or Ovidie are not alibis for the malestream/painstream industry)?
Why should we take “Feminists for Life” more seriously than “Feminists for Pornstitution”?Why should we even be grateful that they generously accept to join us (pro-/feminists opposed to sexual exploitation) in pointing out the racism and misogyny of “partiarchal porn” (like there could be an other kind)? That should go without saying.
I won’t ask for the right to be sick and tired of this dogfart. In my motherland, a 16-year old girl has been gang-raped by four of her classmates and she is the one being blamed because she “didn’t defend herself vigorously enough”. Did I mention that one of the boys’ sister was allegedly filming the rape on a camera phone? This is a country where legal prostitution is booming and pornography is widely displayed, yet “liberal porn” blogger X and “male feminist” Y will prefer to bash “some (unnamed) radical feminists” than to aknowledge how this relates to the “depiction of whores” so dear to their hearts.
Ain’t no “common ground”; they got capitalism and its oppression task force on their side. They have the privilege to stop bothering about the facts and start counting the money.
-
Jimmy Ho says:
Why should we take “Feminists for Life” more seriously than “Feminists for Pornstitution”?
That should read
Why should we take “Feminists for Pornstitution” more seriously than “Feminists for Life”?
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
Mandos, I am unclear what the hell you are talking about here. But anyways - if we saw something like let’s say a movie that negatively depicts any other group or population - we would protest, we would critique it - and rightfully so.
Why then would porn be exempt from critiquing the it’s ‘psycho-social’ impact on people. Additionally, if we are using an ‘unsympathetic’ chainsaw on men - please indicate how? Cause I think patriarchy is harmful to men too, something I think Violet has already mentioned.
Anyways, Violet you keep talking about feminists critiquing porn, but as I mentioned before - unless you have a woman-centred definition of porn like we do for woman abuse, like we do for body image etc… we can’t really get too far.
If you are going to define porn in gender neutral terms - it’s pretty useless. Because it’s obvious to anyone that porn affects men and women differently.
-
Violet says:
The “middle ground” is that great Silent Majority of feminists in the middle who are disturbed by modern pornography but do not accept the whole traditional antiporn theory. They keep getting DROWNED OUT by extremists on both sides — on the antiporn side by people who think that everyone who doesn’t adhere religiously to the Dworkin Gospel has cooties and mustn’t even be talked to, and on the pro-porn side by people who think that unless you’re in favor of rape porn then you’re an anti-sex prude.
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
Oops I didn’t do the blockquote thing right!!!
LOL - it’s in reference to your statement here:
So I find that a lot of the anti-anti-porn people seem to be influenced by both theoretical and therapeutic psychology considerations, to put it euphemistically. A lot of arguments about Real Existing Porn still center around taking apart people’s psyches, and some people are very wary of hacking into other people’s psyches with a completely unsympathetic chain saw, which is how they see a lot of antiporn radicals.
-
Jimmy Ho says:
Whatever, Violet. I think I shouldn’t have posted under such passion. Today, I’ve had to deal with some of my people who argue that if a girl didn’t kill herself in front of the boys assaulting her, it means that she agreed to be raped.
-
Jimmy Ho says:
The two sides are not two equally cut halves, Violet. If defending equality and opposing the sexual exploitation of live human bodies is “extremist”, I don’t want to be moderate. I also tend to think that the extremist position for the abolition of slavery is the most reasonable one.
-
Violet says:
Today, I’ve had to deal with some of my people who argue that if a girl didn’t kill herself in front of the boys assaulting her, it means that she agreed to be raped.
Jimmy, that’s horrible. And frankly that kind of misogyny is exactly why I’m so interested in re-building the feminist coalition of my youth. I know for an absolute FACT that there are many middle-of-the road feminists who are concerned about modern porn, see the problems with “raunch culture,” but don’t buy the traditional anti-porn arguments.
-
a louis wain cat says:
Well, I have to say that this has been one of the more productive and interesting discussions on this subject I’ve seen- enough to get me to delurk again.
On Violet’s post #238 above about finding the middle ground between pro-porn and anti-porn feminists, and the possibility of reconciliation- it’s not an optimistic conclusion, but I tend to think that the two camps really do have some profoundly different fundamental assumptions and beliefs, and that this is why comity between them is so difficult to reach. I think one of the major ones is the question of whether or not one believes that sexual liberation = women’s liberation.
The pro-porn camp, from what I’ve seen, tends to assume that the one automatically follows the other- the anti-porn camp, as I understand it, would say that sexual liberation can not come without women’s liberation, and at any rate that the latter is a far more important issue anyway. (I’m definitely in the anti-porn camp, for the record.)That brings me to Violet’s question in #224, about envisioning a post-patriarchal world and what it would look like. That is something we are so far away from that it’s difficult to even imagine it, which is part of the problem itself. The way I see it, though, it wouldn’t necessarily be a free love utopia- I can picture a non-patriarchal society that’s like that, but I can just as easily picture one that’s quite sexually conservative in some ways, though of course not in in the “traditional values” sense. (As Violet points out, a certain concept of sexual modesty seems to be universal.) I can also picture an ultra-patriarchal “free love” dystopia, the ultimate conclusion of porn/raunch culture, a nightmare vision easily as bad as the Taliban/Handmaid’s Tale flip side of the coin. In short, I don’t think a society’s degree of sexual liberalism or conservatism necessarily reflects how patriarchal it is. I think that a lot of the split between the camps revolves around differing opinions on that question. I would guess that most in the pro-porn camp, if asked to envision a world without patriarchy, would envision something which looks like the free love utopia, while the anti-porn camp would have a greater diversity of visions, but I could be wrong. It might be an interesting post in itself, to ask people to post their own personal visions of a world without patriarchy.
On the question of why the silence on pornography- I’m afraid that most of my theories on that ultimately involve “hacking into other people’s psyches with a completely unsympathetic chainsaw”, as Mandos put it, so I won’t go into them much, except to say that in the most sympathetic reading I can muster, I think the pro-porn camp assumes that the increased availability and visibility of porn is an important component of sexual liberation, and then that sexual liberation = women’s liberation. Thus, they feel that even if the stuff out there now is overwhelmingly ugly and misogynistic, in the long term it’s part of a process that will lead towards women’s liberation, and speaking out against it ultimately works against the cause of feminism. I have a lot of problems with that point of view, but in an attempt to keep this post from being too long, I’ll just say that I think it takes much too limited a view of the nature of patriarchy. If one views the heart of patriarchy as lying within conservative authority and traditional “morality”, of being epitomized by things like enforced burkha wearing and Southern Baptist doctrines of “male headship”, it makes a certain sense. However, I think patriarchy is ultimately something much, much more insidious than that, and things like that are just the most obvious and traditional manifestations of it. I’ve come across my share of left-wing, counterculture hipster types who were vile misogynists every bit as bad as any right-wing ultra-conservative fundie preacher. Almost worse, in a sense. The old radical feminist saying that (I’m paraphrasing) “Conservatives want women to be private property, liberals want women to be public property, but feminists don’t want women to be property at all” seems relevant here. Anyway, I’ll stop here before this gets any longer, but I think that’s one of the reasons why there seems to be such reluctance to attack the porn industry.
-
cicely says:
I think you’ve described the problem of coalition building exactly right, Violet.
Jimmy Ho, you and others have this habit of reporting atrocities as if only people with your own views on pornography give a toss about what is done to girls and women - which is why I feel compelled to repeat what should be obvious. We all care - ALL feminists care. I wish you’d stop doing this although I don’t expect you will and obviously, I can’t tell you what to do. But it doesn’t help.
I almost feel as though feminists who’d like to do a critique of extremely women-hating pornography will need to do so in isolation from anti-porn extremists, just so we can keep a clear head. Anyway, I’d like to go looking for information along these lines and come back later if I’ve found anything useful. I don’t mean - by tomorrow - by the way. It may or may not take some time - because I’ve got some important work stuff I have to attend to over the next couple of weeks.
-
Mandos says:
Why then would porn be exempt from critiquing the it’s ‘psycho-social’ impact on people. Additionally, if we are using an ‘unsympathetic’ chainsaw on men - please indicate how? Cause I think patriarchy is harmful to men too, something I think Violet has already mentioned.
It may be harmful to men as a group in a specific way, but it’s not harmful to all men at the same time and in the same way, and it’s not just men I was talking about: cicely has told us before that she feels that in the heyday of the original, pre-Internet porn warz, there were people put under the microscope who should not have been.
The problem with dissecting people so directly, even by proxy, is that you’re not always likely to get the reconstruction that you wanted to get. Does it work?
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
You know, a louis wain cat, I think you bring up a very good point about “pro-porn feminists assume that pornography will eventually be liberating”… That’s a very good point.
It’s also completely hysterical that they believe this, because if you look at countries where porn is readily and openly available, it’s quite the exact oppposite that happens. I mean go to Italy on any given Sunday in any given city in that entire country….
Men go into the church to pray and come out to porn stands to buy porn (walk in a circumference around the Vatican and you’ll see that it’s surrounded by porn stands). Which is FASCINATING - because every bloody night on cable TV DURING PRIME TIME is a boob festival including adverts that show women masturbating (pussys galore and all). Wow. Talk about catholic redemption…And let’s not forget the extremely high levels of street harassment in Italy… Coupled with recent laws that have harsher crimes against rapists who rape virgins (and non-virgins barely count)…Hardly my idea of a ’sexually liberated society for women’.
Look at the UK. Things don’t even have to be ‘labelled porn’ and yet, there is ‘porn’ everywhere… lad’s mags are all over the place. Car washes with topless women! Washing your car has never been so much fun.
So going back to ‘looking’ at the concrete examples of what’s going on - is what we need to do. And I think violet (despite our differences) you are right to say that pro-porn feminists can do this too.
We don’t need a collaboration, or a kiss-a-thon, we really need to get everyone into action. We also need academic feminists to start picking up the slack, us armchair activists/intellectuals will barely cause a dent in what’s going on.
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
Mandos for you:
An example of pro-porn’s pussy liberation efforts:
Gag Factor: 11/10
Is Jenna Jameson an inappropriate dinner date?SAN DIEGO (KP International) It appears 800 marines may miss out on the opportunity to dine with Ultimate Fighter Tito Ortiz and his girlfriend Jenna Jameson.
The former UFC champion was scheduled to be the guest of honour at the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar birthday ball in San Diego. However, upon hearing Ortiz was planning to bring his porn star girlfriend as his date, organizers apparently changed their mind.
“There is some serious consternation here about having your girlfriend attend our ball,” read an email sent to Ortiz from Major Jason Johnston. “Of course I and a lot of Marines are very excited about it, but many of our commanders feel it might be inappropriate for the type of event we are having. It is professionally embarrassing for me to have to possibly retract our invitation, especially when I am such a big fan.”
More links:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/11.....agesix.htm
http://xbiz.com/news_piece.php?id=17868 (possibly a porn industry link - I am unsure)
http://www.marinecorpstimes.co.....315509.php (the marine’s news source)
Showing our pussy’s to men is not going to liberate women’s sexuality. Men like to see you naked, men want you to strip, men want you to turn them on, but at the end of the day you’re still a ’slut’ and any opportunity they can have to show you and tell you are nothing but a ’slut’ they’ll do it.
Pussy-’reclaimation’ is not working… Sorry pro-porners.
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
Let me clarify here: It’s okay for the military (the marine’s as a part of the military) to invite ‘a burlesque troop’ using TAX PAYER’S MONEY to entertain the troops. It’s okay for the US military to create the current thai sex tourism industry. It’s alright when YOU PAY for their services. It’s not alright when you are on an ‘equal footing’ with them.
https://eteraz.wordpress.com/2006/08/28/booty-dancers-in-haditha-iraq/
Men (I mean most men - right?) know that pornography is the ‘writing of whores’ - because that is what women in porn are to men. By men “PAYING” women for it, they get to exert their dominance. But if women start assuming they are equal to the men that ‘pay them’ - well no way! The woman is out of line, she ought to know she’s a ‘whore’.
And this is precisely what is going on with the Jameson incident.
Disgusting - fucking disgusting.
-
delphyne says:
That is such an interesting story about the Vatican, Aradhana.
“The “middle ground” is that great Silent Majority of feminists in the middle who are disturbed by modern pornography but do not accept the whole traditional antiporn theory.”
The thing is that silent majority isn’t really that silent. Most feminists on the internet where much of this discussion is happening are either pro-porn (but we hate the misogynistic stuff) or anti-porn (but we don’t think porn inherently misogynistic and we hate the misogynistic stuff). It’s pretty difficult to find any differences between them.
“They keep getting DROWNED OUT by extremists on both sides — on the antiporn side by people who think that everyone who doesn’t adhere religiously to the Dworkin Gospel has cooties and mustn’t even be talked to, and on the pro-porn side by people who think that unless you’re in favor of rape porn then you’re an anti-sex prude.”
Well you’ve been getting some heavy disagreement on this thread I”ll admit, but I didn’t see Amanda getting drowned out by me or anybody else who tried to point out the flaws in her arguments on her thread. Did you? Amanda did try and paint me and by implication other radicals as a religious fundamentalist and it appears that you are trying that trick too. Be aware that that line comes straight from a PR firm employed by the porn industry. Do you really want to be their mouthpiece? I follow Dworkin’s line because she was right, because her analysis and descriptions of the mechanisms of porn and male supremacy gives us the best understanding of how it operates and how it will operate in the world. It’s entirely predictable that porn stalls surrond the Vatican - they are both sites and institutions of male supremacy. And I don’t think you’ve got cooties for disagreeing with her, I just think you are wrong.
If “middle-ground” feminists (gosh you must be the most reasonable and objective feminists around with that title) aren’t convinced by the standard feminist anti-porn arguments, that’s fine. I’d rather convince a much larger group - women in general - many of whom have direct experience of pornography in their lives and aren’t under any illusions that it could somehow be non-degrading, or non-humiliating to women.
-
delphyne says:
Speaking of which -
“I get what you are trying to say, agree with you. and it didn’t fall on deaf ears. Count me on the anti porn side.”
I meant to say that’s terrific, Henderson. These arguments are for women, what I want to do is to make sure that anti-porn arguments are heard, so that women who need to hear them know they aren’t alone, that their feelings and unspoken objections get some kind of recognition. I know how much it meant to me coming across the Andrea Dworkin website (http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/OnlineLibrary.html) about ten years ago and I know that I wasn’t and am still not, the only women who needs to hear her words and those of other anti-porn feminists.
Men’s instinctive feelings - that they like porn and it gives them a feeling of pleasure are transformed into reality and porn is everywhere. Women’s instinctive feelings - that porn is repulsive, that we feel hurt when we see it and know it damages us are ignored and silenced. Our experiences don’t count - we need to change that.
-
henderson says:
I think you are speaking up for Average Jane. She experiences the heartbreak of her partners porn usage. The embarrassment of having to watch ads for Girls Gone Wild when all she was wanting to watch was an episode of Poirot. Go in to get some candy at the store and be overwhelmed with rude mysoginist magazines. She’s the one who must choose between here BFs or husbands’s porn usage or leaving him and raising the kids alone. So she battles alone and questions herself and internalizes it. She might think “There’s something wrong with me.” She’s the one who has trouble on dates or in the office because the guys have looked at so much of it that they forget what’s even decent behaviour anymore. She is the one who questions here own sexuality. She sees her little girls growing up believing they are nothing unless they look or act like porn stars. She’s the one who feels like a bitch. Less. and lonley. very very lonely.
No sympathy for her on these ‘feminist blogs”. Well, not much. Except for people like you. And the other anti porn women. And I agree with the South Asian lady. There’s an awful lot of things out there we do not label pornographic that are.Pornography makes people lonely. The user, but that is by choice. but more importantly- Average Jane.
and the wierd thing is, it seems like it’s taking more and more courage to speak out against porn today. So i admire your courage. and anyones elses who is willing to do so. Frankly, I think you see it the way it is for more women and speak for more women out there in real world land.
-
cicely says:
Men’s instinctive feelings - that they like porn and it gives them a feeling of pleasure are transformed into reality and porn is everywhere. Women’s instinctive feelings - that porn is repulsive, that we feel hurt when we see it and know it damages us are ignored and silenced. Our experiences don’t count - we need to change that.
How about women expressing ourselves via feminist porn? The porn women hate most (which is no doubt most *of* it…) has nothing to do with women’s pleasure. It’s all about men’s fantasies - that they can do anything at all to women sexually, no matter how humiliating or degrading it might be - and women will like it.
Early in my research, but yes, I came upon something I hadn’t known about. The first ‘Feminist Porn Awards’ ceremony, held in Toronto in June of this year. (google will get you there.) To win an award a film had to feature female sexual pleasure, have women as major creative contributors and some other pro-women qualifications I can’t remember off-hand.
This seems like something good to support - as it’s something concrete and real - set up in opposition to the overwhelmingly male ‘fantastical’ perspective.
Thoughts?
-
henderson says:
And no, I do not care about another persons’ - personal, private sexuality or thier fantasies, or what they masturbate to or what they like in bed, or who they sleep with or what their fetish is, or any of it. That’s all beside the point in my eyes.
Discussions about porn in the world today unfortunately end up talking about who likes what in bed. And then never gets around to talking about porn in the world today and it’s real life insidious affects on society. I hear the other side, I just don’t agree. I am not looking for consensus among women. It does not bother me at all the there are women who are against what I see. And vice versa. And I don’t care at all what males think on this. So there you go. Aren’t I aweful?Because I do not think it’s a chicken or egg thing. what causes what. One causes the other and the other cause the first and vice versa. It is really a reflection of an age old mindset. The patriarchy exists and they would turn us all into whores or saints as suits them and the females will like it and go along and even support it. So show us your boobies ladies! The younger the better. That’s their utopia.
-
henderson says:
sorry cicely, cross post. Thought I was alone on the thread this morning.
-
delphyne says:
Thoughts? There’s no such thing.
The ad for the feminist porn awards was guess what? Not a hunky man in a sexy pose but a pair of naked female legs, skirt pulled up, akimbo. Nothing to do with what women might find sexually attractive and everything to do with appealing to men. It’s about women sexualising themselves in order to keep men happy.
Look at Tristan Tamorino singing the joys of stimulating the male prostate gland with a strap-on (sorry to be crude but once again that’s porn for you - even “feminist” porn). She might as well be writing for Cosmo on twenty ways to please your boyfriend.
http://villagevoice.com/people.....90,24.html
It’s a yawn fest. It’s much more exciting and rewarding (not sexually though which I guess some will find disappointing) to actually challenge and subvert this shit instead of just finding new pretzel shapes for women to twist ourselves into in order to fit in with this awful pornified world that men have created.
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
Delphyne, I just read bits of that article, one had to wonder who ‘bend over boyfriend’ benefits more - the societal perception of stigmatized gay men or the societal perception of women as ’sex service bots’. At the end of the day I think it might help with the former, but only reinforces the latter.
It’s interesting.
“Early in my research, but yes, I came upon something I hadn’t known about. The first ‘Feminist Porn Awards’ ceremony, held in Toronto in June of this year. (google will get you there.) To win an award a film had to feature female sexual pleasure, have women as major creative contributors and some other pro-women qualifications I can’t remember off-hand.”
Cicely, I’ve asked this above, if Jenna Jameson starred in ‘feminist porn’ then would it be feminist porn? One could answer ‘yes, it depended on what she was doing in this porn”. But I would say wouldn’t feminist porn have to include a non-hyper patriarchal model of feminine beauty? But it’s funny, because if you look at the cover shots of the video jackets of ‘feminist porn awards’ the women in feminist porn do not look all that different from the women in straight porn.
Henderson, I think it’s vital if we are going to further anti-porn as a movement whole, we need men to participate in the struggle, because we need a new model for masculinity. I think feminism in general needs male allies, and we need to put the onus on men’s responsibility.
Additionally, if you look at the Jameson example I’ve put above. It’s not women saying no to Jameson’s presence at the ball (though they might be to), it’s because Jameson (A “WHORE”) has the gall to attend the event as a ‘guest’.
Despite all of her fame, celebrity and fortune Jameson is a ‘whore’ to the very men that consume her vids. And this is what men think of women in general about porn. So if we don’t care about what men in general think - we are doing ourselves a great disservice.
-
henderson says:
I don’t care what men in general think about porn. And I don’t need their alliance. I can see where others feel they do. but I don’t. There are some issues, where I don’t care what men do or don’t think. Whether they help or don’t help. This is one of them. Not on every issue. but this one and a few others. I don’t care what men think about burquas either. or about abortion. Or about whether a women should vote or not. or whether a women should work or not. Or whether they should drive a car or not. Don’t need any allies. If they want to ally with us, great. If they don’t I don’t care. Could take it or leave it. I don’t need their permission, approval or disapproval or anything else on some issues.
-
henderson says:
You see, for me- I give no quatre to the patriarchy. Don’t like it. Don’t respect it. Will not acknowlege it. It’s illigitimate in my eyes.
Rosa Parks just sat herself down. Needed no allies. She got some and had some, and that was lovely. but at that moment. She was all alone.
I don’t Average Jane to think she needs men’s alliance to be okay. She is okay already.
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
Edited to correct:
“But it’s funny, because if you look at the cover shots of the video jackets of ‘feminist porn awards’ the women in feminist porn do not look all that different from the women in straight porn.”
It should not read ‘Straight porn’ (i.e. not all feminist porn is or should be lesbian porn) but it should read ‘mainstream’ porn.
A slip…yeah, yeah read it any way you want. :P
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
Well the pussy cat dolls new song is called ‘I don’t need a man’.
http://www.metrolyrics.com/lyr.....olls/I_Don‘t_Need_A_Man
And while I generally agree with that sentiment, I have to wonder why someone like the pussy cat dolls comes out with a song like this.
What’s happened is that by society portraying feminists as ‘man-haters’, we’ve got men and women reluctant to ally. (this is different from saying that feminist brought it on themselves that is not what I am saying). And when men at large control resources/finances - if they aren’t allying with us, well they’re going to continue setting the model for new generations of boys to follow.
Additionally, most women use ‘I don’t need a man’ half-heartedly. I am not talking about independent women/feminist/lesbian women. I am talking precisely about the ‘average jane’. “I don’t need a man” is a reconcilliation to women, used when women DO want a man. It’s feminist ‘lip-service’ which rings hollow in a patriarchal world. When the pussy cat dolls prance around in their undies and sing it, it’s insincere.
Men need to take responsibility for their actions, and by having more male allies in the movement this may serve to help us. We need a new model for masculinity. Additionally, feminists have stopped focusing on masculinity when women’s roles have changed so much over the past few decades.
I mean we’ve done everything - yet, we’re viewed the same way. We need to have men change if differences are going to be made. It’s almost as if ‘being a feminist and focusing only on what women should be/do - is backfiring’. We need to focus on men and what they do and how they ought to help.
Perfect examples of this - are the fact that both men and women partner’s in a relationship are involved in paid employment, it is women who perform 70% if not more of the household chores.
I’m hoping people get my drift.
-
henderson says:
What’s happened is that by society portraying feminists as ‘man-haters’, we’ve got men and women reluctant to ally.
I’m not a leader so I don’t even care that much what I think, neither should you. So I have to say, and please don’t take this bad. Even though I sound very forceful. I’m not wishing to be mean to you. I don’t care what “society” has portrayed feminists as. They can say whatever they want. It’s not true. So they can portray it that way, it doesn’t make it true.
Additionally, most women use ‘I don’t need a man’ half-heartedly. I am not talking about independent women/feminist/lesbian women. I am talking precisely about the ‘average jane’. “I don’t need a man” is a reconcilliation to women, used when women DO want a man. It’s feminist ‘lip-service’ which rings hollow in a patriarchal world
I agree. Averyage Jane does want a man in her life. She also wants a mind of her own. Especially when she questions her own self regarding her thoughts and feelings on her husbands pornography use.
Men need to take responsibility for their actions, and by having more male allies in the movement this may serve to help us.
yep.
We need a new model for masculinity.
That’s their thing. re: men need to take responsiblity for their actions. The don’t need any female allies to do that. They don’t need us holding their hand. They can clean it up or not amongst or indiviually. I’m not going to wait around until they do. We’ve waited too long as it is. They can help or don’t. I’m not waiting. Do it with or without them. Better with them- but it’s not my prerequisite.
It’s almost as if ‘being a feminist and focusing only on what women should be/do - is backfiring’. We need to focus on men and what they do and how they ought to help.
I don’t focus on what women should/ be/ do. The second part. About focusing on men and what they do and how they ought to help. I’m for it.
I do get your drift about the women going out an working, then coming home and doing the household chores and child rearing and everything else. That’s my Average Jane- and boy! is she pooped out! Ag reat dealis expected of her. and she’s a tough girl. Then she has to put up with hubby on the internet while she puts the kids to bed and gets them washed up for the evening while he jerks off to porn. Notice I keep bringing this back to porn? I don’t wish to stray. These porn topics have a way of straying.
I’m not the person you’ll be wanting to talk with on this. I’m much too nutty. You ought to stick talking with Violet or cicely or Delphyne or somebody. But i am honored that you gave me the time of day, though.
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
To add and clarify, “I don’t need a man” mentality in society allows men to escape any scrutiny. It allows them to exempt from female criticism of their actions.
Women saying “Men do not listen to us and I am pained by my partner’s inadequacies” are far more threatening to men than women collectively saying “Who cares, I don’t need a man anyways”.
This type of pseudofeminism is rampant in mainstream discourses. And as I have tried to explain above we need to change this because for far too long, men have been getting away with far too much while women have been ‘adjusting their attitudes’ repeatedly.
-
henderson says:
I don’t know who the pussy cat dolls are. they are some singing group. Again, don’t care one way or another what the pussy cats dolls say or don’t. I read the words to the song. it just doesn’t mean anything to me.
i also don’t care what Dworkin says.I have have sees to see and hear to feel. and I think she’d be proud of me on that. But even if she wasn’t- i still wouldn’t care.
-
AradhanaDevindra says:
Smiles to henderson! I liked your comments - and I think I just cross-posted.
-
henderson says:
Women saying “Men do not listen to us and I am pained by my partner’s inadequacies” are far more threatening to men than women collectively saying “Who cares, I don’t need a man anyways”.
The first part is weak and gives power to the man again in an issue wher they already rule the show. and the second part is only on this issue and a few others and personal for me only. and again. I said I don’t care what they think on this issue. Help- appreciate but dont’ need it, don’t help- I’m not waiting.
This type of pseudofeminism is rampant in mainstream discourses. And as I have tried to explain above we need to change this because for far too long, men have been getting away with far too much while women have been ‘adjusting their attitudes’ repeatedly
Agree with the last sentance. As for “pseudo femnisism”. don’t know one one label from another. Again- I don’t go for it. Just one nutty, hurt broad talking by myself. But have been around the block a couple of times.Not single- by the way. Been with my guy for 25 years. Love him dearly. He has his opinions and I have mine and they have changed and shifted over the years. We get along.
-
henderson says:
Anyway, i am going. Been a typing fool and misspelling all over the place. Looks like I’m even nuttier than I am. Not only is she a kook- she can’t spell either.
have nice days guys and girls. love you all. -
henderson says:
Honestly,
since it’s become a “sides’ issue on the porn thing. I don’t think the anti porns will ever win. But it doesn’t have to stop a gal from getting in there and bitching a little.have been old, have been young, have been in the world as a participant and an observer. Seen the good and the bad and the ni foo ni faa. Got heartbreaks and given them. Got joys and given them. As we all have. have had it all taken away, and built it back up again. Several times. Made horrendous mistakes,and some really good moves too. Wish nobody any harm. that’s the very best part. Maybe it’ll all have a happy ending. I like to think it will someday. Not looking for agreement from others anymore. People think whatever they think in accordance with their own situation and life’s experiences. Me too. A majority of one. Good luck ladies on both sides. the best in people always will come out in the end and the rest will be just people struggling to get there. I believe it.
-
Mandos says:
Henderson, are you CR? Because you sound like CR, soneone who posted here regularly a few months ago. Same “voice”, same life details…
-
henderson says:
Not sure what you mean?
-
henderson says:
Anyway, I know you’re a man Mandos. and I’m still going to read your thoughts on this thread and any other guy who likes to give his- or anybody else who likes to throw thier two cents in. I do take them into account. I still have to trust my own self on these things. Just as anyone else ought. And question myself too. I have spent a lifetime giving others their due at the expense of my own. Putting others opinions higher than my own. Defering to them.
Not meaning any trouble for anyone, now. But one day i woke up and said, I mean no one any harm. Just trust myself and my own judgement more than anyone elses in certain areas. And learn to give others their due where I do not know. I do this now because I have been steered in the wrong direction too often. and one time a few years ago ,someone I love got hurt very badly because I didn’t listen to my own judgement. I knew better but listened to others and “society” instead of my own judgement. I promised never to do that again. No one means to give lousy advice. But they do so with such gusto, that I just went by it in lieu of my own. It was in error and someone got hurt. So now I’m just a going it alone- judgment wise. No one has gotten hurt yet. So I like it better this way.
Good luck in your life Mandos. You seem like a very nice person.
Back to pornography debate. Come out swinging and please to observe The Marquis of Queensbury rules at all times. ;0)) I have nothing more of value to add to this business. -
Violet says:
No sympathy for her on these ‘feminist blogs”. Well, not much. Except for people like you. And the other anti porn women. And I agree with the South Asian lady. There’s an awful lot of things out there we do not label pornographic that are.
Actually, Henderson, this is the kind of Average Jane experience I think we need to tap into. I believe this is a large part of women’s experience, in fact I think even women who are slightly pro-porn feel assaulted by the incredible pornification of the world.
That’s exactly why I think we need to focus on how porn works, and in fact my list (from somewhere way up thread) is pretty much exactly like yours: sexist porn as an ever-present social constant reinforces women’s status as sex objects, it invades our relationships, it warps women’s sexuality and our own sense of ourselves into some man-made sexbot fantasy. That’s where the gut-level resistance to porn is. It’s an overwhelming social phenomenon that presses heavily on us as women and as individuals, and we want to be free of that pressure.
-
Violet says:
This seems like something good to support - as it’s something concrete and real - set up in opposition to the overwhelmingly male ‘fantastical’ perspective.
Thoughts?
Cicely, I found the ad for that thing and remembered seeing it awhile back. In fact my initial reaction to it was a bit like Delphyne’s: it sounds good, but if this is “feminist” porn, why does it feature a woman’s spread naked legs in high heels? I remember shaking my head over that. It reminded me of Cosmo: endless magazine covers trumpeting “women’s sexuality,” all illustrated with big-boobed bimbos.
And it’s not just the ad — when I googled articles on the awards, the illustrations for each article generally featured a woman in sexbot attire and 4-inch heels, or naked, or something like that. Indistinguishable, in fact, from standard male porn fantasy. Do you see why this makes my old feminist antennae go haywire?
-
Violet says:
Cicely, reading more about the feminist porn awards, a sentence more or less like this one crops up in every article:
“The main thing that sets female-friendly porn apart from its mainstream counterparts is this refusal to gloss over women’s pleasure, she says. A lot of traditional porn doesn’t depict anything close to a real female orgasm and the climax of the films (so to speak) is the ubiquitous “money shot” - male ejaculation.”
Every article, every interview with the pornmakers emphasizes that this “feminist” porn is different because it shows women having real orgasms.
Now, I can see how that might be very appealing to a lesbian. But this porn is apparently aimed at straight women. And I can honestly say that looking at another woman getting off just doesn’t sound like something I’d want to look at. I like men. Most straight women do! Why on earth would straight porn aimed at me feature a woman? Why is that supposed to be feminist?
I’m not saying these folks aren’t sincere, because I believe they are. I think their intentions are good. It just looks to me like they haven’t even begun to escape the mindset that women are the sex objects, always.
-
Violet says:
a louis wain cat, I just want to say that your comment makes me wish you’d delurk more often! I can’t tell you how much I appreciate that kind of thoughtful post.
As for a rapprochement between pro-porn and anti-porn feminists, I think you’re right if you’re talking about getting the theorists and the purists on both sides to agree with each other. But I think a lot of women occupy the middle and aren’t sure about the deeper arguments; some think pornography can be good in some circumstances, some don’t — but they can agree that the existing situation has got some serious problems.
Back in the day a lot of feminist alliances were built across differences like this; we didn’t necessarily agree with each other on the theory or on the whole agenda, but we could agree on some things that needed changing.
It might be an interesting post in itself, to ask people to post their own personal visions of a world without patriarchy.
That would be interesting, and I think I just might do that!
-
cicely says:
I think the feminist porn people do have good intentions and we can only wait and see how the genre develops.
In terms of action, I agree with those who say that men themselves have to be participants in challenging and de-constructing masculinity. Andrea Dworkin said this herself. Men need to question themselves and MOST IMPORTANTLY - each other - about what it says about them that they need to degrade and abuse women/gays/transexuals in order to feel like’real men’, whether this is for real, or just in fantasy. It might take courage for some to do this - but, hey - aren’t they supposed to have that in abundance? They should be looking not to be ‘masculine’, as currently understood, but to be fully human - because they can’t actually be both.
I think the male joo-joo we’ve talked about here is the key to it all - I really do. When I was a young girl, if you looked up ‘masculine’ in a dictionary, the first words you saw were ’strong’ and ‘brave’. If you looked up ‘feminine’ you first saw ‘weak’, emotionally fragile etc. Definite opposites. Now we’ve seen how any attribute can be observed in anyone. Film of a woman commander performing a tricky maneouvre in a space shuttle has been beamed around the world, a courageous Russian investigative journalist has recently been murdered, a significant number of war correspondents around the world are women. Women have always had every human attribute and not been permitted to express themselves as fully human. They’ve done so anyway - just to live- and largely in the battle to get men’s feet off their necks.
I read a long article last night about the history of mass produced porn. It’s not going to go away. It can’t be isolated from the entire feminist project, but of course it can be critiqued as everything can.
I say - men - show us your bottle - have the guts to be human!
-
Violet says:
Cicely, you’re right about men needing to challenge this stuff. I’ve ordered ‘Pornified’ by Pamela Paul, which features a lot of interviews with men about how porn affects their lives. Most men who talked to Paul apparently agree that porn negatively affects their real sex lives…but they can’t stop looking at the stuff. I’m interested to read the book.
I think a number of things might be going on in explaining the rise of ever more extreme porn and ever more ubiquitous pornification. It’s challenging to sort them out:
1. My theory about how porn is actually a self-spiral now of seeking ever more “hidden” or “forbidden” things.
2. Male backlash against feminism — the more we gain, the more they try to recreate the thrill of oppressing us via porn.
3. A non-sexist consumerist spiral of just seeking ever more thrilling things (I don’t buy this, but men often propose it).
4. Female acquiescence in, and co-option by, raunch culture. This last one is where sex-pos and anti-porn feminists really disagree. To me the current landscape of porn stars and strippers and so forth doesn’t look like women’s sexual liberation any more than the mini-skirted bimbos of the original Star Trek did. You know? We look back at Star Trek and the 60s and laugh at how people thought being a Playboy Bunny was liberating, when in fact it was just acting out a male sexual fantasy. Well, the rise of modern raunch culture has just brought all that back, only in spades. I don’t think raunch culture is sexually liberating for women at all. I don’t think the pressure to look and act and dress and fuck like a PornStar, or else not get a man, is “sexually liberated.” -
Violet says:
Cicely, have you read “Female Chauvinist Pigs”?
-
cicely says:
No, Violet, I haven’t read Levy’s book, but I’ve read lots of commentary on it.
Here’s an appropriate discussion with a comment or two on Paul’s book as well, where you see how self-id’d sex-positive feminists are not blanketly enamoured of raunch culture either. Many I’ve read do see it as co-option and still for the male gaze. Sorry about the long link. I just copy and paste these into the address bar.
Female Chauvinist Pigs at the Trough
Male backlash against feminism — the more we gain, the more they try to recreate the thrill of oppressing us via porn.
I’ll buy that.
-
cicely says:
Whoops - I did break up that link into two lines, but it still came out in one. Seems you have a built in protection against your column expanding sideways. )The last bit just got cut off.) Lucky. I had to type in the second line manually, because when I copied and pasted into comments straight from the site the line still insisted on appearing way over to the right. Anyway. Take two:
susie_brights_journal_/2005/09/
female_chauvini.html
Surely this will do it….
-
Violet says:
I fixed that first link, I think.
You know, going over to Susie Bright’s website, what jumps out at me AGAIN is that all the pictures are of women. I know Bright herself is a lesbian, but she pushes herself as “America’s Favorite Sexpert” on heterosexual matters, offering advice to all women. Straight women, couples, etc. So why is every picture on her site of women? Women’s boobs, women’s legs, women’s crotches… it’s Cosmo all over again. You know? Sex magazines for men feature women. Sex magazines for women feature…women. I thought we’d have gotten past that with Playgirl 30 years ago.
I want to see a sex-positive feminist site that objectifies men. I don’t want it to be pink, I don’t want it to be plastered with boobs and spread-eagle women. Why would I, a straight woman, want to look at other women’s boobs and crotches? I mean, can you imagine porn for straight men featuring men’s bodies?
-
Violet says:
I’ve read through the article at Susie Bright’s now. For some reason it took a long time to load on my browser. Her page first comes up with just the sidebars, no central content — which is why I had time to muse over the nature of the images on her blog, hence my comment above!
Anyway, thank you for the link, Cicely; I enjoyed reading it and the comments. Too sleepy tonight though to post any thoughts.
-
Infidel says:
Wouldn’t it be bad if motherly love were shown to be the catalyst for mens attitudes towards porn.
Since they are so prevalent you might attribute a commonality to these male attitudes that is instilled early and generally.
Mothers love their children and selflessly give of themselves.
Daughters see this as training and sons see this as a good thing, an excellent thing.
XX means you are something
XY means you will contribute to the making of something or contribute to the making of something that will contribute to the making of something or contribute to… -
Violet says:
Okay, I’m back. There was some good stuff in the Susie Bright thread, but what jumped out at me were the couple of comments from those who said that people who criticize raunch culture are playing “sex police.” That was interesting because it illuminates a fundamental difference in perception. So much so that if you’re not a pro-porn sex positive, you have to shake your head a few times to try and figure out the thinking.
See, many women experience raunch culture as oppressive. It’s not liberating; it’s just the patriarchy telling us what to do again. Same shit, different day. Only now the shit is so much worse and so much more pervasive than before: PornStar culture means that to be “with it,” you have to have every hair ripped from your body, get boob implants, have labia surgery, and like it. You have to wear thongs and take stripper classes. You have to make out with your girlfriends and act like a “slut” (their words) if you want to get a guy. And you can’t even find a guy whose sexuality hasn’t been totally shaped by porn, which means that in the bedroom he’s not interested in discovering what you want, he just wants you to act out the porn fantasy he’s been whacking off to. Girls interviewed in Levy’s book have no idea how to be sexual apart from performing sexuality for men.
For a great many women, that’s not liberation at all. That’s oppression. They want to be free of it. If there are any sex police around, it’s in the form of this pornified society that is ramming this commodified conformist view of women down our throats (as it were).
-
Sam says:
middle-of-the road feminists who are concerned about modern porn, see the problems with “raunch culture,” but don’t buy the traditional anti-porn arguments.
Don’t buy them or never get a fair chance to hear them? The oldest feminist newsjournal in the US is the anti-pornography off our backs, but go see if you can find their multi-decade feminist newsjournal linked to by Feministing or other “middle” feminist blogs.
The “middle ground” is that great Silent Majority of feminists in the middle who are disturbed by modern pornography but do not accept the whole traditional antiporn theory.
Where have these Bust-subscribed, Bitch-reading, middle feminists been getting their information about antipornography feminism for the past twenty years? Not from Bust and Bitch or even Ms Magazine. Does Alternet feature one radical feminist article for every pornstitution feminist one? Has The Nation ever published one article by a radical feminist critical of the pornstitution industries to counter dozens over the years supporting a woman’s ‘right’ to be a whore and a man’s ‘right’ to help women fulfill their whoring destiny?
I’ve seen Wikipedia’s anti-pornography page with the photo of two old, fat, white men holding signs in a cornfield providing the visual for “anti-pornography movement”. Behold the message reaching those in the middle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I.....ndiana.jpg
I had subscriptions to The Nation, Mother Jones, Ms. Magazine, Utne Reader and Brill’s Content when at the age of 24 I discovered there was such a thing as anti-pornography feminism by reading the Ms. Boards. It took an Internet space where male editors and the liberal women editors sitting on their laps could not chuck anti-porn feminist writings into the circular file before it ever saw the light of publishing day for me to get my first hint that my pornography use was not as pro-woman as “middle-of-the-road feminist” I had been led to believe.
I think the veritable explosion of radical feminism online over the past year is a result of both the increasing pornification of our culture and the ability of feminists to finally get access to antipornography news, studies and theories that pornfed liberal and feminist media makers have witheld from our view for years.
-
Sam says:
Don’t know why the link to the photo isn’t working. The photo has changed from being the first on the page when I saw it a few months ago to being the second on the page. I think I may know the radfem responsible for that change.
-
delphyne says:
“Wouldn’t it be bad if motherly love were shown to be the catalyst for mens attitudes towards porn.”
I think you need to be looking at fathers and older brothers who often initiate boys and young men into pornography and the sexual objectification of women. Woman-hating is a male invention not a female one. I’m sure if you thought back into your past Infidel you could even come up with some of your own examples.
Blaming mothers is also a male invention and an extremely boring one to hear at that. Forty years of feminism and we’re still hearing these same old rubbishy arguments from men. Can’t you come up with something new?
-
ginmar says:
God, women get blamed for every frickin’ thing there is. Blaming moms for it is classic, when in fact boys stop listening to their moms as soon as they start realizing that women and girls are unimportant and have cooties. Sure takes the heat off those older brothers and dads just fine, though, doesn’t it? Gee, I wonder if there’s a connection there.
-
Violet says:
Don’t buy them or never get a fair chance to hear them?
I was referring to people who have heard them. People who object to porn on the grounds I’ve mentioned, but don’t accept all the elements of the classic anti-porn argument.
As for feminists who’ve never been exposed to the classic antiporn arguments, that’s an interesting point. I imagine there are a lot of young women coming up today who are unaware of so much of that stuff, and the internet is a great boon. Actually it’s going to be really interesting to see how antiporn feminism develops on the internet; maybe it will really blossom. And maybe raunch culture is going to reach a point of such excess that there will be some kind of backlash that will make the anti-porn argument compelling to more people.
-
cicely says:
Violet, I know what you mean about the dearth of objectified men. A bi-sexual woman friend of mine was complaining about that recently. She relates with quite passive or submissive men in real life, as does another primarily lesbian friend of mine. I remember years ago one of these women taking a photograph of a man, a friend of ours, naked and face down in the sand, which he was quite happy, even thrilled, to have taken. My friend related sexually on a regular basis with this man, but never allowed full sexual intercourse. There’s more of this type of thing about than one might ever imagine as we are soaking in imagery of sexually submissive and available - to men - women.
I read a Robert Jensen article on masculinity and porn the other night where he described a video in which a woman gave blow-jobs to a row of six men who all ejaculated into her face. This brings to mind a fantasy one of the above women once described to me. She has a line of naked men before her - all volunteers - with erections she may or may not choose to give any attention to anytime soon. Too much information for some I’m sure, but I only bring it up to raise the issue of accuracy about sexuality or sexual desires overall. There’s no balance in the context of male domination, via women’s ‘place’ as the sex class, around the world.
-
cicely says:
Sorry to have reverted to sexual behaviour - no more, I promise!
-
Violet says:
Giggle. I was amused by your friend’s fantasy.
What do you think of the critique of raunch culture, the sense that it’s not so much liberating as just another type of conformity, telling women how to be? I know you’ve mentioned before that you get sick yourself of the endless parade of woman-on-a-stick, etc.
I guess I’m thinking that even if I identified as a sex-positive, I’d still say that this current raunch culture is bullshit. Liberating if your personal desires happen to involve Brazilians and pole dancing, but for the rest of us, not so much.
-
delphyne says:
I think what would be more interesting would be to talk about the men who fantasise about being the fifth or sixth man who ejaculates on a woman’s face. Because there are a lot of them about.
One of the funny things about that “feminist” porn nonsense, is that they think that because men want to see women being ejaculated on, it’s the actual male orgasm that men are interested in. Then to take the illogical and faulty analysis even further and thus assume that therefore women must want to see women orgasming. Of course the reason that men want to see women ejaculated on is this -
“It’s like a dog marking its territory. You know, why do dogs pee on fire hydrants and trees? I don’t know. It’s just like a man will leave his mark on a woman. You see something beautiful, you’ve got to let them know you were there.
-Pornographer Brandon Iron, explaining why men like to ejaculate onto women’s faces”I’m not surprised your friend fantasises about being the object in bukkake, cecily. It’s called Stockholm Syndrome. What a shame that a scene of a woman being degraded in real life should only bring women’s fantasies to mind. How about a little compassion for the real woman being used in such a humiliating and damaging manner.
-
Infidel says:
“God, women get blamed for every frickin’ thing there is. Blaming moms for it is classic, when in fact boys stop listening to their moms as soon as they start realizing that women and girls are unimportant and have cooties.”
It would be bad if a mothers love was shown to be the catalyst.
The objectification of women.
I am helpless. You help me without limit and do it selflessly. I associate your selflessness with selflessness and my expectations of woman are selflessness. I am still a baby and every time I cry and get attention my expectations are reinforced.
Eventually I learn and start to think, but back there in the past where I can’t even remember the impression, the feeling is that the female is mine. It is wrong and I’ll have to think my way out of that misconception but still it is a basis for perverted truth.
The truth is my mothers love should be an example to me and a human action I should always attempt to emulate. Those thoughts are not coherent and expressable at 5months as far as I know or remember- sorry just a thought at 58.
The possible objectification I committed as an infant towards my comfort and source of food possibly laid the groundwork for an easily swayed feeling of the proper place of patriarchy.
-
Infidel says:
…Then when my brothers and male friends hit me with women hating proposals I was ripe for the taking.
But I concede my feminist ignorance and I value input new to me and am ashamed of my as yet apparently boring and forty year old argument. -
delphyne says:
“Then when my brothers and male friends hit me with women hating proposals I was ripe for the taking.”
Could you tell us some more about this? Maybe a few examples.
I think its always enlightening for women to find out how men induct one another into masculinist culture.BTW if taking care of male babies is the real cause of the monstrous sexism and misogyny that men direct towards women I propose that in future men should be required to take care of male babies.
-
Infidel says:
I am not saying “the cause”, any more then giving a gun to someone and telling them to keep the peace is the cause of innocent civilians getting murdered.
“I propose that in future men should be required to take care of male babies.”
or robots as in the THX1171 utopia.
I took care of my babies. Pretty good.
Brotherly and Friend Examples: having magazines, check out that babe kind of talk, look at these movies I got(film), bachelor parties, dirty jokes-lotta dirty jokes.
That’s all after 8years old and older.
Prior to that some of my friends influenced my perception of female servitude by their mother being the housewife/mother and their taking that for granted. My mom worked and I was alone or at my friends. We’d sit at the table and be served. I took what I got thanked God and liked it. My friend would whine and ask for the crusts to be cut off, or refuse to eat stuff. -
Infidel says:
And the link to Porn?
It is a stretch, but the admitted prevalence of patriarchy is new to me and I am honestly trying to understand it and how and where I fit in it.I am also still trying to get my mind around the rape numbers.
I had a loving mother and despite that or because of that I objectify women. If I look closely, I can see myself see women as something less then men. Or see them as sexy. Man would I like to… Desire. Centerfold. Pornography.
…eh?!
Do I see my mother that way? My sisters? Violet?
There is no one way I see women, but there is this underlying structure I am a part of, or that envelops my existance which has through common culture or religion or outright suppression-got the man on top. I don’t deny it. I don’t like it. And I’m not going to take it anymore.
I apologize for contributing to it. -
cicely says:
What do you think of the critique of raunch culture, the sense that it’s not so much liberating as just another type of conformity, telling women how to be? I know you’ve mentioned before that you get sick yourself of the endless parade of woman-on-a-stick, etc.
To be honest I’m not exactly sure what raunch culture is other than this stuff about women learning pole-dancing and getting Brazilian waxes etc. I’ve never seen ‘girls gone wild’, don’t know what it is or under what circumstances girls are lifting up their t.shirts. I’m aware of the sexualisation of very young girls through young girl and teen mags - sexy clothing for them - and even for tots, and if that’s part of it then it’s been causing controversy here in Oz too. I’m both instinctively and politically deeply opposed to the sexualisation of young girls in this way. It seems to me to be very obvious that this is commercially driven pressure to conform to a one dimensional image of female sexuality that appeals to males.(except the ones it doesn’t appeal to, if you get my drift. Like it’s what’s ’supposed’ to appeal to *real* males.) I guess some of it (raunch) might have merit as a jumping off point for young women (as opposed to very young girls) to express themselves, but they need to take real ownership of it and have it suit themselves for that to be the case. So, I’m deeply suspicious of it, as far as I know about it, and probably need to learn more.
But - the ‘women-on-a-stick’ stuff - everywhere - yes, that really pisses me off. Feminism had a win years ago when guys had to stop pinning up calendars with pictures of naked women on work-place walls. Now they can have any number on their mobile phones downloaded from the internet.There’s virtually no restriction on where or when they can do their perving, or in what company. I’m certainly one of those anti-anti-porn feminists you mentioned who is nevertheless greatly disturbed by the invasiveness and pervasiveness of the pornification of women. Porn has a place, in my opinion, but that place is not in everyone’s faces without their consent.
-
cicely says:
I’m not surprised your friend fantasises about being the object in bukkake, cecily. It’s
called Stockholm Syndrome.I’ll let her know, delphyne, but I’m not sure she’d want to take the cure. I haven’t chosen to after being diagnosed with the syndrome myself. There seems to be a lot of it about.
It’s those irreconcilable differences.
-
delphyne says:
The cure is smashing patriarchy. There aren’t any individual solutions or “cures”. It’s an issue of power structures, who has power and who doesn’t.
Women have to do what they can to survive in male supremacy, including ignoring the suffering of other women, the way you did regarding that woman in the bukkake video that Robert Jensen described. Instead of feeling compassion, empathy and outrage that that was done to her, you jumped immediately to your friend’s (not even your own) fantasy. I tell you what I bet your friend would not be interested in a real scene like that where of course the men would be in control, not her.
The problem is that things like this are done to women in real life every day. There’s that gang of Australian boys who raped a teenage girl and made a porn DVD out of it. Same thing just happened in Greece too. And those are the ones we hear about. Instead of talking about fantasy Cicely, why don’t you start addressing the hideous sexual violence that men enact on women ALL THE TIME.
-
Jimmy Ho says:
Same thing just happened in Greece too.
This is what I was referring to in my latest comments. I am very grateful to Stormcloud for bringing it to the knowledge of the English-speaking feminist blogocosm.
-
cicely says:
delphyne says:
Women have to do what they can to survive in male supremacy, including ignoring the suffering of other women, the way you did regarding that woman in the bukkake video that Robert Jensen described. Instead of feeling compassion, empathy and outrage that that was done to her, you jumped immediately to your friend’s (not even your own) fantasy…Cicely, why don’t you start addressing the hideous sexual violence that men enact on women ALL THE TIME.
I’m just an asshole I guess. I mean, what are you trying to achieve here, delphyne? Your comment makes me think of this:
‘There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue’.
You hate my politics so you write as if I am someone who doesn’t feel compassion, empathy or outrage at the violence done to women as you do. You are far from alone in this practice, but I don’t accept it, just so you know. I can’t be shamed or bullied into adopting your particular set of beliefs about exactly what is and exactly what needs to be done about it to improve the status and the lives of women, based on accusations that simply aren’t true. I do address the issues, just not according to your specific beliefs and demands.
-
delphyne says:
I’m not shaming or bullying you Cecily, I’m pointing out what you did. Maybe you do feel compassion for that woman in the bukkake film, but you didn’t demonstrate it, instead you jumped straight to your friend’s “fantasy”. Why?
I think real things that happen to real women in the world are what’s important. You appear to think that a fantasy that goes on in another woman’s head is what’s important. Clearly we don’t share the same value system. But that’s politics for you, and why we are having a discussion on this particular blog.
I don’t envy or hate you by the way, so you’ll have to find a different solution as to why I pointed out your distinct lack of apparent empathy or care for the woman in the bukkake video. Maybe the problem lies within yourself and the enivironment you find yourself in rather than with me.
-
delphyne says:
Here’s the scene that reminded Cecily of her friend’s fantasy.
http://www.zmag.org/jensenporn.htm
(Violet, if you find this post goes too far I’ll perfectly understand, but once again it’s impossible to talk about porn without actually talking about porn).
Possibly triggering -
““Blow Bang #4” is: Eight different scenes in which a woman kneels in the middle of a group of three to eight men and performs oral sex on them. At the end of each scene, each of the men ejaculates onto the woman’s face or into her mouth. To borrow from the description on the video box, the video consists of: “Dirty little bitches surrounded by hard throbbing cocks … and they like it.”
In one of these scenes, a young woman dressed as a cheerleader is surrounded by six men. For about seven minutes, “Dynamite” (the name she gives on tape) methodically moves from man to man while they offer insults that start with “you little cheerleading slut” and get uglier from there. For another minute and a half, she sits upside down on a couch, her head hanging over the edge, while men thrust into her mouth, causing her to gag. She strikes the pose of the bad girl to the end. “You like coming on my pretty little face, don’t you,” she says, as they ejaculate on her face and in her mouth for the final two minutes of the scene.
Five men have finished. The sixth steps up. As she waits for him to ejaculate onto her face, now covered with semen, she closes her eyes tightly and grimaces. For a moment, her face changes; it is difficult to read her emotions, but it appears she may cry. After the last man, number six, ejaculates, she regains her composure and smiles. Then the narrator off camera hands her the pom-pom she had been holding at the beginning of the tape and says, “Here’s your little cum mop, sweetheart — mop up.” She buries her face in the pom-pom. The screen fades, and she is gone.”
-
Infidel says:
Yes, thanks again for Robert Jensen and I prefer the quest to be a human over being a man.
but..“We can find ways to use and enjoy our bodies in play without watching each other crumble to the ground in pain after a ‘great hit.’”
-Robert Jensen-Enjoying play without the physical exchange or the cuts and bruises? There is a lot to be said by the hitter as well as the hittie beyond the crumbling to the ground in pain after a great hit- a great hit causes a fumble or saves a first down, touchdown, or a game. For the most part both players understand that and accept that, even enjoy that, and what is wrong with that. I never, ever, ever, saw Sir Walter Payton get up after being tackled-no matter how hard and not look for someone to help up. You go to far, Mr.Jensen when you look for inhumanity in the violence of sports as the default value of the violence of sport.
-
Infidel says:
“Dr.Jensen” I apologize
-
Violet says:
I don’t envy or hate you by the way, so you’ll have to find a different solution as to why I pointed out your distinct lack of apparent empathy or care for the woman in the bukkake video. Maybe the problem lies within yourself and the enivironment you find yourself in rather than with me.
No, I think the problem is with you, Delphyne. Cicely was reminded of a friend’s fantasy about having six men at her disposal; you aggressively interpret this as meaning that she has no empathy for the woman in the Jensen video, and further that she’s unconcerned about what happens to real women in the real world. That’s outrageous. Drop it.
-
Violet says:
Cicely, I was too engrossed in the election, etc., to comment last night, but I want to say that I loved your comment #334. I think that’s exactly the sort of middle ground where feminists of different stripes can have a fruitful dialogue about the problems they do agree on. Thank you.
-
Violet says:
One more thing: people who haven’t been reading this blog since the beginning may be confused by the fact that I’m an antiporn feminist who doesn’t hate non-antiporn feminists. It’s a crazy thing, but there it is. Non-antiporn feminists are not the enemy, nor are pro-porn feminists. They are, in my view, simply women whose beliefs differ somewhat from mine about how best to free our half of the human race from age-old oppression. And in fact, I’ve found that depending on the topic and the particular feminist, sometimes the differences aren’t always even that great. Though of course you have to actually talk to each other to find that out.
Stating your opinion on an issue is welcome here; attacking feminists who offer an alternative perspective is not.
-
Sam says:
I loved your comment #334.people who haven’t been reading this blog since the beginning may be confused by the fact that I’m an antiporn feminist who doesn’t hate non-antiporn feminists.
That’s a surprisingly cheap shot I didn’t expect from you. I shouldn’t have to say this but you know very well who I hate: tricks, pimps and slave-movers/traffickers. I haven’t been ambiguous in making clear who I consider the harm-makers of prostituted women. When some women, for whatever reasons, put themselves between me and the men who hurt prostitutes, I’ve dealt with them as I felt necessary. Over the years I’ve changed some of those people’s minds, wedged unpleasant but inescapable facts into some closed minds, and exposed some others for profiting from poked pornstitute pussies in ways that compromise their integrity and make them uncredible witnesses to hoeing’s empowerfulness.
I’m not making cicely or any other pro-prostitution advocate defend men’s rights to rent the insides of women’s body for sexy entertainment, but standing between me and the men (ab)using prostitutes you know I’m gunning for is not going to stop this river. Put a rock in my stream and I’ll bubble around it until it’s worn away, but dealing with the rock’s interference isn’t what makes me flow.
-
Sam says:
(looks like it cut off the beginning of my comment)
I loved your comment #334.
I didn’t because once again there is talk about women and girls as victims of “culture” and no talk about men and holding them accountable for their sexism and abuse of children. Saying you oppose the sexualization of kids is not a middle ground between pro-john and anti-john feminists any more than saying you’re against murdering doctors is a concession between anti-choice and pro-choice peoples. It does not get one old trick’s dick out of one single 13-year-old runaway’s body.
(now the rest of #346)
-
Violet says:
That’s a surprisingly cheap shot I didn’t expect from you.
It wasn’t directed at you.
-
Violet says:
I didn’t because once again there is talk about women and girls as victims of “culture” and no talk about men and holding them accountable for their sexism and abuse of children.
I think that’s an unreasonable standard for discourse. We cannot analyze a problem, discuss its constituent parts, approach it from different perspectives, much less think aloud if in every comment in every thread we must state the entire problem in full and register our disapproval accordingly.
-
richard cherry says:
‘There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as moral indignation, which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue’.
Cicely - my admiration for you grows with each word you write (or quote).
But dammitall you’ve drawn me back to comment on this bloody thread that I promised myself not to engage in; guess I’ll just have to forgive you.
Thanks -
Tom Nolan says:
I’d just like to second Richard’s comment regarding Cicely. She’s one of the best things about this blog and I hope she won’t make us wait too long for her next comment.
-
Sam says:
We cannot analyze a problem, discuss its constituent parts, approach it from different perspectives, much less think aloud if in every comment in every thread we must state the entire problem in full and register our disapproval accordingly.
You’ve confused me. Stating the problem and registering her disapproval is all Cicely has done in the post you pointed out. Can she (I’ll use third person until she addresses me) move beyond merely restating the problems of oversexualized kids, “woman-on-a-stick”, pornography in public, Brazillian waxes, etc. and registering her disapproval of them? That remains to be seen. I would like to see it.
What I don’t want to see is more of the “Well, sexism is everywhere so whaddayagonnado?” brush off that commonly attempts to divert or outright shut down debates on the violent sexism reinforced by pornography. That lazy and unproductive shoulder-shrugging has no place in a feminist’s verbal repertoire.
-
cicely says:
That lazy and unproductive shoulder-shrugging has no place in a feminist’s verbal repertoire.
Frankly, Sam, this is the kind of comment that does little to encourage me to dialogue with you at all.
I’m not going to repeat all my views on pornography and prostitution - you’re very familiar with them by now (and anyone who’s not can certainly find them here). What I do want to say is that you appear to have missed a few things on this blog in recent days.
I have applauded a Swedish initiative to ban the use of women’s bodies in advertising for un-related products. I invited comments that might illustrate any inconsistencies with this and my position on pornography. None were forthcoming at the time. (I think that was on this blog…)
I see this initiative as sending a powerful message that all women are not ‘nothing but sex-objects’, despite the fact that *some* women with other viable employment alternatives do actually choose to sell sexual services. I know the Swedish government will have done this in tandem with their’ prosecute the john’ legislation, which I don’t support, but maybe the ad thing could be applied anywhere. Anyway, an idea at least worthy of discussion I feel.I provided a link to a comment about computer-generated pornography - no humans required - in response to foilwoman’s comment about this. The popularity of PC Porn games where they are available is interesting in that it challenges the idea that men - as a class - are necessarily addicted to the notion that real women have suffered indignities or actually been abused in the making of pornographic films. (Maybe there’ll be an increase in PC porn in future?) At least it’s worth discussing, also.
I have agreed with Violet that pornography should be open to critique (we both oppose censorship - thanks for the reminder, Violet - I did know that but for some reason thought the response I gave was the required one at the time) and have made a clear statement that I would like to see a more accurate and multi-dimensional portrayal of both men’s and women’s sexuality encompassed in it.
I have stated that I think it’s important that all cultural definers/reflectors continue to be critiqued and worked with…(one I think is interesting is the tv show ‘Bones’. Anyone got opinions about this?)
In short, as you can see, I’m very interested in exploring ideas and actual initiatives all feminists can support. What I haven’t done is agree with you that your approach is the only right one.
-
cicely says:
…with each word you write (or quote).
I was remiss in not posting the source, Richard. It was Erich Fromm. I came across it recently - all on it’s own somewhere - and it jumped out at me shouting ‘Hello’.
-
Sam says:
Frankly, Sam, this is the kind of comment that does little to encourage me to dialogue with you at all.
And here I thought it was how consistently I’ve shown your inaccurate theories and ineffective solutions to be in regards to stopping men’s escalating violence against sex workers.
Will something terrible happen to you if you once, just once, focused on the men who abuse prostituted women? You’ve managed to omit men entirely from consideration.
I have applauded a Swedish initiative to ban the use of women’s bodies in advertising for un-related products.
How does that stop johns, pimps and traffickers from hurting prostituted women? It’s a great idea and a step ahead for womankind in general, but it’s also unrelated to the problems of pornography and men getting off on seeing harm done to and themselves harming prostituted women.
I provided a link to a comment about computer-generated pornography
How does these games work to stop 13-year-old new recruits and the dropping age of entry, the explosion of sex trafficking worldwide, increasingly rape-themed pornography, and the rapid increase in British men’s who admit to (ab)using prostituted women, a number that’s doubled from 1995 to 2005? In what must just be a big coinkidink, the were no Nuts & Zoo lads mags or any lapdancing clubs in England before the first opened in 1995. Tens years later there were 150 lapdancing clubs and lads mags are a smash hit, so I ask what plausible reasons you have to believe more computer-generated sex films will reverse these trends and not simply feed them?
I would like to see a more accurate and multi-dimensional portrayal of both men’s and women’s sexuality encompassed in it.
That’s a consumer desire stated, not a feminist solution proposed to stem the tidal wave of increasingly abusive pornography and help the women abused by men in the making of it.
I think I read that you have not seen any of the pornography that you defend as free speech. To say pornography should be “open to critique” without yourself looking at the anti-woman propaganda you’re defending as freedom makes the notion of substantive critique laughable. If you want I could see about sending you a slide show to bring you up to speed with what the average pornstitute-using man is wanking to these days. I suggest not eating before viewing the photos.
I used to work for a translations and interpreting company around the corner from the UN. One day a big job came in from Israel to be translated into 17 languages. It was a pornography site of various animals mounting little girls, little as in 6, 7, 8-year-old children with dogs of all breeds, pigs, snakes, gerbils and other animals being used to rape them. Though our rich, old, gay man boss who took 4-5 trips to Thailand a year insisted we take the job, none of the usual translators we reluctantly approached would touch it. We couldn’t report it to anyone because it was from Israel and we were told it would be impossible to prosecute.
Those photos and photos like them should be burned into your mind like they’re burned into mine. Before you can give an informed opinion about pornography you need to inform yourself about pornography and that means experiencing it in the real instead of solely through essays and books.
-
Sam says:
sorry for the formatting snafu
-
Tom Nolan says:
How do we feel about Sam’s contention that the worst examples in a category must characterize all the examples in the category? In this case: because someone has filmed something so evidently disgusting and clearly damaging to the exploited victims before the camera as child/animal pornography, then taking a photograph of a naked adult person, or making a film of two adult people having sex, in order to sell it for others to masturbate over must be equally reprehensible by virtue of belonging to the same category (ie pornography).
If we do accept “contamination” like this, it is hard not to accept also that there can be no legitimate discrimination between examples.
-
Sam says:
That’s not what I wrote. The worst examples are the worst examples and mainstream pornography is mainstream pornography. I suspect trying to further clarify the issue for you would be a waste of my time while debating with cicely is not.
-
richard cherry says:
How do we feel about Sam’s contention that the worst examples in a category must characterize all the examples in the category? Tom.
Or… how do we feel about Sam’s bizarre extrapolation that Cicely is assumed to defend child/animal porn? What is it about this blasted porn debate that persuades people to critique excatly what other people HAVEN’T said????
I just don’t get it; couldn’t everyone please try to read what others actually say occasionally? -
Tom Nolan says:
Sam, I wasn’t expecting you to explain anything to me, and I didn’t address my comment to you.
It’s strange, isn’t it? Nobody wants to debate anything, but everyone wants the last word.
-
Violet says:
What a wrestling match y’all got into while I was having my not-heart attack.
For the record, and apart from the circumstances of this particular contretemps, I just want to note that while I too am a full-paid member of the Cicely fan club, Sam is also someone I respect and whose presence here is welcome. Sam is a strong voice for prostituted women and a deeply knowledgeable advocate.
One of the reasons I think tempers get so hot on this issue is because there is much personal pain in the mix. I know that several anti-pornstitution feminists have personal knowledge of the industry and have loved, lived with, and sometimes lost women who have been harmed terribly. Their hearts have been broken by an industry that they know first-hand to be hell on earth. On the other side I know some sex-positive feminists have a history of feeling personally shamed and ostracized from the Sex Wars on, and those wounds have not healed.
I don’t mean to sound like Ms. Nice-Nice, and in fact I think I’ll have to go post a rant on fucking godbags just to get the Nice out of my system, but on these extremely contentious feminist topics (porn and prostitution) we really need to maintain the effort to be generous with each other. All of us do, including me.
I’m still trying to create that space where we can talk productively and openly with each other. That’ll only work if the smart women participate from both sides (or all sides?) of the debate. I don’t always agree with Cicely on everything, but I value her voice immensely. I don’t agree with Sam on everything, but there is no more knowledgeable advocate for pornstituted women on the intertubes. Let’s please keep working on listening to each other.
-
Tom Nolan says:
Sam to Cicely
“I think I read that you have not seen any of the pornography that you defend as free speech.”
As a point of information, I think it’s Violet who says that she’s seen next to no pornography; I certainly don’t remember Cicely saying anything of the kind (and I’ve tried to read everything that she’s written at “Leftist” since the old days when she and Alon used to tag-team).
-
cicely says:
Will something terrible happen to you if you once, just once, focused on the men who abuse prostituted women? You’ve managed to omit men entirely from consideration.
On the contrary, Sam, I’ve stated how crucial it is that men aspire to be fully human (which Infidel has said here that he does…) rather than ‘real men’ since masculinity as currently understood and practiced undeniably has misogyny as an indispensable component. I particularly demand of enlightened men that they have the courage and integrity to OPENLY challenge other men over sexist speech and behaviour. Change is simply not going to happen without the participation of men in this way because, as it is, they all too often only really speak/listen to each other, using their opinions and treatment of women as a kind of language/currency which has gang rape as its ultimate expression. Obviously pornography and prostitution both occur in this women diminishing/hating cultural context as well, but where you see these as inherently and in all cases degrading and abusive, I don’t. Therefore I can’t adopt your solutions. (which I believe to be Mackinnon/Dworkin-ish or censorship re pornography and ‘prosecute the john’ re prostitution.)
From my perspective what I can support is voluntary sex-workers’ income, health and safety protections - and dignity - in tandem with the provision of alternative employment opportunities and/or social support for people who are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse and vigorous pursuit and prosecution of those men and women who do engage in criminally exploitative, abusive and violent behaviour in and around the sex industry. (This includes clients who abuse individual sex workers.)
Many, many more women and children are trafficked and/or forced to work in other industries than the sex industry - including mat-weaving, shoe-making and even house-cleaning. My solution isn’t to make mat-weaving , shoe-making or cleaning other people’s houses illegal, or to prosecute the purchasers of mats, shoes or housecleaning services. It’s the same as the above for the sex industry.
I think that we feminists *are* engaged in a hearts and minds cultural battle that should be waged on all fronts and not be so heavily focused on voluntary sexual activity (commercial or private) between consenting adults.
Where there is an escalation in the pornification of women, the sexualisation of young girls etc, we could be said to be losing the cultural battle. We need to create and support fuller and more accurate portrayals of what it is to be human and sexual - particularly for the young - and challenge these narrow and debilitating perceptions at every turn via magazines, books, tv, movies, music, the internet, conversation. I think that Swedish initiative in advertising is an excellent example of the kind of thing that can be done.
In all honesty, Sam, apart from our views on pornography and prostitution, which I guess you see as the lynchpins of women’s oppression, we probably don’t see the world very differently. If we agreed to disagree on that issue for a given moment we might even be able to come up with some productive insights and possible strategies together.
-
cicely says:
Re soaking myself in the cruelest and in all ways worst and/or clearly criminally obtained pornographic imagery, I don’t see any of it because I choose not to. I want to help create a world in which *nobody* chooses to. No-one not caught up in it is forced to. I am hurt and enraged by even fictitious women-hating stories on tv - women being forcibly addicted to drugs such as heroin and kept as sex-slaves - well the whole gamut. I know all these things are really done to real women in the real world, along with a lot of other hugely cruel and unacceptable stuff. I don’t need to be convinced of how bad it is. I have boxes of newspaper and magazine clippings collected over many years that paint the picture of women’s lot around the world. I pay attention and it hurts. I take none of it lightly.
-
cicely says:
I’ve tried to read everything that she’s written at “Leftist” since the old days when she and Alon used to tag-team
Tom - just so you know, I’m not ignoring you and I’m glad you’ve found my contributions here as worthy as all that of following. I didn’t quite know how to respond (hence the gap) but I do want to acknowledge your generous comments in this thread and thank you for making them.
-
Infidel says:
“I’ve stated how crucial it is that men aspire to be fully human (which Infidel has said here that he does…) rather than ‘real men’ since masculinity as currently understood and practiced undeniably has misogyny as an indispensable component.” -cicely
..alas I share the shame, currently, that the good doctor Jensen experienced, early on, in his studies. I am aroused reading, envisioning, the gang banging.
George C.Scott as Patton with the corpses smoldering..”God help me, I love it!”
well…not so passionate, but I do (God help me) get a hard on. I’m not compelled to go whack off or anything, and I’m more prone, especially in this “discussion” context to just feel shame- but there it is-hard and tingling. I don’t know, and I’ve never been so introspective about it, because…um…this lady, this human being, is going to take it all, all the way, wet,slime, open, slick, deep, dirty, raw.
Aspire to be, but certainly am not, yet-fully human
Sorry, and grateful -
Tom Nolan says:
It was the least I could do, Cicely, your comments have given me a lot of pleasure, and I would have given you even more whole-hearted support if I hadn’t feared that it might be counter-productive (I reaped a bit of a whirlwind on another thread).
I was in Perth alot over the summer (my folks live not far inland in a one-time goldfields frontier town) and I
