If you ask most folks who have been blogging for a while, they’ll remember the one “break-out” post that got them noticed, or first attracted a significant number of comments and hits. For me, it was this post about pornography back in April 2004. I wrote in response to news that several major stars of the adult film industry were infected with HIV.
I wrote that post, and many subsequent posts on pornography from two over-lapping perspectives. I wrote as a pro-feminist steeped in the anti-pornography tradition of one branch of feminism; I wrote as someone who was moved by the desperately sad story of Linda Lovelace, moved by the razor-sharp incisiveness of Andrea Dworkin, challenged by the dazzling legal theory of Catherine MacKinnon. But my intellectual response to porn was mixed with my own experience of “addiction” to pornography, and a long struggle to overcome the compulsive use of sexually explicit material. Porn addiction, particularly in my youth (long before cyber-erotica became available) had done tremendous harm to me — and as a consequence, it had damaging repercussions in many of my relationships. So my feminism, my faith, and my own intense desire never ever to go back into that addiction combined to form a very strong anti-pornography stance.
It has been a long time since I’ve “used” pornography of any kind. But that doesn’t mean I’m blind to the possibility of relapse. Heterosexual married men in my position — teachers, pastors, mentors — are famous for living sexual double lives. (The examples, sadly, are too many to list.) While some fall from grace in spectacular ways –Ted Haggard — others commit “adultery” only with their computers. I know my own tendency towards workaholism and Calvinist striving; I know that that Puritanical streak can, left unchecked, feed a dark side. It’s so easy, after all, to feel heroic doing what I do: mentoring, teaching, volunteering, advising, chairing committees and giving lectures. It’s easy, too, to buy into the lie that I’ve “been so good” and I “deserve” a little “me time.” For a lot of men, including myself for many years, that “me time” involved the compulsive consumption of pornography.
I learned early that a fulfilling sex life with a partner or a spouse is not a prophylaxis against porn addiction. I’m very clear these days that it isn’t my wife’s job to keep me sufficiently sexually sated that I don’t stray, even in my mind. It’s my job. And staying faithful in body and mind involves many things, of which willpower is actually the least important. Staying faithful to my commitments is made much easier by honoring the needs of my body as they arise. I was much more prone to use porn when I was hungry, angry, lonely, or tired; I have become much better (thank God) at recognizing my triggers. I listen to the needs of my body, and I don’t suppress them. That doesn’t mean I indulge every imperious demand! It means I do take the naps I need; it means I do get the (very non-sexual) professional massages that release the tension and the ache in my flesh. It’s when I bottle everything up, I know, that I am at risk of “acting out.”
But writing about pornography from the perspective of a recovering addict is problematic. Most saliently, it leads me — as it obviously did in that 2004 post — to be dismissive of those whose experience with pornography was radically different from my own. I’m not talking about the Larry Flynts of the world, mind you; I have little time for them. I’m talking about feminist voices, in the blogosphere and elsewhere, voices of women who work or have worked in the sex industry. Like so many folks, I’ve been more willing to hear the stories that match up with my pre-existing world view. I confess I’ve given more credence to those who spoke of the sex industry in negative terms (exploitation and abuse and addiction) than to those who talked about genuinely enjoying the work they were doing.
What I am most guilty of is pathologizing those whose experiences do not match my world view. I am not alone in this; many of my fellow anti-porn feminists do the same. We of all people, who ought to know better, still regularly suggest that women who work in the sex industry (or merely those who enjoy watching porn) are — take your pick — “deceiving themselves”, “working through childhood abuse issues”, “filled with a self-loathing they cannot acknowledge.” Sometimes, we infantilize female sex workers, suggesting that they are in desperate need of “rescue” by we the enlightened, the middle-class, and the sexually vanilla.
One of the many changes I’ve been going through this year is a re-evaluation of my position on pornography and sex work. Several incidents occasioned this. First off, I was deeply stirred up (in the best way) by a panel session I went to at the WAM conference in March. Led by Audacia Ray, the panel explored the various ways in which even the feminist-sympathetic media often misrepresents the voices of sex workers. It was a challenging presentation, but it got me thinking about my own preconceptions. I started reading Audacia’s blog, as well as those of Amber Rhea, and Renegade Evolution. I’ve met Amber and Audacia, and have long admired Ren’s writing — but after the WAM conference, really made an effort to set aside my knee-jerk anti-porn stance as I read their work.
I also got some critical feedback from a few (well, two) students in my women’s studies course. These were excellent and involved students, committed young feminists, and I’m happy to say that they were both effusive about how much they had enjoyed most of the course. But each of them came to me, separately, after last semester was over to take issue with just one segment of the class: my section on pornography. One of them wrote in her journal something to the effect that “the only time you seem to get preachy and dogmatic is when porn comes up. On that issue, you just don’t seem to present other points of view.” Another, who told me she had worked in the industry herself, said she felt “silenced” by the way the rest of the class happily went along with what she saw as an unfair anti-porn slant.
I’ve gotten that complaint before, honestly. And in the past, I’d been almost as dismissive of the “pro-porn” feminist view as I tended to be towards the ultra-conservative “a woman’s place is in the home” crowd. Heck, because of my background with evangelicals, I was probably better about hearing and validating the views of social conservatives than I was about really giving credence to the voices of women who worked in the sex industry, or who simply — on their own — delighted in using pornography. Finally, this year, I’ve been able to hear these criticisms without being reactive or defensive.
A lot of this is due to my own growth, I realize. We demonize what we fear, and my own struggles with pornography became entangled with my ideological and theological responses to sex work and erotica. Today, I still have many of the reservations about pornography and sex work that I had in the past. What I also have is more and more “time” away from pornography. My fear of relapse grows less intense as I get more and more distance from the period in my life where porn use was pretty darned compulsive. And while I am not over-confident, I am centered enough today to do a better job of distinguishing between my fears and my convictions. I’m certainly in a better space today than I was in April 2004, when I wrote that impassioned but somewhat overwrought post.
Thanks to Ren, I found this post by Debs, a woman who has long been a radical feminist (in the classic, anti-porn sense): Across the Porn Divide. She writes:
Porn is a very important issue, and this article in no way attempts to say we should ignore it, or give up fighting for what we believe is right. But, I think that all kinds of feminists need to realise just how unproductive, unhelpful, and ultimately meaningless the current stand-off is. We repeat the same arguments, we all stay in our own ‘camp’ and do not venture out, not even for the shortest time, to converse with the ‘other side’. We each go round in our own orbits, and never meet at any point. So much more could be achieved, and we could actually start to move forward with the issue of porn and other issues, if we could take some time to visit the other side, and actually engage with them. Talk to them. Begin some kind of dialogue. You may do this with the intention of changing people’s minds, which would be fine, and you may even succeed, or you may, as I do, do this in the spirit of attempting some open dialogue to escape the suffocation of always talking to the same people, who always agree with you. It is not healthy for any person, or group of people, to always live in each other’s pockets, so to speak, to never here a voice of dissent or disagreement, or to be challenged on anything. A person or group who operates like that cannot progress, and there can be no movement, which is what feminism is supposed to be.
Emphasis mine.
In my case, I’m ready to do more listening than talking. I’ve got two avowedly “pro-sex” students in my women’s studies class working on a scholar’s option project about feminist pornography, and I’m looking forward to seeing how their project develops. I’m reading the work of women like Ren and Amber and Audacia and others, looking not for evidence of dysfunction or self-deception, but looking to connect with the reality of their experience.
I am convinced that on balance, prostitution as it exists today in the Western world hurts virtually everyone involved. I remain convinced that the porn industry, particularly the male-centered mainstream, sends out tremendously damaging messages about sexuality. I am keenly aware that porn can play a part in reducing our ability to connect with each other as full and complete creatures of light. Porn, it still seems to me, is the enemy of empathy.
But I know that the real picture is more nuanced than that. While we must not ignore the voices of the exploited and the abused, we must also pay attention to the voices of those who experiences in sex work have been largely positive, fulfilling, and soul-affirming. We must stop trying to convince women who do like porn that they all have been “brainwashed”. If we want the “other side” to stop calling us Puritan killjoys, it would help if we had a bit more willingness to validate and affirm the variety of views, responses, and experiences that women who like porn and sex work can share with us.
God willing, I won’t “use” porn again. I remain deeply troubled by the impact porn has on men, women, and society. But I am more willing now to participate in dialogue — not just for the purpose of swaying others to my view, but for the purpose of better understanding.
And the end goal of “better understanding” is empathy, it is love, it is respect, and it is a world in which sexuality is a means to deep joy and justice for all of us.
As I already stated in the comment thread on the post at Deb’s blog that you have linked here, I spent most of my life quite adamantly pro-porn and prostitution…almost became a sex workers myself. It was only very recently that I began to take an anti-porn stance after realizing the harm that is caused by porn in general as well as the harm that it caused me. So, I personally have listened to the other side. I used to preach the “other side” verbatim myself. I know the “other side’s” argument by heart.
My issue with the “other side” has little to do with their opinions on porn or prostitution, but with their behavior towards anti-porn feminists in general. Women can disagree until our faces turn blue when it comes to porn and prostitution…that I can handle. I can not handle witnessing blatant attacks on anti-porn women. I can not handle witnessing blatant attacks on women at all.
I also have tremendous difficult handling the male commenters that tend to hang out around the pro-porn blogs. Those particular commenters (Here’s looking at you, IACB and Ernest Greene!!), have virtually no business being involved in such sensitive discussions. There seem to be few male commenters who can even begin to grasp the impact that their comments have on women who feel traumatized by porn, or who have been victims of actual sexual abuse.
So, I have at least for the time being decided to withdraw from the pro-porn side completely. Right now, the heartache that is caused by reading the constant flame wars and vicious personal attacks is simply too much for me to handle.
I’ve never been able to decide how I feel about porn. The honest truth is that, in its current state, it’s overwhelmingly anti-feminist. The internet’s filled with “See this woman get deceived into having sex” “See her get pounded” “See her get ripped apart” “See that stupid chick get gangbanged by 3 black men on the wrong side of town” - the last having sexist AND racist issues. And then there’s the whole issue of pay and safety for the actors - it’s well documented enough that it’s not good.
But porn COULD be better. Obviously there will always be people who feel like porn is inherently evil and unhealthy. I don’t think it is. I know there are women in the porn industry who are producing women-friendly porn, in both the content of the videos themselves and in the making of them. I think it’s going to be really difficult to move the whole industry that way while society as a whole is still under a patriarchal umbrella, but I also think it’s defeatist to just rail against it.
Shorter version: It’s hard to be “rah rah porn!” when the situation is as it currently is, but it’s hard to NOT be sex-positive when I know it has the capacity to be healthier, if only we can get it there.
Hugo,
I’m looking forward to a discussion based on that premise. I’m not sure this will mean something to you, but this is a post that reassures me that you’re actually interested in learning as well as in preaching - aka a real debate. Good to know :)
Speaking of which - you earned yourself this motivational link ;)
I’ve stripped the http so it won’t get stuck in the spam folder…
blog.ted.com/2008/09/the_real_differ.php
I don’t understand how any feminist can defend a porn industry that shows young women raped, beaten, tied up in painful positions, wrapped and unable to breathe, cut and smiling while they are tortured. I would not want to see young men in those positions either. It is very sick. It is very different that erotica that may show two models/actors who are exhibitionist and happen to be naked engaged in consensual sex acts.
Not to mention all the marriages that are broken and all the children that are neglected when someone becomes addicted to these activities.
To each his or her own, Rainbow. “I don’t understand why you get off on what you do, and I wouldn’t want to see it” doesn’t leave much room to go forward. I don’t understand why a lot of people are into whatever they’re into but so long as it involves consenting adults, my personal confusion or distaste, and anyone else’s, isn’t much of an argument.
Granted, that’s emphatically not a reason not to engage with the significance and impact of porn, nor not to engage in a fair, open-minded and still critical assessment of its content and social significance, much less not to address issues of pathology and addiction.
Myself, I’m tired of people posturing as the Great Golden Mean, scolding all us bickering children to just listen for a change. As if we didn’t, as if there were only two identical camps with exactly opposite views. Talk about infantilizing!
What B said.
I’ve found that it is sometimes all too easy to ignore how people say things as long as they mostly agree with you. I noticed this when I realized that I disagreed with several prominent feminist voices in our views around the sex industry, and it has increased my understanding of a lot of viewpoints I don’t necessarily agree with.
I also find that sometimes in order to increase my understanding of the other side of an issue, I need to overlook things being said that I find personally insulting and decide later if they are really unreasonable. Sometimes they are and sometimes they aren’t. I think that most people are likely to say things that aren’t necessarily fair about the other side when they have strong feelings about an issue, and this creates stronger divisions than there need to be and leads to much unproductive bickering.
I don’t know what the heck we are supposed to do about it though, aside from just telling everyone to turn the other cheek.
I came from not quite the opposite direction as Faith. I was impressed by the sex worker rights movement from the first time I heard about it, but it took a long time for me to realize that so many of the anti porn and prostitution folks are actually against it. It may seem obvious to some people, but looking at the core arguments of both sides it still puzzles me.
The other day I opened the last issue I got of $pread magazine (the publication that introduced me to the sex worker rights movement) and saw the following quote:
They think we’re working because we like it. They should do a little street work and see how things work and then they would stop saying stupid things like that
I often hear almost this exact statement used by people trying to show how stupid/hypocritical/misguided those of us who support the sex worker rights movement are, and yet here it is in a sex worker rights publication. What’s wrong with this picture?
“scolding all us bickering children to just listen for a change.”
Yea, that too. As far as I can tell, many to most of the anti-porn feminists have listened. Many of them used to support porn themselves or even be sex workers.
“We of all people, who ought to know better, still regularly suggest that women who work in the sex industry (or merely those who enjoy watching porn) are — take your pick — “deceiving themselves”, “working through childhood abuse issues”, “filled with a self-loathing they cannot acknowledge.””
I’m willing to believe that some of the women who watch porn, or perform in it, are not any of those things. It isn’t accurate to state that none of them are. I was one of those women who was “deceiving themselves” and “filled with self-loathing they cannot acknowledge” when I was masturbating to degrading, misogynistic porn on a nearly daily basis. I had to nearly self-destruct before I realized the harm that had been caused to myself and to my relationships by porn.
Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon will never, ever be able to address and make amends for the incalculable damage their anti pornography crusade did to gay and lesbian advancement, or for their failure to address how their theories were used to censor gay and lesbian literature—in MacKinnon’s case, with her complicity—or shut down and prosecute gay and lesbian bookstores like Vancouver’s Little Sister’s Book and Art Emporium. Nothing that either of these two pro-censorship gargoyles produced in their lifetime was worth the damage they did. No serious study of queer theory or history, in my opinion, can be undertaken without removing this obfuscating political prism.
I think this is a pretty important step, Hugo. There’s some pretty horrific porn out there both in terms of what’s depicted, how it’s created, and how and why it’s consumed. And there’s some completely harmless, often self-created and shared-only-with-friends porn that’s absolutely great for all parties concerned. And a rather large quantity somewhere in between that’s neither quite monstrous nor quite harmless. And while I agree that “pox on both your houses” positions (a trope I too-frequently resort to) is probably alienating to a lot of partisans, and boring to non-partisans, the logjam really would benefit from a little distinguishing between the different forms rather than branding it all “one person’s meat” or “one person’s poison.”
Your post proposes instead to *listen to* rather than condemn both sides and that’s a big deal. Because there really is conflict between both sides not because one is stifling or the other is evil but because, as you say it’s not a monolith. Consequently it’s counterproductive to treat it as such, nor to demonize one’s opponents. Even if your goal is to get rid of all of it. Even if your goal is to celebrate all of it.
On an only slightly tangential note you might want to see Michael O’Hare’s post about professional and intercollegiate athletics at the political blog Reality Based Community samefacts.com/archives/sports_/2008/09/sports_and_character.php. It’s relative not because pornography and, especially, spectator sports are equivalent but because he uncompromisingly identifies and condemns specific practices, presentation, and consumption that are horrific without condemning all athletic, or even all competitive athletics. And I think his example is illustrative because he *sidesteps* the question of whether “all sports are good” or “all sports or bad.” Nor does he waffle with a bunch of “to be sures” or “to be fairs.” Instead he directs attention to specific practices and behaviors related to a particular form and decries that. (My only beef with the post is that he *only* decries it instead of finishing with some kind of call to action.)
My point is that decrying specific instances and areas one avoids alienating, and thus opens a door to recruit support from, people who otherwise might not listen to you at all.
Great post. Thanks.
figleaf
Fig, that’s a nice link and a very good point about how we can call attention to problematic practices without engaging in wholesale condemnation.
Michael, I agree that the practical implications of what Dworkin and MacKinnon proposed ended up being disastrous, especially in Canada. Andrea Dworkin, I understand, deeply regretted that. Her criticism of porn was always more compelling than her proposed solution.
There is too much of attributing to taste what are really destructive behaviors. How can anyone say that ripping a women’s or man’s insides out, cutting them, or leaving horrific bruises to be merely a matter of preferences or not society’s business and sign of mental illness. Do we always have to wait until the woman or young man has been killed or commits suicide? It is one thing to write in a novel or story whatever horrible thing one can conjure up. It is another thing to do it to a living, breathing human.
Anti-abuse of women and men in pornography does not conflict with sex worker rights. How many sex workers really want to be beaten to a pulp? I suppose a prostitute gets paid more if they agree to a beating as well but I suspect most beatings are not compensated.
Porn is not solely used by men, either. I know essentialism is frowned on by feminists, but there is a noticeable pattern of men being turned on by pictures, while women prefer words. If we wish to resort to porn we would be more likely to turn to the “erotic fiction” section of a bookshop than the highest shelf in the supermarket where the magazines are.
What annoys me about visual porn is that it is assumed the viewer is male and so something that would be of interest to a heterosexual female - such as even the look on a man’s face - is not shown. All we see are panting ecstatic girls - about as exciting as white bread as far as I am concerned. :-)
Hugo,
I posted a response to this over at my place.
well done, Hugo, well done. I’m not going to address a lot of what’s been said there in the comments, loosing proposition all around, but I appreciate the post.
Thanks, Ren. And as I said over at Amber’s place, I’ll be responding to some of her (Amber’s) questions, suggestions, and criticisms in another post - but that’s probably two weeks away. Short hiatus is imminent again…
enjoy the hiatus!
I’m also pretty goddamn tired of the trope of “well WE are reasonable and listening, it’s your side that’s full of ideologues.”
I’m glad to read this post. I too would like to know what you mean by the “empathy” line. Speaking as a guy whom, as you and I have talked about, thinks that the kind of porn I look at matters. I am a huge fan of Suicide Girls, which you have criticized in the past, but hate the stuff that seems more violent to me, like DPs and so on. I call myself a pro-feminist man, thanks largely to you, Hugo Schwyzer. But I don’t think jacking off to images of beautiful adult women who have voluntarily taken off their clothes and are being paid for it completely degrades that nubious feminist street cred.
I believe it is possible to be addicted to porn. You clearly were. You also, by your own admission, have a very addictive personality. I don’t. I smoke pot rarely, but I smoke. I have two beers and stop. And I look at porn once every few days, rarely for more than thirty minutes at a time. (I mean, it has a purpose, and I have other things to get to after I get off.) So, do you think men can use porn without getting addicted as you, and quite a few other guys, did?
Also, my gf uses porn occasionally. Not because I made her, either. And you know who she is, of course. She told me to tell you that she wishes she had made a similar comment in her journal a few yaers ago about your anti-porn stance. You might have written this post earlier!
Anyhow, have a great hiatus. Is it for Rosh Hashanah?
Hugo,
Thanks for this post. As a person with a disability, I always thought of pornography and BDSM, something else that often gets lumped right in with pornography, as something good. Our bodies often work in nonstandard ways; eroticizing what others would think of as “pain” is one way some of us craft sexualities for ourselves in a world that says that we have no sexualities. Pornography gives many of us the ability to at least look and fantasize.
So when I first came across the brands of feminism that call my sexuality not adaptive like my glasses or my old scooter/walker/wheelchair, but broken beyond repair, my only response is anger.
Well, anger and bewilderment that feminism is supposedly only “for” the sexualities of a very narrow sliver of women, most of whom are able-bodied, white, educated enough to be deeply invested in feminist theory that they may well have learned about in college, etc. My crip self fits some of those, but not all… and hearing that my sexuality is patriarchal and broken sounds an AWFUL lot like being called “cripple” as an insult. My body, life, and mind are not worth less than anyone else’s.
If pornography and its use have been bad for you and harmful to you, by all means, work on stopping. But please don’t assume that my pornography use as a person with a disability who is not a man has done the same thing.
I don’t have a body of theory. I haven’t (yet!) gotten the slew of book deals Dworkin did. And if I were writing, it would probably be far more about disability and sexuality generally than porn, porn, porn all the time. So I don’t think it would get the same kind of uptake.
But does that fact mean she’s right and I’m wrong? If wheelchairs aren’t an abomination, why is the way I fuck an abomination? Why am I seen as hip and cute? Why is my trauma minimized, denied, in some cases treated as though it didn’t happen because it wasn’t the trauma these women have experienced?
I don’t *get* that, and I’m glad you’re listening to your students, rather than writing them off as vapid trend-followers.
“All we see are panting ecstatic girls - about as exciting as white bread as far as I am concerned.”
Being bisexual, I’m just as likely as a hetero. male to get aroused by an image of a naked woman. What bothers me is not seeing images of naked women. What bothers me is seeing images of women being used, abused, and exploited for profit and misogynistic male pleasure.
Hugo:
I posted this over at Amber’s, and thought maybe you should have a look at it too, for when you get around to that “empathy/sympathy” post:
Yeah, that “enemy of empathy” thing absolutely flabbergasts me too. I get that it’s supposed to mean that for some people, pornography… does… something. I think it’s something like “makes it harder to focus on your partner.” But I can’t figure out how that works, as my introduction to porn was using it WITH a partner. It was part of our cuddling and together time, and he would go out of his way to hunt through his collection for things he thought I would specifically enjoy. I try to compare that with this stereotype of the person who supposedly prefers paper or the glow of the CRT to human flesh, and I simply *can’t* — it’s so far outside of my experience that all I can do is nod a bit and say “I *guess* that makes sense, yeah.”
And later partners of mine, too — all have used porn in some fashion, and I never felt in any way pushed away by it. I found looking at what they liked to be interesting. It gave us something fun and sexy to do, and it gave me insight into their kinks and personality. Sometimes it helped me learn or divine things about their interests that they might have been shy about telling me upfront. And I have never felt that I couldn’t say “I like this, but that bothers me, so look at that on your own time” to any of them, ever.
But just as Hugo doesn’t want to ignore the people that he isn’t famiiliar with, I don’t want to deny that some people are hurt by porn. Some people are pressured into looking at it or acting like it, and that’s bad. Some people are pressured into being IN it, or trafficked into it (though these things, I find, are often discussed really sloppily on the anti-porn side), and that’s horrific. So I can’t say the experiences are the same for everyone.
But I do find myself really mind-boggled when I read the experiences. I wonder if it’s common in vanilla circles, this pressure and force and addiction THING, because I really haven’t seen it at all in kinky men (or women, for that matter, and yeah, lots of dykes like by-dykes-for-dykes porn and erotica.)
***
Addendum:
Hugo, I do believe you when you say you struggle with addiction. And I’m sure that it’s tough to deal with a compulsive feeling that you should be doing something you don’t want to actually do. I’ve dealt with a few compulsive feelings of my own in my life, and I know that familiar feeling of thinking “doing X will finally give me pleasure or peace,” only to find that it just leaves you in a worse mess.
But I also have to say that… well, like I said above, I don’t really understand what the drive is that makes someone porn-addicted. So I’m going to ask you, but please understand that if it’s too personal to answer, I understand, and don’t feel pressured. But… is it just being overwhelmed by sexual desire? Suddenly needing an orgasm now? Or is it wanting things one’s partner isn’t interested in? Both? Neither? Because for me, it was always just “Oh, masturbating at the end of the day is nice. Oh, I liked that picture of the tattooed girl quite a lot, and as my current partner is neither tattooed nor a girl, why don’t I fantasize about that *click*?”
So… yeah, that for me was about things my partner was not, attributes I find sexy that my partner didn’t have (tattoos, female body parts — though male ones are just as sexy too so it’s not like she’d be “sexier” in some way because she had certain body bits), but I never really saw it as diminishing my attraction to him at all. So… how does this connection between using porn and liking your partner less, or paying less attention to her, or being uninterested in her, or whatever it is, work exactly? I’d really like to know exactly what it is that’s being *said* when someone says “Pornography distances me from my partner” because it’s so outside my experience.
That’s a hell of a question, Trinity, and it will be part of the response I post — as I said, the week of the 6th. Thanks so much for engaging.
I suppose people cam use anything to distance themselves from their partners, or other people, and porn and other addictive substances just facilitate the impulse to withdraw. But I’m not an addictive.
I used porn to work through child sexual abuse issues and masturbated to things in the past which now strike me as quite disturbing (I never ventured into the kind of nasty material described above, porn was just a small part of my process) - and VERY un-sexy. I find this such a complex issue, because I think maybe I needed to work that through and engaging with those images etc in the way I did was a part my healing process. But, as has been pinted out here there is some horrific material doing the rounds which can only damage all concerned. And when I used porn I was at a stage of taking great care of myself and had a high level of awareness of my processes. There is no way I would use porn now and that is simply because I value my own sexuality, which had once been stolen, far, far too much to allow it to be stolen or intruded upon again. I revel in my own creativiy and that enriches my life. I think it is such a shame for people to loose that; when I find a partner I want him to a mind which is as active and free as mine.
I suspect that the problem with porn could boil down to a problem with people, and that some porn is benevolent, but the vast majority is most definitely not.
Consider these two propositions:
- Women get raped, trafficked, and murdered.
- Men see, read, and think things I don’t approve of.
I see the separation of these propositions as crystal clear, and I find it hard to understand anyone who does not. When women get raped, trafficked, abused and exploited in pornography, we have an obligation to do something about it. And to the extent that the way we address the second proposition affects people’s willingness to engage the first, I see a real problem.
It appalls me that so many people don’t see sex trafficking as a crisis, and don’t ask what (if any) role the production of pornography plays. But it also appalls me when anyone proclaims a disposition to intrude into the thoughts of other people without asking what their arguments say about their priorities.
John:
I have yet to hear anyone say “Trafficking? Of women, girls, and why yes, boys? No big deal.” People can absolutely enjoy porn made legally with consenting adults and hate illegally made porn with forced participants…and work against that….just as a person can enjoy wearing clothes and using technology but detest and work against sweatshops and forced child labor.
What Ren said. And also… well, I’ve made online friends with a guy who directs porn recently. And I just have found myself learning so much about so many different things, talking to someone who’s directly involved. I think it’s really easy to come up with a totally unrealistic image of people when they’re The Man Behind The Curtain… especially when what you’re talking about is something you already deem sinister.
But it’s just got me wondering: in all this discussion of pornography and how evil it is, why is there no talking to pornographers and examining their responses? I mean, there’s responses to very small sound bites, clearly chosen for shock. But there’s not: “okay, point by point, here’s what this person/agency/group/website even says about AIM, and here’s point by point why I think that doesn’t really keep people safe.” (I choose that as an example because Hugo links to an old post of his about Lara Roxx, which is full of emotion and empathy but very little discussion of what that meant in terms of industry standards and the like.)
So… yeah. I’d want a conversation that actually includes directors and producers too, ideally — though I really don’t blame them if they wouldn’t show up, as some anti-porn feminists can be very hostile (there were a few comments on one small blog recently to the effect of “I wish women could/would kill pornographers,” and I wouldn’t blame someone for not trusting “the feminists” as far as s/he could throw them after seeing that.)
Well, right, and I love how “pornographers” are assumed to be skeevy men. One of my best friends is a pornographer - a woman my age, queer, sex-positive, multiple college degrees, etc…
It’s just, a lot of these people ARE me friends (and ME, depending on what we’re talking about in particular) and I hate the vilification and downright WRONGNESS of people who have no idea who these people are and basically pull assumptions out of their butts.
Oh, yeah… in high school, my peers deemed a project I did too risque, and called me “pornographer.” It wasn’t a positive term, a term of endearment, or a “You go!” It was fear of me and judgment. And it didn’t just come from Dworkin-loving women. It came from men. And it was applied to me regardless of my not being a man.
Which is of course not the same as my actually being a part of a particular industry that feminists have critiqued, in a few cases wisely and in many cases badly in my opinion. But I always think back to that when I hear this stuff about how pornographers are hip and cool and no one has the GUTS to take them on because culturally, they’re supposedly kick-ass and awesome.
And the other thing, Amber, is that… yeah, this whole discussion conveniently ignores women who produce porn (and yet again: where are the dykes? What about On Our Backs (yes I know it no longer exists), or SIR, or… etc.)
But I also was thinking specifically about the men, actually. Why are the men only represented in these one-second, calculated-to-be-offensive comments from Flynt and Hefner and that’s it? Why doesn’t anyone ever, say, fisk an entire interview with some producer? Because I’ve never seen it. I see these one-second things, like that tiny snippet of Ernest Greene in the Price of Pleasure trailer, saying he doesn’t think porn makes people do evil things.
Now, I haven’t seen The Price of Pleasure, so maybe (though I’m not holding my breath) they give Greene a long, nice, relaxed interview where he can fully flesh out that comment and explain his views of evil to the viewer. Maybe it really does allow the viewer to think about and accept or reject them. But all too often, I see a really long list of anti-porn comments, or an entire essay, and then one little sound bite that could mean anything and sounds kind of offensive but you can’t tell, and that’s supposed to be equal time.
Matey:
Thanks for sharing something so personal. And it certainly sounds like you did what was best for you stopping.
The thing that is important to me personally, though, is that people don’t assume that everyone’s process of dealing with trauma is the same. I know that when I was first dealing with the things I survived, mental health professionals said things to me like “Oh, it’s perfectly natural for you to have sadomasochistic fantasies RIGHT NOW given how you’ve been hurt. As you heal, they’ll go away.”
As I’m sure you can guess, they never went away. And for several years, this bothered me deeply. I took it as a sign I hadn’t gotten better, and was still broken and messed up. I watched my relationships and friendships improve, my flashbacks grow less frequent, my desire to self-harm fade almost entirely… but when I was by myself thinking about sex or looking at sexual material, I just couldn’t get myself to be more vanilla. Things just weren’t changing at all.
And that led me to all kinds of conclusions about myself that really weren’t healthy. I even went to a fundamentalist church whose beliefs went totally against what I generally believe in, at my wit’s end, unsure how anything but a deity could transform me. That of course didn’t work, and subjected me to even more things that were not good for my fragile mental state. (They had me sit, alone, through a very disturbing and violent movie in an attempt to “explain” to me why God had to bring the Great Flood, for example.) But my sexual desires never changed at all, and I would go home after church and talk online to my friends about SM and feel like an alcoholic who’d fallen off the wagon.
So… yeah. I don’t have any problem with people for whom porn use, sadomasochism, rough sex, multiple partners, or whatever is a coping device they later abandon. But I do feel the need to bring up my own story when that gets talked about, lest people think that people like me are wallowing, or damaged, or “not healed yet.” Yes, I still have PTSD, but judging from the way my symptoms have diminished over time without commensurate changes in my sexuality, I feel confident in saying that the two are not related.
“What annoys me about visual porn is that it is assumed the viewer is male and so something that would be of interest to a heterosexual female - such as even the look on a man’s face - is not shown. All we see are panting ecstatic girls - about as exciting as white bread as far as I am concerned. :-)”
Which is one of the things that was quite lovely to me about an old lover’s “couples tapes.” It wasn’t often, no, but every once in a while one of the men would be very beautiful to me, and I could enjoy looking at him just as much as I enjoyed looking at the women.
All righty then, Hugo. What, stats down? It always works to stoke up the hate the anti-porn feminists machine, no? Gets those stats right up there.
Julia,
Where do you see any hate in his post? I’m honestly confused.
Decent effort, Hugo.
The problem is that once anything is made a state issue, a war is intrinsically declared on those who are engaged one way or another on the prospective illegal activity. Now some RadFems claim to NOT want censorship, but they can afford to. They can count on others to ensure censorship for them. Meanwhile they continu to oppose legalization/decriminalization of other sex work.
So, given the entwining of politics and polemics, how can opposite sides be too terribly human? I mean I have yet to see many Democrats say much to humanize McCain, nor many Republicans to say much to humanize Obama. It’s the nature of the political beast, regardless of the partisanship.
Would it be well to be humane? Yes. However, being humane comes at a very high cost in political power. Fine grained understanding of people makes for poor sound bites, static graphics and for no slogans or jingles. This is made even more difficult when “people” devolves into “individuals”, who are tediously slow to respond.
I would like to encourage you in the path you have begun, but I doubt it will prove satisfying to your side - and perhaps to you, yourself.
Julia, if you’ve read my blog you know that I am relentlessly optimistic about the possibilities for bridging ideological divides.
Ron, my goal is not to be satisfied for the sake of being satisfied, nor am I looking to have a great “kumbaya” moment where where those on opposite sides of the sex wars hold hands and forgive each other the judgment and hostility and misunderstanding. Journeys have a way of being both slow and full of surprises. I’ll be blogging this more after the hiatus, as the autumn rolls on, and probably beyond that.
“Meanwhile they continu to oppose legalization/decriminalization of other sex work.”
Continue to oppose legalization, yes. Continue to oppose decrim…um, not so much. Some of the Radical Feminists are for decrim.; some are for the Swedish model which involves decriminalizing the selling of sex, but also makes it illegal to purchase sex. I am personally in favor of decrim. I lean towards the Swedish model but I’m still feeling that particular stance out. I do believe that johns deserve to be penalized but I’m weary of pushing prostitutes further underground.
(Note: I don’t know if it’s completely accurate to label me a Radical Feminist. I am an anti-sex work feminist and I do believe in a significant portion of Rad Fem. philosophy. I still don’t really consider myself a dyed in the wool Radical Feminist, however.)
this is a refreshing post, hugo.
i too have some difficulty with the whole porn issue. i recognize that the sex industry is often harmful to the women who work in it and that some of them are exploited. i also recognize the potential for users of pornography to get addicted and/or to use porn in lieu of connecting with real life partners. one other danger that i don’t think has been specifically addressed in this post is the influence of porn on more mainstream cultural tastes–i do think that porn has a greater influence than it used to over what people feel is desirable and sexy and “fun.” case in point: disappearing pubes. as a woman, i admit that sometimes i feel pressured to put on a sexual performance, in other words to act more like a porn star during sex or try new things i might not have thought were sexy before they were everywhere in porn because i don’t want to be seen as unsexy or a prude or just not fun. i know that’s silly, but i think the pressure is there and it is real. i do think that watching a lot of porn can inform what a man thinks is desirable and maybe having a lot of one’s sexual interest shaped by porn is dangerous.
that said, i am extremely disturbed by feminists and other concerned liberals painting sex workers as incapable of agency and without exception psychologically damaged. it’s patronizing and inaccurate. i do think that human beings are visual creatures and will probably always want to watch some type of porn and that there is nothing inherently wrong with that. i myself enjoy porn now and then, both alone or with my boyfriend, of both the visual and written kinds and have never felt i was using it for anything other than as trinity put so well, “Oh, masturbating at the end of the day is nice. Oh, I liked that picture of the tattooed girl quite a lot, and as my current partner is neither tattooed nor a girl, why don’t I fantasize about that *click*?”
i guess i think that what is most important is working to ensure that people are not exploited or forced into sex work against their will and that sex workers are treated fairly and with the same respect as anyone else, while simultaneously working on the bigger picture of gender equality. it’s a big task, but i think that the less women are objectified and othered in society as a whole, the less negative impact watching people have sex on camera will have.
Actually…MOST Radical Feminists support some form of Decrim. I may not get along with a lot of Radical Feminists, but I know most support decrim in some manner, most often seemingly the Swedish Model. Let’s make that clear.
Nodding to what Trin & Amber said about pornographers. They are PEOPLE after all, and not all sinister evil men looking to hook women on drugs and exploit them. There are women pornographers, and pornographers who specialize in gay or lesbian porn, and those who specialize in women-centric films, or couples films, or countless other things. If you assume all pornographers are the same, you pretty much then have to assume all humans are the same…and those are the assumptions that seem to get people in trouble and end up in a lot of strife, anger, and hurt feelings all around.
OK, I agree 100% with what Renegade said in reply to me, which makes me think I failed to make myself clear.
So, I’ll try again. Yes, making pornography certainly doesn’t make a person a rapist, an exploiter, or a person cynically indifferent to other people’s suffering. However, rapists unfortunately exist, as do people who like to exploit others, as do people indifferent to the suffering of other people. Some of those people go to work in government, organized religion, or Walmart, but others make pornography.
Now I take it as read that when the process of making something involves trafficking, exploiting, or harming a person, then whether the product ends up on the Internet, in the XXX video store, or on the shelves of a nation-wide discount chain, we ought to have only two priorities: end the suffering and restore the victims. So it does concern me when people, who find the product itself offencive and regard the desires it satisfies as wrong, fail to make a clear separation between the urgent and widely shared goal of preventing abuse, and the more controversial notion of promoting good thoughts.
Hugo, you are hardly the one to bridge this particular ideological divide or any ideological divide that has to do with prostituting women. All you’ve done is create a comfy haven for haters here.
I am very much in favour of a world in which sexual services are no longer considered morally problematic in any respect as long as all involved parties are voluntarily enganging in the transaction, I would like to see a world in which a former sex worker can proudly put that on his/her resume and leverage the interpersonal experiences gained in that job. I’m in favour of a world, where sex work is no longer carried out in dark alleys or backrooms but in the broad daylight where everyone can see it and make sure no one gets hurt. I’m in favour of respecting and honoring the experience of sex workers. I’m in favour of a world in which a politician who is single could stand up and say “I’m using sexual services and I’m watching porn, it’s a mutually beneficial transaction. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. I do masturbate, like you do.” I’m in favour of a world in which radical feminists would see the general prohibition of sex work as an infringement of women’s and men’s rights.
I’m in favor of a world where “See this woman get deceived into having sex” “See her get pounded” “See her get ripped apart” “See that stupid chick get gangbanged by 3 black men on the wrong side of town” aren’t what men find sexually exciting.
Sam,
I’m in favor of a world in which men don’t view sex as a service to be purchased and women’s bodies as living, breathing commodities. I’m in favor of a world in which women can exist without men believing that they are entitled to sexual access to our bodies. I’m in favor of a world in which men don’t kidnap, rape, enslave, and kill women and children for their own personal sexual pleasure. I’m in favor of a world which views women as full human beings who deserve the right to be able to feed themselves and their children without having to resort to prostitution or performing in porn. I’m in favor of a world in which men don’t watch porn and then try to pressure their unwilling wives and girlfriends into performing acts which the woman feels are sexist and degrading. I’m in favor of a world in which men have enough respect for the act of sex and for women’s bodies that this conversation doesn’t even need to be had.
Oh, and what Lisa said.
Faith,
actually, I agree with pretty much everything you write, in particular, despite the loaded feminist slang -
I’m in favor of a world which views women as full human beings who deserve the right to be able to feed themselves and their children without having to resort to prostitution or performing in porn.
I’m very much in favour of establishing an economic structure that would create such an enviroment. I personally think it is possible to create a society such as that and enhance overall economic performance. No one should have work to merely feed themselves or their children, in sex work or any other line of business. I think it was clear from my post above that I’d like a world in which VOLUNTARY participation in sex work is something respected and INVOLUNTARY participation doesn’t exist.
As for
I’m in favor of a world in which men have enough respect for the act of sex and for women’s bodies that this conversation doesn’t even need to be had.
I’m probably too much of an economist to understand how people can believe something like sex to not have a value and used as means of exchange in interpersonal interactions, like any other kind of exchange or communication. What is soooo special about sex that makes it the only non-economic transaction in the world? Exactly - there isn’t anything. Whatever your requirements for consensual sex - it is also an exchange of value (in various currencies, usually not monetary). Love, mere arousal, social approval, whatever - are all part of the transaction. From economic point, there is nothing special about sexual contact as a specific form of human interaction. There is no reason to claim that it’s the only “transaction” that you cannot model with supply and demand.
I’m in favor of a world in which men don’t view sex as a service to be purchased and women’s bodies as living, breathing commodities.
Again, whatever way you look at it, sex IS always an exchange of value, whatever form that may take. Sex CAN be considered a service if part of the value exchange is monetary. I think it is important, however, that while the service is performed by a body, it is not the body that is purchased. If I get a massage, that’s an economic transaction, a service, performed by a body. What would change about the logical structure of the transaction should the massage therapist offer to massage my primary genitalia in addition to my back? Technically, nothing. But socially, a lot. The problem are attributions, not economics.
Why is sex work so often construed as something women “resort to?” (Or “fall into” - that’s another one you see a lot - and you’ll note it’s very passive language wherein the woman has no agency.) That is a stereotype, and a patriarchal one (because surely no woman would just choose do do that!) but we don’t seem to even consider these deeply embedded assumptions for analyze and deconstruction. THAT is what bothers me.
Ultimately, most of the time I feel like I’m saying one set of things (equal access to law enforcement, healthcare, support services, etc. for sex workers; removal of stigma/illegality so that sex workers can more easily exit the industry when they want to pursue work in another industry; rejection of “fallen woman” stereotype) and people are arguing with an entirely different set of things, which I did not mention at all (sex is a transaction! men expect unfettered access to women’s bodies! you support the rape of underprivileged women! you want to believe that all women in the sex industry love their work and are empowered by it!).
“Frustrating” would be an understatement.
What is soooo special about sex that makes it the only non-economic transaction in the world?
I don’t agree with you, Sam, that every human interaction has an “economic” element — I’d firmly agree with radical feminists here who would find that creepy. I don’t see, say, love or intimacy as quantifiable at all.
Where I DO agree with you is that I don’t really understand why all kinds of services can be bought and sold, sometimes involving bodies and physical pleasure (say, massage) yet it’s inherently bad or wrong or degrading to take sex and give it an economic dimension, ever, at all.
I don’t think it follows from “I can’t quantify intimacy” that “sexual pleasure cannot be bought and sold,” for example. Those are two different things!
If someone can sell me a good experience at his restaurant, full of “Yes sir/ma’am, right away!” and all this, why can’t someone who chooses to (and again, we’re all for eliminating pressure/coercion here) sell me a good sexual experience?
I can’t parse it. We already sell pleasure, and while we do I think have concerns about it (everyone knows that people in service professions often get treated poorly and it sucks) we rarely set up groups like “Feminists Against Sit-Down Restaurants” or “Feminists Against Sports Bars” or etc.
Trinity,
“I don’t see, say, love or intimacy as quantifiable at all.”
I’d say the problem already starts with an epistemological problem of even operationalising the variables. However, to accept that every human is a closed, autopoietic, system and that it is thus impossible to create interpersonal kardinal scales of value attribution doesn’t mean the things we can’t measure do not have a value to a specific individual and are as such part of an exchange. I think most people use a too narrow definition of transaction, one that is much narrower than the one used by institutional/behavioral economics.
“I don’t think it follows from “I can’t quantify intimacy” that “sexual pleasure cannot be bought and sold,” for example. Those are two different things!”
Which is, I think, precisely what I said, isn’t it?
Sam,
I think some things, call them the set Q, aren’t “exchanges” in a formally quantifiable sense. I think that some forms of sexual intimacy are part of Q, for a considerable amount of people. But I don’t think that means every sexual interaction does or should fit into Q — and I don’t think it’s feminist to tell someone that if she does sell sex, she’s doing it wrong.
Feminist to help her out if she feels illegitimately commodified? Feminist to let her know that if she would rather do Q-ey things exclusively, she should be able to do that without pressure or shame? Yes, yes, yes.
Feminist to tell her what’s Q and what’s not? No.
But saying that everything is ultimately economic, which is sure what “Love, mere arousal, social approval, whatever - are all part of the transaction. From economic point, there is nothing special about sexual contact as a specific form of human interaction.” sounds like to me… that I don’t agree with, and I see exactly why radical feminists find that skeevy.
Faith,
I don’t know if you’re still reading this or not, but I do want to say this to you: I’m sorry I’ve been so aggressive toward you in the past. I’ve definitely disagreed with you in the past and my opinions remain the same, but you’re entirely right that I have picked on you aggressively in the past and owe you an apology. I’m sorry.
That said, though, I have to say I’m mystified by some of what you’re posting. Ernest Greene, for example, is responding to people specifically saying things like “women should kill pornographers” and the like. I understand that his presence on a blog might make an anti-porn person uncomfortable, but I really don’t see aggression in “hey, I saw a friend get gunned down, so when people say ‘women should kill pornographers’ I take it seriously.” I see a response to people who are, in fact, making threat-like noises.
AmberRhea,
interesting rather recent attempt at an economic theory of prostitution.
http://www.reading.ac.uk/nmsruntime/saveasdialog.asp?lID=10393&sID=34517
As for the talking past each other thing you mention, I agree. I think it’s unfortunate, very unfortunate, that radical feminism is theoretically constructed in a way that follows up on very conservative notions of sexuality for a different reason, as I see it: They were mostly concerned with PUBLIC power (represenation, public sphere) but aware of PRIVATE power that women hold, partly through their sexuality. Radical feminists thus attempted to reduce this private power (and the gendered division of labour in general) and discredit it as an alternative to their model of division of labour by hooking into the conservative discourse of male sexual aggression (that needs to be controlled by controlling access to female sexuality by marriage and other institutions) and turning it around into a discourse of victimzed female sexuality. Both discourses profoundly limit the socially acceptable range of expressions of female sexuality and, in the feminist case, even deny women agency while the conservative model is usually content with controlling the expressions of while accepting the existence of both male and female agency.
Trinity,
“But saying that everything is ultimately economic, which is sure what sounds like to me… that I don’t agree with, and I see exactly why radical feminists find that skeevy.”
I don’t disagree with that. A lot of people find economic lingo problematic as it’s hard to translate into what most people would use to label the things they see and do. So, for all practical purposes, I completely agree with your definition of and the proposed way of handling Q and the quantifiable subset thereof.
In an economic sense, we’re exchanging value by having this conversation, it’s a transaction - but I certainly understand that that’s not the way most people would define those words.
chareth,
The bit in your comment where you mention using porn with your partner makes me want to take an informal poll here of female porn users. How many of us use it with our partners?
Because the stereotype of the sad, porn-addicted male is of someone who has a partner and avoids her (always her; never him. Part of my suspicion of porn addiction language is that it’s always hetero men — which suggests to me that whatever this is is a social issue among heterosexuals, not a physiological addictive response. And yet when I see queers and dykes going “wow, what a heterocentric issue, god am I bored now” I rarely see ANYONE taking that seriously. Funny.)
And, well, I’m kind of harping but well, I’m still not sure what porn addiction is anyway. Hugo above mentions “slipping” when he’s lonely, and… that puzzles me, because I personally am more likely to masturbate frequently when I’m single. When I’m not I could be having sex instead! So it sounds, as written, like “single men ’stumble’ or ‘are weak’” or something and that just… why is that a weakness and not a… hmm, I still feel desire? I mean to me that’s completely non-moral. As is the idea that “me time” or “relaxing and unwinding” could include masturbation. I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t.
I’m probably just misunderstanding, but the post calls a whole lot of things selfish that I can’t imagine would be selfish at all. (And then mentions massage, and is quick to distance this from sexuality, which is again odd to me — the pleasure of massage is definitely a sensual, bodily pleasure, and so is the pleasure of sex. I don’t see them as the same thing but I don’t see why they would be totally distinct, either. Our bodies are built to feel pleasure, whether that’s touch or hugs or sex. We have nerves. They do stuff. If we are (and I’m not sure of this myself) designed by a creator, it doesn’t seem to me that that creator designed too much of a difference between the two.)
Now if he means (as I suspect he does because he says he struggles) that he experiences compulsion, and JUSTIFIES it by pretending to himself that that’s what “relaxing” is, that’s different. But it’s weird to me because it’s presented as obvious that this is NOT relaxation, and as I’ve done plenty of that as soothing relaxation and it’s worked for me,I don’t get it. Particularly when doing that for relaxation actually does sometimes take the edge off loneliness for me because it reminds me of how nice sex is, and how welcome and fun it will be when I next find a beloved partner.
Trinity,
“I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t.”
The way I see it - when sexuality was freed from Christian conservatism (free sexuality as dangerous to social stability and the notion that abstinence is a sign of moral strength) in the 60s and 70s, radical feminism was quick to put significant parts of sexual expression back in the “sinful” box by proposing that they are inherently harmful to women (axiomatically, regardless of any actual women’s opinions on the matter).
Thus people like Hugo (who, in my opinion, doesn’t buy the abstinence is morally superior claim, partly for political reasons, but still seems to believe that overcoming ones urges is something spirtually important, like fasting, some kind of carthasis) or Jackson Katz (saw that on youtube) speak of “sinful pleasures” when they are referring to men using pornography, just think of “objectification” for a term that sounds rather sinful but doesn’t actually have any specific cognitive meaning.
I’ve once asked Hugo in another thread about a similar topic what would differentiate looking at porn from imagining a woman in his mind while masturbating with respect to objectification. He never replied…
Trinity, the problem is that we don’t live in a society that treats sex the way we treat eating at a restaurant. And we don’t assign power and gender roles to restaurants the way we do to sex.
A few things… I really don’t want to get too deeply entwined in this discussion, because I fear I might be wasting my breath (past experience colors present expectations, what can I say)
But:
Trinity,
I have never understood the construction of sexuality (or specific sexual activities, such as masturbation) as “weakness” either. It really unnerves me.Several years ago I wrote about this in my funny-but-actually-not-so-funny reviews of the Every Young Man’s Battle books.
Sam,
I’m wary of your generalizations of radical feminism. I have plenty of quarrels with branches of feminist thought that cast themselves as staunchly anti-sex work, but I am loathe to paint with a broad brush. “Radical feminism” is too broad a term with too many variations within it to do that fairly. In some of my past writings on my blog I’ve definitely used it as shorthand for “these people who are being assholes and not listening to a word I’m saying,” but in total honesty I understand and am quite vehement that we mustn’t paint with too broad a brush.
Faith,
I agree about some of the men you speak of on feminist blogs. Trinity’s point about Ernest is important - again, it’s vital not to generalize. Everyone is an inidividual. I’ve had plenty of quarrels with IACB and and Anthony Kennerson and have called them out. I also firmly believe there are some spaces in which men should participate as listeners only. Again, please do not fall into the trap of categorizing all sex-positive feminists as one way. It’s insulting and reductive - just as it would be insulting to do so to all radical feminists.
Mythago,
Right, and why not? It’s worth questioning the WHY behind that statement, not just throwing the statement out there and accepting it as “the way things are, so let’s not probe for where that comes from.” That’s what I’m interested in, uncovering the reasons behind these assumptions.
Oh, and Trinity, re: your informal poll: I occasionally use porn with my partner and occasionally by myself. On the whole, I don’t use porn nearly as much as I feel like a lot of people in these discussions would assume I do. :P (I also don’t particularly like the term “use porn,” but I’ll save that topic for another time!)
Trinity, the problem is that we don’t live in a society that treats sex the way we treat eating at a restaurant. And we don’t assign power and gender roles to restaurants the way we do to sex.
Okay, but how will abolishing an industry get people to stop assigning social power in this way? How is the abolishment supposed to come about?
And even if we ARE being realistic and realizing that porn isn’t going away, how do we make sure that we’re replacing the porn use with something other than the oozingly repulsive “make me feel better, sistren, I sacrificed my masturbatory habits FOR YOUR LIBERATION!” of a Jensen?
Because that’s the same patriarchy to me (if not totally worse anyway): Here am I, Mighty NON-Porn-Using Male, here to take over Mighty Porn-Using Male’s job of telling you how to fuck and where and when and what can be playing in the background.
Hmmm, I got taken out of moderation and then put back. Either computers are amusing, or my words have some power somewhere… *scratches chin* Or maybe the words I use make me sound like a spambot? Ahem. *coughs politely and assumes demure attitude*
Anyway, Sam: Yeah, I see some of that “moderation is spiritually important” as a theme in some of Hugo’s posts. And the thing is, that doesn’t bug me as a personal thing. A lot of us have things we choose to moderate or abstain from because it’s best for us (for example, my mother feels wonderful, and has seen improvements in general physical health, on a diet I’d find incredibly restrictive. I have no idea how she does it, AND I think pressure to diet is a questionable cultural phenomenon rooted in fat-hating, but I see nothing wrong with her making a personal choice to do what she thinks best for her body.) But a lot of that just isn’t translatable between people.
So yeah, I don’t know that I find a personal sexual diet or sexual framework that I’d find really restrictive to be silly (not that I’m saying you said it was.) I just think that, well, when we start imposing that on other people things get weird.
When we stick to “here are the specific production conditions occurring at X porn-producing company at Y time. A, B, and C are coercive or worse,” there’s really not a problem (at least not that I’ve seen. Anyone remember how the “pro-pornies” unanimously condemned Joe Francis?) A lot of us who aren’t anti-porn have and continue to talk about and decry bad things when they happen. (Which sometimes seems to go unnoticed, honestly. It’s often as if no matter what we say, only the “Porn is awesome!” parts get heard.)
“just think of “objectification” for a term that sounds rather sinful but doesn’t actually have any specific cognitive meaning.”
And yeah, that’s a thing that puzzles me. I feel like I understand what it’s supposed to mean in general, but some of the things the term is applied to don’t make any sense to me, really. I guess… I remain unconvinced that there is such a thing as sexuality that doesn’t include some degree of mild objectification, and I also remain unconvinced that any and all objectification is bad.
I mean, supposedly “the gaze” is objectifying, right? And yeah, I get how someone you don’t welcome looking at you is skeevy and gross, and I get how if that person has real power over you (say is your boss, your professor, the husband that controls the family bank account) that attitude can be bad.
But I just… I think of the idea that any man who looks at porn “objectifies women” and that’s bad for us, and then I compare that to a government that keeps sending people to die in a war… and I see one case of uncomfortableness, there, and another of “you literally are a thing that can and will be used, unto death, for state purposes, however good or bad.”
And I think of the guy sitting at home alone and how he vaguely “objectifies all women” and compare that to “yeah, here, go get blown up by an IED, we’ll fly a yellow ribbon for you” and… I sigh and grunt and wonder what the word means any more.
Great comment Trinity… mine is stuck in moderation! Argh!
The only real criticism I have of most porn is that it’s so mechanical, artless, and unerotic. No one approaches the making of porn as if they were actually a filmmaker. It’s all about shooting some people screwing in an afternoon and slapping it together as quickly as possible to rush it into an oversaturated market where it’s more likely to be pirated than anything else. Even to the people who produce it, porn is “product.”
It would be lovely to see some really talented people make artful erotica. There’s a director named Andrew Blake who’s come closest. Respectable erotica should have been what the NC-17 rating opened up. But naturally, the rating was demonized as soon as it was announced, by fearmongers who found it to their advantage to scare the public with pronouncements that “this is just a ruse to sneak porno into your homes!” So much for that.
I suggest being very careful about using the word “no one.” Just because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it’s not out there. You should see my porn collection.
Martin,
I’m not sure if what you’re saying is that you’d like more pornographic “high art”, and if that’s what you mean, this doesn’t apply… but I’d say that even something like couple’s tapes qualify as more than “It’s all about shooting some people screwing in an afternoon and slapping it together as quickly as possible to rush it into an oversaturated market where it’s more likely to be pirated than anything else.”
And, like Amber says, that’s not even accounting for some of the smaller producers out there.
“I’m probably too much of an economist to understand how people can believe something like sex to not have a value and used as means of exchange in interpersonal interactions, like any other kind of exchange or communication.”
Actually, Sam, I’m an anti-capitalist. I don’t object simply to selling sex. I object to the selling of anything and everything for profit (particularly non-material services). You see assigning economic value to all interactions as apparently perfectly acceptable, even positive. I view capitalism as a dehumanizing and degrading institution that reduces human beings, pleasure, and our very relationships with each other to commodities. Do I object more strongly to sex work than most other forms of profit and commodification? Yes, I do. Because I view sex as the most intimate physical activity that two or more people can engage in (even if those people are complete strangers). I view it as a tremendously powerful force that must be treated with respect lest it cause grave harm. Sex is a double-edged sword. It can heal or virtually destroy. Reducing sex to a service to be performed on demand for a certain lump sum of cash - as in prostitution in particular - creates far too much of a possibility for the prostitute to be harmed.
“I don’t know if you’re still reading this or not, but I do want to say this to you: I’m sorry I’ve been so aggressive toward you in the past. I’ve definitely disagreed with you in the past and my opinions remain the same, but you’re entirely right that I have picked on you aggressively in the past and owe you an apology. I’m sorry.”
Trinity,
Thank you.
Sorry, I don’t remember suggesting we “abolish an industry” - which makes no sense in terms of porn anyway. You asked why people treat the exchange of sex for money as different than the exchange of, say, a restaurant meal for money. It’s because sex has a special social value and is loaded down with a lot of issues about power and gender. We don’t call somebody a “whore” because she is paid to cook meals.
Faith:
In your above statement, there are a lot of “I” statements…I think, I believe…and you are fully entitled to that. But not everyone sees sex as intimate as you do…and whether I’ve been mean or reasonable or anything else, that is something that people seem to refuse to look at…that one’s “I” is not universal, and thus the feelings attached with anything are not accurate for all. Can you see why that gets frusterating? I mean, like Trinity, I think there is a level of objectification that is natural in sexual attraction. And I know you are an anti-capitalist, but currently in a capitalized world, all kinds of people and things are commodities. Does it not reason that some will object to selling some things or services more than others, and others will not? One persons very personal and intimate cannot be slated, as fact, for all.
Trinity- to answer your porn question…yes, I watch porn, generally without my partner. My porn use has not affected our sex life in a negative way.
And again I say: Exactly. That’s the problem/issue at hand. WHY do we place special value/labeling/stigmatization on one and not the other?
“value/labeling/stigmatization” is not all one thing. We place a value on sex that we don’t on cooking because sex is an intimate and personal activity. (You would agree, I hope, that there is a big difference between stealing a cookie from a cookie jar and rape.) Stigmatization is part of sexism, which is why works like slut and whore are highly gendered.
However we need to define what we mean by “an intimate and personal activity.” I think it’s vitally important to understand the words in the lexicon we use to talk about these issues, bc say those words to 10 different ppl and they’ll hear 10 different things. To me “an intimate and personal activity” connotes the Christian concept of the pure marriage bed, and an array of sexual activities I can’t do, ways in which I must restrict my sexuality, a narrow set of appropriate venues for expressing my sexuality… and that’s not okay with me. I often fuck for fun; I don’t have to be deeply emotionally attached to the person. Sometimes I am, but it’s not a requirement. That’s why nebulous justifications like “an intimate and personal activity” don’t work for me.
Faith,
“Because I view sex as the most intimate physical activity that two or more people can engage in (even if those people are complete strangers). I view it as a tremendously powerful force that must be treated with respect lest it cause grave harm. Sex is a double-edged sword. It can heal or virtually destroy.”
That makes absolute sense, and I agree that this is how many of the people in the world, especially women, see some if not all of the sex they have.
But the problem is that not all people see the sex they have that way, for one. For another, some people see sex (or sexual activity, like BDSM play and the like) as more or less intimate depending on context. I have had very intimate sex that made me feel deeply connected to the person I was with, or expressed a personal connection in a relationship. I’ve had sex a few times that was just about mutual fun. I’ve certainly done, and enjoyed, casual BDSM. I don’t know the names of all the people I’ve done SM with, in fact.
I don’t see any reason why “sex IS intimate.” I think that depends on a lot of different factors, including who the person is, who they are with, and the basic context of the encounter. I don’t see why sex *need* be intimate for anyone, though I do think intimate sex is enriching (which is probably why that’s most of the sex I have had.)
To go even further, as I’ve said I think that the people who tend to see sex as always intimate, and bad if it isn’t intimate, are women. I think this is actually because of patriarchy. Marriage was originally, as many feminists point out, about women as property. Women were not supposed to allow themselves to “belong” to anyone else. Everything, from use of their bodies to the sight of their bodies to the sight of, in some places, their ankles or their hair, was private. Intimate. Not because sex and intimacy are inherently linked, but because WOMEN WERE PROPERTY.
The overarching social stereotypes that say women are always intimate about sex and women are not are actually about patriarchy, not about the nature of sex itself. I don’t think anyone is liberated until sex is permitted to be both or either, as the partners themselves dictate.
And thanks to everyone who’s answered my question so far.
For my own answer: I started out using it with a partner, then got deeply into using it myself, and now don’t as much but still do. I’d probably use it with my current partner if we lived together and had more time to just be silly lazy.
“Sorry, I don’t remember suggesting we “abolish an industry” - which makes no sense in terms of porn anyway.”
Then can you please tell me exactly what your side wants, and how you intend to make it happen? Because what I usually see are blog posts about how porn is bad — including the recent sketchy and creepy stuff about how pornographers should be killed — but very little real-world activism.
So what are you doing and how are you doing it?
“My side”? What are you talking about?
As for intimacy, you seem to be assuming that means emotional intimacy - it doesn’t. Do you believe rape laws should be abolished and rape treated like any other physical assault? That patting a five-year-old on the head is the same as fondling her sexually? I doubt you do, and for good reason.
“Do you believe rape laws should be abolished and rape treated like any other physical assault? That patting a five-year-old on the head is the same as fondling her sexually?”
No, but what does any of that have to do with intimacy? The suggestion that a rapist is being intimate is kind of creepy, so… yeah, I’m going to wait for an explanation before touching that one with a ten-foot pole.
“I don’t see any reason why “sex IS intimate.””
Trinity,
I said (or I hope I said) -physically- intimate. Sex is the most -physically- intimate exchange two or more people can engage in. I said nothing at all of emotional intimacy.
Sex IS -physically- intimate whether you view it that way or not. It involves inserting body parts into other body parts, licking, sucking, etc. How on earth is that not -physically- intimate? I think the only problem here is that you and I are defining intimate differently.
Ren,
See above.
Trinity, still waiting to hear what “my side” supposedly is, where I posted that all porn is evil, and precisely what activism you think I should be involved in. After you, of course, as I assume you’ve got activism to put me to shame?
As for intimacy, Faith made it pretty clear she’s talking about physical intimacy, not the whole cultural myth that women want only romantic sex and men only want no-strings-attached sex.
“Sex IS -physically- intimate whether you view it that way or not. It involves inserting body parts into other body parts, licking, sucking, etc. How on earth is that not -physically- intimate? I think the only problem here is that you and I are defining intimate differently.”
I’m honestly not sure what physically intimate is supposed to mean. If intimacy isn’t something about emotion I’m really not sure what’s being talked about at all. So now I have no idea what’s being said.
Sex involves physical contact, yes, sure — now what are we saying about that? Are we talking about disease risk? Because everything else I can imagine we might be talking about — personal boundary issues, mental connection of any sort — is not purely physical. So again, I’m going to have to ask what “physical intimacy” means and why it is important, if we’re not considering emotion here.
Mythago: Apparently I misunderstood what your position actually is. I sit corrected. However, now that I don’t know what exactly it is, I’m not sure how to respond to you. I have no idea what you should be doing; all that I saw was your suggesting that society sees sex differently than it does waiting tables.
To go back to that, I’d say I agree with Amber that that’s part of the problem, not the solution. If we want society to stop thinking of sex this way, it seems to me that insisting, as many people who are against pornography do, that depictions of sex are “degrading” and therefore should not be made is the worst possible solution.
Everyone,
congrats, this has become a respectful an interesting debate :)
Faith,
You see assigning economic value to all interactions as apparently perfectly acceptable, even positive. I view capitalism as a dehumanizing and degrading institution that reduces human beings, pleasure, and our very relationships with each other to commodities.
Do you notice how you use “economic value” and “capitalism” as synonyms? They are not. Really. Check wikipedia if you don’t believe me. Assigning “value” to pleasure and relationships doesn’t make pleasure and relationships a commodity in any way. I attribute value to our conversation, possibly even monetary value (because I prefer to write this instead of using selling my time on the market), but that doesn’t mean I can’t sell it. (I suppose there was a time when I could have used it as a down-payment for a house, but those days are probably over for a while…(and yes, that was a joke. just making sure.))
“creates far too much of a possibility for the prostitute to be harmed.”
That’s an entirely different argument, and, in my opinion, the only one that can legitimately be used to argue against sex work, including pornography. This, however, is an issue that can be empirically assessed and evaluated. If you look at the reports from liberal European countries like Germany, where a new legal framework for sex work has entirely legalised this industry in 2002, the results are overly positive, even though most sex workers seem to avoid salaried positions and union memberships so they can avoid taxation (I’ll find you the report in English, if needed).
Trinity,
“To go even further, as I’ve said I think that the people who tend to see sex as always intimate, and bad if it isn’t intimate, are women. I think this is actually because of patriarchy.”
I think this is largely right, but I would pinpoint the problem to the establishment of romantic love as the precondition for marriage/sex (largely equal from the renaissance until recently), which I’m not sure was a patriarchical idea - in fact, I think, it was a liberating men and women from “property” issues as predominant reason to couple up. Of course, that only happened when we (humans in the “West”) were rich enough as a whole to indulge in such things (starting seriously in the 18-hundreds). The requirement of “romantic love” as currency for sex and its social institutionalisation has disqualified any other motivation to engange in sexual activity.
Well, see, that’s the problem. I don’t think you have to know that I belong to a particular “side” (as if there were only monolithic “sides” in this discussion) to respond to what I’ve actually said.
“I’m honestly not sure what physically intimate is supposed to mean. If intimacy isn’t something about emotion I’m really not sure what’s being talked about at all. So now I have no idea what’s being said.”
Intimacy - very basically stated - means nothing other than “closeness”. Correct? So -physical- intimacy means only that bodies and body parts are -close-. They are touching. They are being inserted into one another. They are rubbing against one another. One body part is squeezing another. Another body part is licking another.
“So again, I’m going to have to ask what “physical intimacy” means and why it is important, if we’re not considering emotion here.”
Disease is the most obvious, I’d say. There’s also the risk of pregnancy in PIV sex. Then you have the risk of prolapsed organs - rectums, vaginas, uteruses, etc. When you get into extreme forms of BDSM, all sorts of injuries become possible. Even death is possible in some of the extreme activities, such as erotic asphyxiation.
There are other factors to take into consideration as well that are psychological, but not necessarily “emotional”. Even if the intent is to simply engage physically, there is always some level of psychological involvement. You can not separate the mind entirely (or the spirit for that matter) from sex no matter how much you might want to do so. The person is psychologically aware of what is occurring. As long as that psychological awareness is there, there is the potential for the person to be psychologically harmed.
“Do you notice how you use “economic value” and “capitalism” as synonyms? They are not. Really. Check wikipedia if you don’t believe me.”
You were speaking in terms of -selling-. You were defining “value” in monetary terms.
“That’s an entirely different argument, and, in my opinion, the only one that can legitimately be used to argue against sex work, including pornography.”
I fail to see how that’s “an entirely different argument”. It is not. It is also not the only legitimate argument against sex work. There is the consideration of whether or not it harms others who are not directly involved as well. When it comes to porn, for example, you have two people on this very blog saying they have been harmed by porn. Plenty of other people feel the same way.
“I think this is largely right, but I would pinpoint the problem to the establishment of romantic love as the precondition for marriage/sex (largely equal from the renaissance until recently), which I’m not sure was a patriarchical idea -”
Except no one is talking about “romantic love” as a requirement for engaging in sex at all. Not in the slightest. I could ultimately care less if people even know each other’s names before they screw. I don’t really recommend screwing someone without at least knowing -something- about them, but I’m certainly not against it.
Faith,
“You were speaking in terms of -selling-. You were defining “value” in monetary terms.”
I really wasn’t (exclusively). I certainly believe that sex CAN have a market value. But even if the value is not measurable in monetary terms, I can model “consent” to sexual activity as an exchange of value and model it in an appropriately labeled edgeworth box.
“There is the consideration of whether or not it harms others who are not directly involved as well.”
To a degree. I can also claim that I am aesthetically harmed by muslim women wearing a hijab and lobby for an abolishion of their right to wear a veil based on the argument that they are infringing my rights because I feel harm when I look at them. Basically, this is Kant again - if you say you’re harmed you need to substantiate that “harm” by more than just saying “I feel it” and “other people feel the same” when there is really no way to assess what and who is feeling what and how that should be weighed against the proposed infringements of other people’s rights (say, to wear a hijab, to engange in pornography or prostitution).
“Except no one is talking about “romantic love” as a requirement for engaging in sex at all. Not in the slightest. I could ultimately care less if people even know each other’s names before they screw. I don’t really recommend screwing someone without at least knowing -something- about them, but I’m certainly not against it.”
I was. I was elaborating on Trinity’s point explaining what I think was the main social force outlawing sex work from the mid 18-hundreds on. Wether you personally or anyone else here believes that is beside the point I was trying to make.
“if you say you’re harmed you need to substantiate that “harm” by more than just saying “I feel it” and “other people feel the same” when there is really no way to assess what and who is feeling what and how that should be weighed against the proposed infringements of other people’s rights (say, to wear a hijab, to engange in pornography or prostitution).”
Uh, saying I’ve been harmed, and explaining how, as I have somewhat, and Hugo has, is evidence enough if you trust that we are being genuine (and when a woman says she hasn’t been harmed by performing in sex work, aren’t we only being asked to accept her word? How is is that personal testimony works for your side in this regard and not the other? HMMM…) There’s also the issue of how much influence porn has on some men who commit sexual violence. If porn and prostitution only harmed the people involved entirely by choice, it might not be such an issue. But that flat-out isn’t the case. The effects of sex work are felt all throughout society in some way shape or form. AND the effects of sex work are overwhelmingly negative to the general population rather than positive.
Mythago,
I responded to you here:
“To go back to that, I’d say I agree with Amber that that’s part of the problem, not the solution. If we want society to stop thinking of sex this way, it seems to me that insisting, as many people who are against pornography do, that depictions of sex are “degrading” and therefore should not be made is the worst possible solution.”
You can, of course, engage or not, as you like.
“I think this is largely right, but I would pinpoint the problem to the establishment of romantic love as the precondition for marriage/sex (largely equal from the renaissance until recently), which I’m not sure was a patriarchal idea”
SS — I think it probably both was and wasn’t. I mean, in a society of arranged marriages, widespread bucking the system for love or desire is revolutionary. But in a society where romantic love can then be twisted to mean your honor is wrapped up in serving someone, in a compulsory arrangement once you so much as think you’ve felt love… that’s the system all over again.
Basically what I’m saying is that society pressures “the virgins” AND “the whores” — society isn’t just this “pornified” mess where women who think sex should be considered a different caliber of experience shouldn’t examine why they’re thinking that too.
Faith,
“(and when a woman says she hasn’t been harmed by performing in sex work, aren’t we only being asked to accept her word? How is is that personal testimony works for your side in this regard and not the other? HMMM…)”
Sorry, personal testimony works, and it works not at the same time - because ultimately, as everywhere, the freedom to engange in whatever activity (again, wearing a hijab, driving, eating meat (for Hugo ;)) have to be weighed against possible infringements of rights of others - since you are trying to take the freedom to do somthing from people based on the argument that the perceived harm caused by their engaging in that activity is not tolerable by you and the society as a whole and claim that the perceived benefits of the freedom to engange in said activity do in no way outweigh your harm - the burden of proof is on you.
If I were to tell you that you’re causing me psychological harm by telling me that something I like is morally wrong and that my feeling that harm morally obliges you to stop making that point because “I’m genuine”, wouldn’t you say I’d need to make an overwhelmingly convincing and accessible argument for you to see the need to stop arguing against porn based on the perceived harm you’re causing me?
“There’s also the issue of how much influence porn has on some men who commit sexual violence. If porn and prostitution only harmed the people involved entirely by choice, it might not be such an issue. But that flat-out isn’t the case. The effects of sex work are felt all throughout society in some way shape or form. AND the effects of sex work are overwhelmingly negative to the general population rather than positive.”
Well, here’s the thing. People are killed with knives, yet we keep them in every house for a rather practical reason. The same argument obviously applies to guns, but they are generally considered more dangerous, so people aren’t talking about guns like they talk about knifes. When you talk about sex work, you see it as a gun-equivalent: something that, in your opinion, doesn’t offer sufficient benefits (or none, but I doubt you’d try to argue that) to accept the risk of having it around the house. When I talk about sex work I see it as a knife equivalent - there is the risk of falling and stabbing myself accidentally or having a burglar use it as a weapon against me. But weighing that against the difficulties I’d have without knives, I think it’s a good deal to have them around the house.
There are only two possibilities here: a) we continue to debate and try to operationalize and measure and try to come to a common understanding of what we’re talking about here: guns or knivees, or b) we don’t and we try to rally a majority around our position at the expense of the other.
Trinity, since I’ve never argued that “depictions of sex are ‘degrading’ and therefore should not be made”, I had no reason to think you were addressing me….unless I am to assume that you’ve lumped me in on some “side” and thus I should have understood you to be talking to me.
In any case, it’s a silly position to put in anyone’s mouth; I doubt there are many anti-pornography feminists who think all “depictions of sex” are degrading, since that includes things that aren’t pornography, like sex ed.
Trinity,
“Basically what I’m saying is that society pressures “the virgins” AND “the whores” — society isn’t just this “pornified” mess where women who think sex should be considered a different caliber of experience shouldn’t examine why they’re thinking that too.”
Absolutely.
Faith, my reply to you is in moderation.
Faith-
aside from PIV sex (or actually insertions…) there are full contacts sports that are then “physically intimate”…rugby and greco-roman wrestling come to mind…dancing, pairs figure skating…and countless medical procedures…and physical therapy, and massage…the list goes on.
Is that “contact” or “intimacy”? And who gets to decide?
and sports can also result in all kinds of hideous injuries too…
Once again I think this comes down to placing a sense of “universal” on what can be wildly differing takes on a matter. This is in no way me saying your take is wrong in any way, but it may be vastly different from those of another person…who might also not be wrong.
As for risk (pregnancy, std’s, so on)…people take a risk getting out of bed in the morning. Anything, literally anything, from taking a shower to eating breakfast can kill you. Auto fatalities spring to mind as a leading cause of death amid humans…yet very rarely quite the fuss over that…because people have so many hang ups about sex in general, and get caught in universals.
As for Mythago and the rape/molestation argument…it’s a bit of a red herring and it is used often. Rape and molestation are serious crimes, aggressive crimes, and consent is no where in the picture. With sex work, and porn specifically, consent can be and often IS in the picture.
Ah, now you’ve stepped out of the realm of economics and into the realm of ‘rights’, which is a different argument entirely.
“Uh, saying I’ve been harmed, and explaining how, as I have somewhat, and Hugo has, is evidence enough if you trust that we are being genuine (and when a woman says she hasn’t been harmed by performing in sex work, aren’t we only being asked to accept her word? How is is that personal testimony works for your side in this regard and not the other? HMMM…)”
Faith,
I’m inclined to agree with both you and SS here actually. First, I agree with you that we shouldn’t be considered to have any kind of obligation to go into detail about how we’re harmed by traumatic experiences. I don’t think anyone can demand those details, and I think you’re very right that when an individual says “this harmed me” she’s not thereby required to give details.
However, I do think that when a woman is saying that that harm gives us reason to want some sort of social change (and yes, mythago called me on this, but I find it difficult to believe that any kind of anti-porn feminism is simply about letting the world know its members disapprove — even if abolition isn’t what anti-porners want, surely *some* social shift is), then I think those who disagree do have more of a right to say “Okay, if you want us to ally with you, or to change our minds, we need to understand these harms and exactly how they work.”
“In any case, it’s a silly position to put in anyone’s mouth; I doubt there are many anti-pornography feminists who think all “depictions of sex” are degrading, since that includes things that aren’t pornography, like sex ed.”
Right, but sex ed doesn’t offer us material for arousal — or at least, it didn’t me when I was younger. Maybe there’s suggestions for erotic material given nowadays, but I don’t think so.
And this idea that depictions of sex have to have some purpose OTHER THAN sexual arousal in order to be valid/acceptable has always bothered me. Once again, the sexual is base and “less than” the HIGHER purposes of, well, anything else.
(Snuck in real quick just to get that comment in because it’s a pet peeve of mine; bowing back out now. This thread is giving me a major headache.)
“And this idea that depictions of sex have to have some purpose OTHER THAN sexual arousal in order to be valid/acceptable has always bothered me. Once again, the sexual is base and “less than” the HIGHER purposes of, well, anything else.”
Thank you, Amber. I always wonder why I see so little discussion of what material used for arousal should look like in the post-”pornoiarchy” (to borrow a phrase from one anti-porn feminist.) Admittedly there were a few folks on LJ a year or so back that at least took a stab at this, but it seems exceedingly rare that anyone even try.
“Thank you, Amber. I always wonder why I see so little discussion of what material used for arousal should look like in the
post-”pornoiarchy” (to borrow a phrase from one anti-porn feminist.)”
I’d really like to hear our host on that isssue, since he seems to be decidedly pro arousal (healing power and all that) but decidedly anti-arousal related imagery. But maybe I’m wrong.
“the burden of proof is on you.”
When a child is sexually abused, quite often, the only evidence we have that the abuse is harmful is the child’s word. That’s it. There is, quite often, no other actual evidence of harm.
Should we start approving of child sexual abuse because we have no verifiable absolute proof that certain forms of child sexual abuse is harmful?
I certainly hope not.
““Okay, if you want us to ally with you, or to change our minds, we need to understand these harms and exactly how they work.””
I agree completely. And that’s exactly what anti-porn feminists are doing. They are saying how they have been harmed by porn. They are explaining themselves. The problem, apparently, is simply that either the people listening just don’t want to hear, or can’t comprehend.
I’m personally of the opinion that the former is the case more often than the latter.
“Anything, literally anything, from taking a shower to eating breakfast can kill you. Auto fatalities spring to mind as a leading cause of death amid humans…
Yep, I’m quite well aware of this fact. Which is why I’ve already made it clear that the problem is not simply the impact, or potential impact, it has on performers, but on people not directly involved as well.
To draw an analogy: I’m generally of the opinion that people have the “right” to use drugs. Problem being, drug addicts quite often harm people other than themselves. Drug addicts quite often become abusive or neglectful of their children, partner, or other family members. They destroy their relationships with people. They become unreliable employees which effects their employer. They end up in a downward spiral into poverty that leads to them committing various crimes (sometimes even murder) in order to support their habit.
Given these -realities-, the fact that drug addicts quite often harm people other than themselves, I can’t support the full legalization of most drugs. I can’t and won’t do it. I know too damn much at this point about the truly devastating effects of drug use.
“I know too damn much at this point about the truly devastating effects of drug use.”
And before anyone jumps in with “well, alcohol is legal and alcoholics harm other people too!!” People can become deeply addicted to alcohol. This is true. The difference, to me, is that it’s not such an addictive substance that -most- people who use it become addicted. This isn’t the case with, say, crack. Very few people can just take one hit of crack. Very few people can smoke crack without engaging in serious harm to themselves and to other people around them. Same thing with heroine and meth.
“And this idea that depictions of sex have to have some purpose OTHER THAN sexual arousal in order to be valid/acceptable has always bothered me.”
It bothers me too…which is why I’ve never made that statement.
That argument is a conservative argument against porn; not a feminist one.
“Once again, the sexual is base and “less than” the HIGHER purposes of, well, anything else.””
Well, technically, purely physical sex is -base-. Doesn’t make it “less than” or “wrong” or “immoral”. I just had some pretty base physical sex with one of my evil patriarchal overlords just this past weekend (we also had some sex that wasn’t purely base but that isn’t really the issue at hand). I can assure you I’ll be going back for more of that purely base physical sex with my evil patriarchal overlord as soon as possible.
“there are full contacts sports that are then “physically intimate”…rugby and greco-roman wrestling come to mind…dancing, pairs figure skating…and countless medical procedures…and physical therapy, and massage…the list goes on.”
One other thing: These activities do not -typically- involve swapping potentially harmful bodily fluids. There is also no penetration involved. Being penetrated effects people in ways that simply being touched externally does not. The person, or implement, is literally INSIDE YOU. For most women, being sexually penetrated is a really big deal. This is in part because of the way we are socially programmed. It also has a lot to do with the fact that being penetrated is ultimately a serious act with serious potential consequences on all levels of a person’s being.
“Sorry, personal testimony works, and it works not at the same time - because ultimately, as everywhere, the freedom to engange in whatever activity (again, wearing a hijab, driving, eating meat (for Hugo ;)) have to be weighed against possible infringements of rights of others”
You know the more I read this, the more it irritates me. You are all about the rights of people to use and engage in sex work. You seem to care less about the rights of those of us who say that these things cause harm to US - and other people who don’t participate entirely by choice - and therefore infringes on our rights to not be harmed by these things.
Faith,
I certainly hope not.”
a) Of courrse not. Seriously, are you kidding here?
b) Is that your best argument?
“Which is why I’ve already made it clear that the problem is not simply the impact, or potential impact, it has on performers, but on people not directly involved as well.”
Which is fair enough as a principle - you are assuming that there are costs of the transaction that aren’t a quantifiable and b) fully internalised (ie born by the people actively involved) but have to be born by people not actively involved (external costs).
But again, if you want to limit the range of expression of people because of the problematic nature of their actions (external costs) you need to make the case that the harm caused is intolerable while the limitations of the other people’s freedom of expression are tolerable.
OK, example: If you were to say “SamSeaborn, your pleasure caused by wanking while looking at a picture of a naked woman is hurting me and all women” you’d need to balance that against the model’s and publisher’s rights to engange in their business as well as my right to engage in a pleasurable activity by using their product. You’re trying to take something away from me. That’s causing harm. What makes your harm more important than my harm? And what measure do you use to objectify the social costs/harm in this situation?
“I can assure you I’ll be going back for more of that purely base physical sex with my evil patriarchal overlord as soon as possible.”
Seriously, I know (well, hope) you’re saying this at least partly tongue-in-cheek. But I sure hope you’re not telling him that. I for one would certainly not be available for purely base physical sex or any other form of personal contact if a woman were to tell me she sees me as her patriarchical overlord. I am not interested in any kind of relationship - even purely for sex - based on that premise.
“a) Of courrse not. Seriously, are you kidding here?
b) Is that your best argument?”
You missed the point completely, Sam.
“Seriously, I know (well, hope) you’re saying this at least partly tongue-in-cheek. ”
Hmm, now that I think about it, I think I will go call him an evil patriarchal overlord. I’m sure that he’ll find it quite amusing to say the least.
“You’re trying to take something away from me. That’s causing harm. ”
I actually haven’t said anything about trying to take anything away from you. But pray tell, how on earth are you harmed by not being able to wank off to porn?
You keep throwing in non-sequiturs; I’m not sure what your point is.
Faith,
“Hmm, now that I think about it, I think I will go call him an evil patriarchal overlord. I’m sure that he’ll find it quite amusing to say the least.”
As long as YOU’re not serious about that - enjoy.
I actually haven’t said anything about trying to take anything away from you. But pray tell, how on earth are you harmed by not being able to wank off to porn?
Wow, we really don’t seem to be able to understand each other.
Seriously? You cannot understand how that would harm me? Let’s assume you really like a particular kind of tea. Not being allowed to drink it causes you harm, right? You can drink water (I can wank without the pleasure of looking at beautiful naked women) but it’s not really comparable as an experience. That’s not harm? Sure it is. It’s limitin my range of expression. It’s limiting my freedom.
The point you are making - the point worth considering - is that, if, one day, you’d learn that a) your favorite tea can only be harvested by children in a cancerous environment and b) that their meagre income as child-laborers is a detriment to their country’s overall development, then you’d probably be inclined to not drink that tea out of moral duty which you’d deem more important than the pleasure derived from drinking that tea. You may hate drinking water, but you’d consider it superior to drinking your favorite tea knowing that you’d prolong those kids plight.
Isn’t that your point? You aren’t trying to explain to me that porn/sex work is not harmless or beneficial but actually harmful and thus morally wrong despite the pleasure I (and countless others) may derive from it?
Again, I think the logical structure of the problem is clear. I just don’t agree with your assessment of the overall harmful nature of porn/sex work. I’m not saying it can’t - or even doesn’t - cause harm. Cars cause harm (also to people who don’t drive or benefit from the increased mobility of others), roads cause harm (environmentally, and they attract cars (mobility) that may harm innocent people passing by). Yet overall I think most people would agree that - while we need to improve road-safety and make cars more environmentally friendly, when wheighing the costs and benefits of cars vs not using cars, we’d decide to continue using cars because benefits outweigh costs.
I believe that the benefits of porn/sex work outweigh their costs. I believe that the benefits of prohibiting porn/sex work do not outweigh the costs of prohibiton. You apparently see things the other way around. Alas, as long as we can’t even agree on standards of harm and utility, we won’t be able to get anywhere on this.
Mythago:
No, that’s not at all a non-sequitur. Let me see if I can explain in a way that will make sense to you. (If this attempt doesn’t work, I think I’m going to have to take a pass on this conversation with you, as we seem to be completely unable to even agree on the basic dimensions of what we’re talking about.)
What is at issue in this post is the issue of pornography, and how it affects people. Now, in looking at pornography, we have to look not only at what pornography depicts and what messages might be hidden (or blatant) in that, but also at how pornography is used. Pornography is used, as Amber and I pointed out, for arousal. That means that it fills a certain kind of social role — when people (at least men, though some women too) go looking for something to arouse them, porn is so ubiquitous that porn is what they find first.
Now we have the problem that pornography, if a certain analysis of what it depicts and how that affects people is true, depicts women in a degrading way and encourages men to disrespect or disregard them. I don’t actually believe this is the whole story — and I’m not saying you do either; as you’ve pointed out yourself I don’t know what you believe, and honestly I’d still like to hear what that is — but let us, for the moment, assume that it is.
Well, now we have a problem. Suppose that we simply abolish the industry (which no one has said we can do, and I acknowledge this.) Now there is a social vacuum: where is the material designed for arousal? You made a comment about depictions in sex education; I pointed out that diagrams and the like *might* prove useful if they were all that was available, but replacing pornography with sex ed diagrams is a bit like replacing caramels with brussels sprouts. (Actually, a bit more like replacing caramels with paraffin wax — yeah, you can eat it, but why would you?) Therefore I’m not sure why you’d suggest them at all.
Now, you’ve strenuously objected to my characterizing you as someone who would seek to abolish pornography. Okay, that’s fine, I misunderstood your position and the fault is mine. However, the question then becomes what exactly feminists who are against pornography want. Something like the MacKinnon-Dworkin ordinance, as bad of an idea as I think it is (and as much of a prejudice against sexualities like mine as I think it evinces), can at least be debated specifically as a matter of social policy. But people on blogs saying “Pornography is bad for women”… well, that cannot really be debated, unless it goes with some sort of activity that should happen — whether that be abolition or polite letters written exhorting Larry Flynt to be nicer or anything in between. If nothing is proposed, then people are basically griping on the Internet.
Which is not nothing, but griping on the Internet is hardly any kind of social movement or inciter to widespread social change. So, in the words of Ren: What’s the plan?
So, again, you’ve decide I’m a feminist against pornography with a fixed set of opinions that map to Dworkin and Mackinnon’s proposals?
You’re also conflating a number of issues - even if we agree on a definition of what ‘pornography’ is, you’ve switched from a theoretical discussion of abolishing an industry to abolishing pornography. In other words, you seem to be shifting from talking about shutting down commercial pornography to making all pornography cease to exist. And that’s why we’re talking past each other; you’re leaping to a lot of conclusions and your proposals are sliding all over the place.
By the way, arguing that pornography is hate speech about women actually means it has more protection, not less, under the First Amendment. Obscene material has no reason to exist other than arousal. Sexually-explicit material that is meant to convey a political or social ideology IS a form of protected free speech.
Here’s an analogy for Trinity.
Pro-life people want mostly-women to restrict their sexuality in the name of protecting fetal life - either to refrain from sex and thus not get pregnant, or to engage in sex but accept its natural end product, babies.
Anti-porn people want mostly-men to restrict their sexuality in the name of protecting women - to refrain from a particular form of sexual activity.
If it is acceptable to expect/request/require men to restrict their sexuality, isn’t it then acceptable to expect/request/require something broadly similar of women?
(I accept as a matter of common sense that the level of restraint being asked is different. “Don’t have sex at all, or have babies if you do and get pregnant” is a larger request than “don’t wank to pictures of [x]”. But the requests are conceptually similar; it seems reasonable to me to argue that the level of self-denial asked by one is larger than the other and is thus unreasonable, but not to argue that they are totally different things and thus one is obviously fine while the other is obviously wrong.)
If it’s OK to ask men to do the one, it should be OK to ask women to do the other, even if the answer is “no”. Am I wrong?
“larger request than “don’t wank to pictures of [x]”
There’s a helluva lot more being said by anti-porn feminists than simply “don’t wank to pictures”. If the worst thing that happened because of porn was that men “wanked to pictures”, I don’t believe porn would be a tremendous problem for anyone. The situation is quite a bit more complex and nuanced than that.
Faith, in case you missed it because it was stuck in moderation, my reply to your last reply to me is now online apparently…
“The situation is quite a bit more complex and nuanced than that.”
You keep saying that. So where are those nuances? All you have mentioned so far is “harm” and demanded that statements of “harm” be taken at face value due to their epistemic privilege without, apparently, allowing a similar epistemic privilege for other views or even accepting a weighed, nuanced, response to the issue. Let’s go nuanced. Really. Since I don’t see any principle that can be used legitimately to argue against porn and sex work in a free society, any reason to do so must be in the problematic nuances of the issue at hand. OK, let’s talk nuances (which, well, may require a nuanced approach)…
@Robert. I also see abstinence from sex or experiencing a pregnancy resulting in a human being significantly different from masturbating to pictures.
Seriously, I do not even see an analogy. And since when did ‘wanking to pictures’ become a ’sexuality’?
*boggle*
DCarr,
DCarr, if it were merely “wanking to pictures”, without some broader impact or relevance with regards to sexuality, than the feminist argument against pornography (that it degrades or leads to disrespect or demeaning of women) falls apart. What could be wrong if it were nothing more than just “wanking to pictures”?
@ Tom - wanking to pictures is NOT a sexuality, as is claimed by Robert. Read up Tom, it is Robert who is comparing ‘pro-life’ with pornography use as the denial of ‘male sexuality’
If pornography *is* male sexuality - then yeah, case point.
*snort*
Robert,
No, you’re not wrong, but I’m not sure why you’re asking ME that question. I believe that the restriction of anyone’s consensual sexuality (and I do think that restricting images does fit under this header, though obviously not everyone uses pornography and it’s only a small part of the sexuality of anyone who does) is a very bad idea, which is precisely why I’m not anti-porn.
So could you tell me where I suggested I’d be OK with restricting men’s sexuality at all? Because I get the feeling something huge got lost in translation.
Mythago: Fair enough. But I’m going to bow out of discussing with you until you tell me what your positions are.
Because I get the distinct impression from your comments that you’re intentionally avoiding telling me what your position is so that you can poke holes in what I am saying without offering up your own positions for critique.
As I already said, Trinity, I’m trying to have a straightforward discussion about the issues. You seem unable to do so unless you know what my “position” is - singular, as if there was only a single issue regarding all porn (are you for or against?), and you can’t possibly engage in dialogue with somebody until you’ve hung a sign around their neck.
And frankly, I’m poking holes in your arguments because they’re weak, not because I disagree with a particular “position”.
Robert, how typical of you that you cannot imagine women having sexuality, using porn, or being asked to limit their sexuality for men’s benefit.
“OK, let’s talk nuances (which, well, may require a nuanced approach)…”
Sam,
To be perfectly frank, there has already been some nuanced discussion on this thread. Beyond that, there is a whole damn internet full of feminist writings on porn, prostitution, sexual abuse, and how all of these things are interrelated. There is also a whole plethora of books written by feminists on how and exactly why porn and prostitution is overwhelmingly harmful rather than positive.
If you are really interested in learning instead of interrogating and expecting feminists to spend their time trying to educate you, you can educate yourself, and THEN have some discussions once you have some idea of what is being said.
It is not my job to educate you on the entire spectrum of anti-porn feminist philosophy.
“Seriously? You cannot understand how that would harm me? Let’s assume you really like a particular kind of tea. Not being allowed to drink it causes you harm, right? You can drink water (I can wank without the pleasure of looking at beautiful naked women) but it’s not really comparable as an experience. That’s not harm? Sure it is. It’s limitin my range of expression. It’s limiting my freedom.”
No, taking something away from you that you WANT but do not NEED is not harming you. It might piss you off. It might upset you. It is not, however, causing you any actual damage.
I’m also done speaking with you on this particular matter. You’ve gone from engaging in good faith to bordering on arrogant ass. You are not interested in hearing what I feel. You are only interested in attempting to prove me wrong. I won’t submit to that particular form of “discussion”.
Mythago,
I never asked you to have any kind of binary position; I asked you what you’re talking about in the first place.
Unless you want to talk about something, I’m done.
Faith,
“It is not my job to educate you on the entire spectrum of anti-porn feminist philosophy.”
Certainly not. But I would have really liked to hear about the nuances of that stance. Whatever I’ve read wasn’t nuanced at all. Detailed, possibly, but always was principled, not nuanced. I like this thread for a decent conversation without name calling and things, but it’s certainly not been a nuanced discussion - it’s been a discussion about feelings and principles according to which we judge the reality we perceive (differently). That’s not nuanced in my understanding - a nuanced discussion would come as the next step after establishing mutually agreed upon concepts and an according terminology.
It is not, however, causing you any actual damage.
How do you know? Let me quote, ahm… you, from earlier today.
Uh, saying I’ve been harmed, and explaining how, as I have somewhat, and Hugo has, is evidence enough if you trust that we are being genuine (and when a woman says she hasn’t been harmed by performing in sex work, aren’t we only being asked to accept her word? How is is that personal testimony works for your side in this regard and not the other? HMMM…)
Thanks for making my point. Remember when I said the problem is that we really need a way to decide what “harm” (or any other loaded term in this conversation) consists of? I think it is bordering on arrogant to deny me “harm” or discount it as simply “pissing me off”.
I’m also done speaking with you on this particular matter. You’ve gone from engaging in good faith to bordering on arrogant ass. You are not interested in hearing what I feel. You are only interested in attempting to prove me wrong. I won’t submit to that particular form of “discussion”.
Faith, I am interested in what you feel, but to be honest, I think I have understood what you feel in this matter - you’ve made yourself very clear - and I would like to thank you for your participation in this debate. Really.
I’m certainly not attempting to prove your feelings wrong - how could I? They are your feelings (I have mine, btw, and you’ve attempted to deny me the right to FEEL harm in the potential situation described above).
I am, however, interested in laying out a theoretical structure that could be very useful for such discussions in the future - if you find that arrogant, I can’t help it. But in matters such as this, standpoint epistemology really doesn’t help. In order to communicate we need to know what the other person is talking about.
We need to step out of explaining subjectivities and try to establish facts, if only intersubjectively - otherwise we’ll only have spent time and not achieved anything in the end.
Well. See you next time.
“We need to step out of explaining subjectivities and try to establish facts”
Or at the very least, figure out a way to handle the subjectivities that doesn’t boil down to “who do we listen to, the people who claim they were harmed, or the people who claim not?”
That’s the problem I have with standpoint epistemology too. It gives us no way to actually determine who’s right.
And when what’s at stake is how society should look, we really need some way to determine that.
And as I have said, repeatedly, I’m talking about the issues surrounding pornography and feminism. You, in essence, are stomping off in a snit because I won’t pick a particular team first and for some reason, you can’t handle that. I’m happy to talk to the rest of the folks who don’t have issues with getting labels first.
Sam, the ‘tea’ example is silly. If Faith’s favorite tea can be obtained only from tea plantations staffed with child slaves, would it be reasonable for Faith to insist “But you’re harming me if I don’t have my tea”? Would it be sensible of her to pretend that the harm caused by her drinking tea is in any way comparable to her having to drink Earl Gray?
Now, obviously that’s an extreme example, and I use it not to say all porn is child slavery, but to show that you have a silly definition of “harm”. My son isn’t getting dessert tonight because he stole some off the counter before dinner, so am I “harming” him?
Mythago,
I’m not asking you to pick a team. I assumed you had chosen one because I misinterpreted something you said. You told me I was wrong, which I was, so I acknowledged I was wrong when you corrected me. I don’t see why you keep saying that I want you to choose a team. I have not asked you to choose or do anything, other than to give me more information about your opinions. Of course, you don’t have to do that if you don’t want, but my asking you to do so has nothing to do with asking you to choose a side. Asking you what you actually think is not asking which side you’re on.
Processing this in bits…
I think “evil patriarchal overlord” is one of my sayings…heh.
Anyhoo…Faith:
Sure enough, people have a right not to be damaged in any way, and in a perfect world, no one would be damaged. However, at this point, the world is not perfect. True enough, addictions OF ALL kinds, from weed to porn to booze to world of warcraft harm people. As do countless, nay all really in some way, industries. Including the sex one…I don’t think anyone has ever said otherwise, really. Yet, at this point, the whole “What about US” argument rings hollow and empty for me. People actually ABUSED in the industry, or abused anywhere for that matter, who really want out, so on, by all means, I am for helping them…but some of this other stuff. No. Not on me, or the sex industry, or on anyone else. I could, at this point, say in absolute truth and with absolute certain and clear vision that myself and other people I know have been HARMED by anti-porn and sex work activists. Harmed, warped and damaged. Actively. And sure enough, some people would choose NOT to believe that…it makes it no less true. So then, whose pain and damage is more valid? Answer that with actual examination, and I’ll be impressed and dig up a little more faith in humanity. Maybe.
Contact sports…sweat, spit, and blood are all bodily fluids. And they all flow in contact sports.
“I think “evil patriarchal overlord” is one of my sayings…heh.”
I’m not sure where that came from. It very well may be a saying I heard first from you.
“I could, at this point, say in absolute truth and with absolute certain and clear vision that myself and other people I know have been HARMED by anti-porn and sex work activists. Harmed, warped and damaged. Actively. And sure enough, some people would choose NOT to believe that…it makes it no less true.”
I’ve never denied that you’ve been harmed by some of the things certain anti-porn feminists have said. I don’t deny it for a moment. I’m not blind, nor am I so attached to my own stance that I’m going to ignore what is obviously shitty behavior from people who have the same stance as me. Not only is that clearly unfair to you, doing so would solve absolutely nothing. I don’t agree with you on everything that you find offensive about anti-porn feminists, but obviously calling you “Ms. Plastic Tits” or “rape enabler” or “tool of the patriarchy” is clearly uncalled for and beyond the pale. As is insinuating or directly stating that you’ve clearly been sexually abused as a child or drug addicted…whatever. Your pain in that particular regard is just as valid as theirs.
Faith:
Thanks. I think. Except I don’t have pain in that particular regard, I just get tired of accusations that are not true. Well, yes, thanks. No thinking required.
Now, if I could just get people to stop believing in universals…
Eh, only so much once person can do. ::Shrug::
one person, even…gads I need sleep.
“Except I don’t have pain in that particular regard, I just get tired of accusations that are not true.”
Sorry if that was confusing. I meant pain (or frustration or whatever you wish to call it) in regards to being attacked by certain anti-porn feminists.
Any attempt to force me to think things you approve of, or not think things you disapprove of, constitutes an attempt to do me harm. Politics stops at my skin.
“Any attempt to force me to think things you approve of, or not think things you disapprove of, constitutes an attempt to do me harm. Politics stops at my skin.”
John,
When somewhere around 30,000 people are starving to death on a daily basis, millions of people are without health care, thousands of children are being raped in their very homes by the people who are supposed to be protecting and loving them, women are being forced into porn and prostitution, women are being raped by the men they are supposed to be able to trust, and women do not have the rights that they NEED or are in very real danger of losing them…you’ll have to pardon me if I get a little pissy when I encounter men whining about being harmed by not being able to wank off to porn.
I think a bit of perspective - and priority - might be called for in such a situation.
Is wanking to pictures is a sexuality which deserves the same rights as other types of sexuality such as homosexuality? Well I really am suprised by that idea!!!! I mean human beings have had pictures for a relatively short period of time, what does that mean for men pre - pictures? And if it’s just pictures of sex people want why not just draw some?? or look at some drawings. Wanking to photographs is a sexuality which is only about 150 years old so can’t be that well ingrained and wanking to moving images is even newer. I think if wanking to pictures is such an itergral part of the sexuality of some people that they see themselves as harmed if they cannot do it we are in a state!!! a complete state. You know, I like shoes but I don’t feel harmed if I can’t have a pair I want.
Faith– let me turn this around.
Given the seriousness of the problems you list, and many others, why exactly does “wanking” even come up as an issue for you? Why waste energy on the question of what some men do with their own bodies in private? Why even consider the question?
If you want us to take measures to ensure that no woman ever gets forced into pornography, I strongly support that, and I’ve called for such measures repeatedly. If you want to address starvation, or war, or violence, or environmental degradation, I’ve participated in work to stop all/most of them.
So I’ll ask you again: what does what men think, and feel, and do with our bodies in private have to do with any of this?
“Why waste energy on the question of what some men do with their own bodies in private? Why even consider the question?”
Because I believe that the sex industry is in part responsible for helping to create and maintain some of these issues. If men are wanking off to porn, they are helping to fuel the flame.
While not all thoughts are predicates to action, some are. The Golden Gate bridge was an idea, a thought, before it became a bridge. An act of violence against a woman, such as a rape, was usually fantasized about first. While that doesn’t mean we get to police people’s thoughts — how can we? — it does mean that thoughts and fantasies must be part and parcel of the discussion.
And many men who “wank” are buying porn. The mainstream porn industry is not a non-profit charitable agency. And some of that porn (not all, as I am increasingly willing to admit) is deeply miosgynistic. Every dollar is a vote for the kind of world we want — and how we spend our money, even more than what we think, is an open subject for discussion and for challenge.
OK, let’s leave out the question of what possible connection could exist between the “sex industry” and the presence of hunger in the world. And let’s assume that we can address the plight of women forced into pornography by trying to shut down the “sex industry” rather than regulating it.
Now please explain why, given that the “sex industry” puts out promos for nothing at hundreds of web sites, and anyone can get hold of hundreds of whatever pictures they like to look at without contributing a dime to the coffers of the sex industry, please explain exactly how wanking, per se, fuels anything. You want to tell me to make intentional and ethical choices about where my money goes, no problem. But anyone who wants to wank without contributing to the sex industry has multiple ways to do it.
No, Hugo, it doesn’t. Politics stops at my skin. You can have all the “discussions” you want, with anyone in the world who will talk about your feelings or their feelings with you, but that discussion will absolutely not include me. And since, as you say, you can’t possibly police what people think and feel, what good does it do, how does it justify time and effort, to try to make thoughts and feelings part of the discussion.
As I said to Faith, we can talk about how we spend money, but that has no necessary relationship to “wanking”; not when porn sites give out megabytes of free samples every day.
This seems logically tortured to me. Porn sites track visitors, and then use their hits to sell advertising to other porn sites. It’s a bit like saying, “I’m a vegan, and I would never buy meat, but if they give away free samples of foie gras in the grocery aisle, I’ll have a double helping, thanks.”
Hugo, John,
“This seems logically tortured to me. Porn sites track visitors, and then use their hits to sell advertising to other porn sites.”
I agree.
While that doesn’t mean we get to police people’s thoughts — how can we? — it does mean that thoughts and fantasies must be part and parcel of the discussion.
But this, Hugo, seems equally logically tortured. It is, moreover, a sign of a fundamentally illiberal point of view: You’re not embracing people’s desires, you would want to police them if you could. You don’t think that eating meat or not eating meat are morally equal, private decisions. If you had a chance, you’d like to force me to not eat meat. We will never be able to agree because we’re apparently not able to even define the subjects of discussion in a mutually accessible way. You’re preaching your “religion”, but religious axioms aren’t rationally accessible.
Why did you write this post if you don’t have doubts about your previous point of view?
“OK, let’s leave out the question of what possible connection could exist between the “sex industry” and the presence of hunger in the world.”
I said SOME of the issues, not all of them. My original point was also not simply that porn causes problems…but that it’s frustrating as holy hell to hear men whining about something so inconsequential as not being able to wank off to porn when there are so many other REAL issues. It shows blatant privilege when you are so high up in life that not being able to wank off to porn is actually considered to be an issue. It’s a repulsive statement.
“please explain exactly how wanking, per se, fuels anything.”
It’s the wanking TO PORN that is the problem. Not wanking in and of itself. If a man wants to wank without the use of porn, hell, wank until it falls off. I couldn’t fucking care less. I’ll even supply the lotion. And even if they aren’t paying, they are still using a product that exploits women and helps fuel violence against us. They are quite likely wanking off to a woman who is being harmed and giving porn the metaphorical stamp of approval. They are also internalizing harmful messages about women and sex which can then play part in them engaging in harmful behavior themselves.
Why did you write this post if you don’t have doubts about your previous point of view?
I still think what we masturbate to matters. That hasn’t changed. What I am willing to do is take more seriously the varieties of sexually explicit material out there, acknowledging that redemptive and positive “porn” does exist. I’m also willing to do something anti-porn men do too little of, which is do a better job of really listening to those women who are sex workers rather than making assumptions.
I want to get past the terribly unhelpful binary that says a sex worker who describes herself as miserable is somehow automatically always more honest than one who describes herself as happy and fulfilled. Feminism means listening to the experience of all women, not just those whose views and experiences fit a pre-existing world view.
Hugo, I tried to comment, but it disappeared. Maybe it went into the spam filter.
(Confession: I haven’t caught up on reading most of the comments bc I know they’ll just make my headache worse and I’m tired of repeating myself all the time. My response was only to your most recent comment.)
You don’t think that eating meat or not eating meat are morally equal, private decisions. If you had a chance, you’d like to force me to not eat meat.
These statements are not synonymous.
The point remains that in a closed system, the producers of this pornography do not make any real gains until someone inputs a credit card number; even if one site does sell advertising to another site, it simply means the site they sell the advertising to has less money to spend producing more pornography. By all means, Hugo, feel free to avoid dirty websites if you want, but it doesn’t work to classify wanking to porn as harmful because it gives material support to pornographers. That argument just doesn’t hold up.
As for your “vegan” metaphor, that actually gets to the point pretty well. Choosing not to eat meat when doing so will lend no support to the meat industry involves a decision about personal purity; in other words a personal decision, which nobody has a right to force on anyone else. If men want to not read/watch pornography, fine, but I don’t accept that you or anyone else has a right to tell other people what they may read, watch, think, or feel. When you argue that we have an obligation not to materially support an industry you consider abusive, you may have a point. When your argument gets away from material support, then it inevitably falls back on personal “purity”, and I don’t accept that you or anyone else has the right to make that choice for another person.
Those pornographers who harm women don’t use metaphors to do it; they use social and economic power, and they only get that social and economic power by making money. Metaphors don’t count here.
Which gets us back to freedom of thought, which I regard as a non-negotiable value. What people “internalize” does not properly form the subject of any kind of coercion. I regard attempting to force people to think the way you want them to as harm; the wanking I consider a purely peripheral issue.
I think I’ve clarified my position sufficiently, and I think I understand yours.
Amber, I am so sorry — I can’t find the comment in my spam folder either, or in mod.
“Those pornographers who harm women don’t use metaphors to do it;”
I didn’t say anything about the pornographers. I was referring to the men who are masturbating to porn.
“By all means, Hugo, feel free to avoid dirty websites if you want, but it doesn’t work to classify wanking to porn as harmful because it gives material support to pornographers. That argument just doesn’t hold up.”
It holds up perfectly. His vegan analogy also makes perfect sense.
“What people “internalize” does not properly form the subject of any kind of coercion. ”
It does if they harm others with the messages they internalize.
“I want to get past the terribly unhelpful binary that says a sex worker who describes herself as miserable is somehow automatically always more honest than one who describes herself as happy and fulfilled.”
I personally don’t automatically believe a miserable sex worker over a happy one. I’m still not going to support the sex industry even if a teeny tiny percentage of women say that they are happy being porn performers or prostitutes. The overwhelming majority of women are not happy doing either. There is also, as I’ve already stated, the very real fact that the sex industry harms people who are not directly involved or who are not entirely involved by choice.
Here’s another analogy:
If a man masturbates to child porn, but doesn’t pay for it, is he responsible in any manner for supporting the abuse of the children he is masturbating to?
Of course he is. He might as well be abusing them himself. So, why, doesn’t the same apply to women who are being exploited?
Faith, kindly explain how a man who masturbates to photographic images which he has not paid for - and the production of which he can therefore have no bearing on - is responsible for the putative harms caused in the making of those images.
You might as well say that people who enjoy rubber-necking at automobile accidents are responsible for them.
OK, Faith.
I intended to refer to a man, but let’s not render the women who say they do this stuff invisible. So I’ll say a person goes into a shower stall to masturbate. In their head they have a memory or memories of something they saw on a computer screen sometime in the past week. They don’t remember it perfectly, and their own memories and fantasies affect what they imagine, so the picture in their head as their hands go to work doesn’t match what appeared on the screen, which in turn doesn’t match what the actors and models (if any) actually did or experienced. So they experience an orgasm while thinking about a hazy memory mixed with a fantasy. And that picture stays in their head; in most cases, nobody else will ever know about it.
Now I have two questions for you:
1) What exact mechanism of harm do you see here, and
2) What in your mind makes this tenuous connection so important that it justifies spending all this energy and time?
When I insist on freedom of thought, I can quote people through history, from Oliver Cromwell to Stalin, who promised to make the human race happy and make us good, and I notice that things went badly pear-shaped every time, to the tune of tyranny, war, slavery, and millions and millions murdered. In my own life, I have had just enough experience with the people who want to make humanity perfect that I insist on freedom of thought from a personal as well as historical perspective. I just don’t see a corresponding urgency about whatever effects you see flowing from the picture someone has in their head at an intimate moment. Maybe you can explain it.
Faith, freedom of thought means freedom for the thought you hate. Freedom of thought means the freedom to think the most evil, disgusting thought imaginable. Nothing someone thinks or feels harms you, me, or anyone else. I don’t like people who think the prisoners in Abu Ghraib got what they deserved, or who think slavery in the American South worked pretty well, but nobody has any obligation to make themselves into somebody I would like.
To turn another of your arguments around, it seems to me that worrying about other people’s thoughts also shows privilege. People really oppressed and harmed have less to worry about what their oppressors think, and more about what they do. I also note that people calling for policing thoughts and fantasies invariably seem to imagine themselves carrying the badge, not wearing the handcuffs.
As for children and child pornography: having known a number of child molesters far too personally, I don’t believe that fantasizing about abusing children equals actual abuse. We make child pornography illegal because the children don’t and can’t consent, and therefore any distribution of their images violates their rights. If you look at my previous posts, you’ll see that I advocate, I have always advocated, measures to ensure that adults involved in pornography give their informed consent. I suggest focusing on that aspect of the issue, rather than the tenuous connection between someone’s masturbatory fantasy and a picture on a computer screen they sort of remember. I say this for two reasons:
1) We can actually make policies around ensuring informed consent,
2) Requiring informed consent upholds, rather than denying, rights.
“Faith, kindly explain how a man who masturbates to photographic images which he has not paid for - and the production of which he can therefore have no bearing on - is responsible for the putative harms caused in the making of those images.”
Tom,
He isn’t directly responsible. However, if he is masturbating to images of a woman who is being coerced, abused, raped, etc. he is essentially conspiring. He is supporting the abuse. If he’s aware that the woman is being exploited, he’s also internalizing the message that exploiting women is perfectly acceptable. Since he is supporting the abuse, he might as well be committing the abuse himself.
“As for children and child pornography: having known a number of child molesters far too personally, I don’t believe that fantasizing about abusing children equals actual abuse. We make child pornography illegal because the children don’t and can’t consent, and therefore any distribution of their images violates their rights.”
John,
I have limited tolerance for discussion with men on this particular topic. When a man not only fails to see the problem with masturbating to images of exploited women, but also says to me that fantasizing about sexually abusing a child (and I’d assume masturbating to child porn as long as he is not paying for it) is perfectly acceptable…I know that my cue to exit the conversation with said man has arrived.
Faith–
You can “exit” any conversation any time you like, but please try to read what I said with some care. I never remotely said that I considered fantasizing about child abuse acceptable. I don’t. I did say that I don’t consider it the same thing as abusing a child. Since I consider child abuse one of the most heinous of crimes, I put a lot of room between child abuse and perfectly acceptable behavior. As well, I have explained exactly why I consider masturbating to child pornography, or indeed possessing it at all, a heinous offence, so I don’t exactly see why you misrepresented my position.
No problem, Hugo… probably my browser acting up. Anyway, I feel another post on my own blog brewing about this discussion!
Faith
Sorry to read that the presence of men with disagreeable opinions makes your further participation in this thread unlikely. Before you go (if you must, and I hope you don’t), however, I wonder if you’d consider the following.
If it is true, as you say, that a person (you always say men, but so far as I can see gender has nothing to do with the logic of your argument) who masturbates to pornography for which they have not paid is somehow (but how?) “supporting” those harms, then it follows that people who slow down to enjoy the sight of a good car-smash are “supporting” the harms involved in that lamentable incident. But as the “support” - which in both cases is nothing more than a readiness to take pleasure from a fact which has already occurred - is not a cause of harm, why should it concern you? Why should it concern anybody?
Preventing people from doing harm is one thing, preventing them from enjoying the contemplation of bad things is quite another. The latter policy would entail banning not just pornography but every newspaper and magazine which carried prurient tragedy-stories and salacious gossip, on the grounds that they allowed readers to “support” child-abductions and messy Hollywood divorces.
It’s ironic to me that freedom of thought has been such a strong theme in the pro - porn side of the debate on this thread when I personally see porn as something which alters and controls people’s natural thought processes. In its current format porn is a product of our technological age and I think, although I’m not an expert, a homogenous mass of presumed desires which cater to the lowest common denominator. I personal avoid porn because I want freedom of thought and I want my sexuality too stem from MY soul and reflect MY unique truth, not someone elses. I do think the fact that thoughts and wanking are connected is very significant, sex is incredibly powerful and I know that what I think during that process has a big impact on my personal make up and my view of others. And I know for a dead cert that the thought plus orgasm relatonship shapes my desires.
Matey– I affirm your choice. I just expect you not to impose it on me.
Hugo,
I still think what we masturbate to matters. That hasn’t changed. What I am willing to do is take more seriously the varieties of sexually explicit material out there, acknowledging that redemptive and positive “porn” does exist. I’m also willing to do something anti-porn men do too little of, which is do a better job of really listening to those women who are sex workers rather than making assumptions.
Hmm, I agree with everything here except for the speechmarks around porn. But we do need a mutually agreed upon process to deciede what’s “redemptive and positive”. And yeah, go Voltaire ;)
But we do need a mutually agreed upon process to deciede what’s “redemptive and positive”.
Or you could let people do what they want. Who nominated anyone here King of Morals?
Wow, that’s an awful lot of power to give to porn. People must be pretty weak if they can be “altered” by watching videos of others fucking.
“Sorry to read that the presence of men with disagreeable opinions makes your further participation in this thread unlikely.”
That’s a bit of an overstatement. I can handle “disagreeable opinions”. I have difficulty discussing the sex industry with men because they (you) are coming from a position of privilege. You are not the exploited class. You are a member of the class doing the exploiting. When I explain how women are exploited, and how men help to ensure this exploitation continues…it becomes quite a bit difficult to keep my patience when men are essentially trying to explain to me that they believe I’m wrong. A man essentially telling a woman that she’s wrong in debates like this is like a white person walking up into the middle of a group of black people and telling them what is or is not racist.
“If it is true, as you say, that a person (you always say men, but so far as I can see gender has nothing to do with the logic of your argument) who masturbates to pornography for which they have not paid is somehow (but how?) “supporting” those harms,”
I actually don’t think the problem is only men in this particular debate. The only real difference is the manner in which the messages are internalized. A woman masturbating to exploitive porn is not only becoming desensitized to exploitation of women, she’s also becoming more vulnerable to exploitation themselves. I know that I was far more willing to engage in obviously harmful sexual activities when I was using porn. I also was much more likely to be more aggressive (sexually and otherwise) towards women when I was using porn. Since I’ve stopped using porn, I’ve become far more compassionate towards other women and myself, my self-esteem has increased dramatically, and I’m overall far more able to function effectively and generally far happier. I’ve also become far less sexually submissive to men. When I was using porn, I was willing to do virtually anything, no matter what the cost to me. It didn’t matter. I had literally internalized the message that I was little more than an object.
“But as the “support” - which in both cases is nothing more than a readiness to take pleasure from a fact which has already occurred - is not a cause of harm, why should it concern you? Why should it concern anybody?”
You’re not getting it at all. There is still harm in taking pleasure in other people’s pain and exploitation. Let’s say I get coerced into performing in porn. Let’s say you then jerk off to that particular movie. You are taking pleasure in my pain. You are saying that my pain is perfectly acceptable. Not only is it highly damaging to me to know that other people are taking pleasure in my pain, you are then more likely to cause harm to other women yourself. The more desensitized you become to another person’s pain, the more likely you are to cause pain yourself. That I even have to explain this to you or anyone else is mind boggling.
Faith,
“I have difficulty discussing the sex industry with men because they (you) are coming from a position of privilege. You are not the exploited class. You are a member of the class doing the exploiting.”
Yeah. That’s the real problem - you have decided that a man cannot be honest and still disagree because of his gender. I really don’t want to get into a discussion of “privilege” and “oppression” as framing devices of feminists in debates, but it’s the easy way out (and quite sexist) to argue that you don’t have to respect someone’s opinion in any respect because of their gender. Imagine what you would say if I were to claim that your unwillingness to engage logically with my arguments is related to your gender rather than your “gender-trouble” quoted above. Exactly. You’d rightly call me sexist.
“That I even have to explain this to you or anyone else is mind boggling.”
Not really. Your argument is based on a certain belief-system about how the world works. His is different. You call this difference his “privilege” but have constructed the concepts of “privilege”/”oppression” in a way that only women are logically able to detect it because of their, funny enough, “epistemic privilege”, that can, like you do it, be used in any feminist discussion to “disarm” any man who disagrees (if he weren’t privileged and arguing in good faith, he would be able to understand your assumed rational position, right?).
It’s no surprise you’re mind-boggled by the amount of inability to even understand each other - but that’s because you’ve internalised the belief that, when it comes to discussions about subjects like the one at hand, there cannot really be an agreement between men and women because men are privileged and women are oppressed, right? And moreover, it’s a system that allows you to discount the accounts of women who disagree with you by saying: it’s patriarchical brainwashing that led to their acquiring bad taste.
My point is, there’s no need to discuss anything on this premise. The way you seem to see the reality around us, there is not even a theoretical way for a joint position, or a nuanced discussion about what in porn, as Hugo puts it, can be “redemptive and positive” (or just fun), and what can be harmful or problematic.
Faith
It seems to me that opinions should be judged on their merits, not on the putative privilege or otherwise of the person propounding them. If a woman had expressed the opinions I have, that would not bear at all on their correctness or incorrectness. To take a case in point: Renegades Evolution’s views about pornography are, so far as I can make, out identical with Ernest Greene’s: are they worthy of consideration when she expounds them but to be dismissed out of hand when he does?
And so are you: you and Ren, who produces, profits from and enjoys pornography, belong to the same gender. If, however, I were to declare that your views were automatically invalidated thereby you would no doubt - and quite right too - be somewhat nonplussed. Everybody belongs to the same “class” as others who do nefarious things - we all belong to the human race, after all, the same species which produced Stalin and Ed Gein. Should all our views be dismissed?
Do my requests for elucidation amount to telling you you are wrong?
If a black person told me that the enjoyment I take in looking at impressionist paintings was racist I would feel no compunction in telling them that their definition of “racist” was incorrect and at the very least I would ask them how they justified such a claim. Are men to have no opinions on pornography? But then they would have no reason to resist its attractions, since they would regard it as neither good nor bad. Or do you want them to take their cue from antipornographic feminists like yourself without reflection, to just accept what you say? But that would mean rejecting without consideration the views of other women whose view of pornography is more lenient – and that would be incompatible with feminism itself, not to mention with basic fairness.
Well, that’s good to hear. If pornography was the source of your problems or even just a contributory factor, then it showed good sense and strong-mindedness on your part to abjure it. I think, though, that you should be careful of generalizing from your experience to the rest of the female sex, which is as remarkable for its variety as its male counterpart.
But your claim was rather different: that a man looking at pornography supported the harms involved in its making even if he had not paid for it – to continue with your example: that I, having found the video in which you feature and which I will subsequently “jerk off to” at the bottom of a skip, “support” the harms involved in pornography. You say that it is damaging to you to know that I’m doing so, but that’s not right – as you don’t know any such thing. You knew, of course, when you made the video that men would be looking at it, but the emotional pain caused by that realization cannot be affected by the fact that this or that man, unbeknownst to you, eventually does look at it. And as to the argument that I, having seen a pornographic video featuring you, am more likely to mistreat women, no wonder I didn’t “get it” – it has nothing to do with your original claim. I shall leave it to others to debate this new one.
This issue is very important to me as well. There is such a thing as a “thought crime” and its usage throughout world history has lead to much woe.
In Soviet Ukraine, my father was thrown out of his job for wanting to marry a woman, my mother, whom his superiors had deemed “unacceptable.” So I grew up with a real terror of thought policing, especially when done “for your own good.”
This doesn’t mean that I give a warm, fuzzy embrace to most people who come my way. In fact, I think most people are downright jerks, or worse.
But I think the threat of moral arbitration spinning out of control is a real threat.
As for the specific issue at hand, I’d like to respond to something that Faith has been saying, about harm specifically:
I think we all harm one another, whatever we do.
I don’t think this means that we should all give up on doing good, or trying to treat one another with respect, but I do think that we need to think long and hard about what we can and cannot achieve in regards to living in a relatively just society.
I like what Ren has said about universals. I think they can be as harmful as any abuse on can encounter in an industry, or a society governed by various economic systems. I don’t know how to address that, to be honest.
Where do we draw the line between looking at an image and looking at it for a specific purpose, and which purpose do we deem wrong or right, especially since the motivations themselves are not usually singular?
How do we differentiate between an explicit picture on sexxxaychicks.com or whatever and, say, Agnes Sorel as the Virgin Mary painted by Fouquet? Obviously, we define the former as smut and the latter as art, but Agnes Sorel can be just as sexually stimulating and it’s not as if there aren’t any issues bound up with that depiction either.
There’s lots of layers to this. And I like that we’re talking about them, to be sure. So thank you for this thread, Hugo, for what it’s worth.
“Yeah. That’s the real problem - you have decided that a man cannot be honest and still disagree because of his gender. ”
Inaccurate. Completely inaccurate. And you’d do well to not tell me what I’ve decided unless I state such directly.
“it has nothing to do with your original claim.”
Yes, it did.
I’m not even responding to any of the rest of what you stated. There’s no way in hell I can give a polite response to such level of arrogance.
I’m out of here for good at this point. This conversation is just becoming bizarre and insulting.
Faith,
“There’s no way in hell I can give a polite response to such level of arrogance.”
What exactly was arrogant about his reply??? Seriously, I don’t get that.
“Inaccurate. Completely inaccurate. And you’d do well to not tell me what I’ve decided unless I state such directly.”
You’re right… I/men am/are not allowed to draw my conclusions from what you write. Only you/women are allowed to do that (”arrogance”). And you/women don’t need to be careful how to word your/their comments because other people may get the wrong impression of what you/they are trying to say, only I/men need to do that. Because I’m a man and men are privileged and you’re a woman and women are oppressed… ah, now that makes sense.
Male privilege BINGO for Sam… FAIL.
“An act of violence against a woman, such as a rape, was usually fantasized about first.”
Hugo,
I’m not so sure about that. Most rapes are acquaintance rapes, at least. And yes, I’m sure some of those are devious plotting to gain her trust for the ultimate betrayal of her trust. But I’m not sure, without evidence, that I accept that as obvious. I think if we want to look at what makes men rape, we have to do at least as much, if not more, looking at what makes someone who is supposedly in a relationship feel that he’s entitled.
And yeah, one possible answer is that if the rapist boyfriend or rapist friend uses porn, he might get the impression that every woman but the women he knows are always eager for it, and rape out of utter frustration that those around him are not automatically and eagerly consenting. Or he might even believe that reluctance or even expressed nonconsent is “coyness” or a “game” (”no means yes.”)
But if those are what’s going on, then I’m really not sure the rape is “fantasized about beforehand” as a rape. So I think we’ve really got to untangle a snarled knot of problematic stuff here. There’s “fantasizing about nonconsent” on the one hand (and the question of whether that implies actual desire to harm; I say not always), there’s “fantasizing about the rape one wants to commit”, there’s “fantasizing about universal consent and so missing nonconsent,” there’s “not having any fantasized interest but flying into a rage at NO and ‘doing it anyway’”, etc.
If we want to talk about the psychology of rapists I think we need not only to make it clear which rapists we mean, but also to back up our discussion of their psychology with facts from somewhere. I think we really should be bringing in studies if we want to go there.
“I actually don’t think the problem is only men in this particular debate. The only real difference is the manner in which the messages are internalized. A woman masturbating to exploitive porn is not only becoming desensitized to exploitation of women, she’s also becoming more vulnerable to exploitation themselves. I know that I was far more willing to engage in obviously harmful sexual activities when I was using porn. I also was much more likely to be more aggressive (sexually and otherwise) towards women when I was using porn. Since I’ve stopped using porn, I’ve become far more compassionate towards other women and myself, my self-esteem has increased dramatically, and I’m overall far more able to function effectively and generally far happier. I’ve also become far less sexually submissive to men. When I was using porn, I was willing to do virtually anything, no matter what the cost to me. It didn’t matter. I had literally internalized the message that I was little more than an object.”
The thing is, though, Faith, that while no longer using pornography was clearly very positive in your life, not everyone has the same experiences. I haven’t noticed my willingness to perform or not perform certain sexual acts fluctuating with how often I’m looking at pornography. When something I’m not interested in is depicted in pornography, I usually either ignore it or enjoy it as something the people depicted are presented as liking. There’s an awful lot about standard heterosex that bores me to tears, and I don’t find myself feeling a need to go and do it when I see porn.
So… well, if we’re taking anecdotal stories about porn use to be the truth about how women react to it, now we have a problem. Who’s the representative person for the gender here, me or you? And that has to be decided before we figure out whether we can say “Porn use is bad for women” full stop. But if we’re not saying that, then different stories can mean different things.
Even more than that, I noticed when I stopped using pornography that I was really sexually unhealthy, because I was rejecting it for the wrong reasons.
“when I personally see porn as something which alters and controls people’s natural thought processes.”
Matey,
How can you be sure that it does this, though? That’s the presumption among a lot of anti-porn feminists, I know, but very few people give specific details of how this is supposed to work, or documented proof that it does work. So… you present it here as personal opinion. Is it just something you’ve chosen to believe, or do you have reason to believe it?
What is a “natural thought process”? How do you know when you’ve discovered it?
“Male privilege BINGO for Sam… FAIL.”
And guilt-tripping and silencing debate bingo from Faith and Amber, which really should fail, hopefully.
Otherwise – what Trinity, Sam, and Tom have said. I have nothing to add.
Faith
I’m sorry you feel like that, Faith. On the other hand, I agree that our discussion has reached a natural conclusion and that there is nothing more to add.
that is a shame, wrt Faith, because…well, as female porn viewer and all, I am interested in knowing if, in these sorts of talks, my voice does have more weight because I happen to be…female? if so, i find it a bit…odd, and I can see why people would find it off-putting.
and once again, if ending porn use was good for Faith, and made her healthier and happier, then I am glad for her, but to assume such things are…gah…universal and thus the only right way to go out there? Well, that sorta thing burns my biskets in a huge way.
Trinity
I can’t be 100% sure porn alters peoples’ thought processes, just as others can’t be 100% sure that it doesn’t. Yes, you right I was presenting my opinion, isn’t that what we are all doing here? But I am 100% sure that porn controlled my thoughts when I used it and I feel incredibly free and alot happier for not doing so, although I still don’t think I am completly free of its residue. I feel that some people I know (mostly men) rely on porn as a kind creative crutch (please excuse the pun it was not intended!)and I know that what goes on in my head when I climax and build to climax has a kind of Pavlov’s dogs effect on me whereby it becomes increasingly more associated with sexual arousal. So to me it seems likely thatthat is true for other people, including those who masturbate to porn.
By ‘natural thought process’ in relation to masturbation I mean one which is not synthetic and imposed, ie a manufactured image or similar. I see it as something which comes from me and my interactions with other people, from real life and my own experiences. I know its a tricky phrase, but I find this experience hard to pin down in words. What I say stems from personal experience.
Matey,
Thanks for the explanation!
I’m still not sure quite what you mean when you say it controlled your thoughts, though. I’m not sure if you mean one or all of the below:
1. You couldn’t fantasize about things you hadn’t seen in it.
2. You felt compelled to use it at times you didn’t want to/found thoughts about it intruding on your daily life.
3. You felt you had to do what it depicted.
4. You found yourself ignoring your own boundaries, because the women in the pictures didn’t have the same ones.
To me any of these things is bad, and if any or all of them were happening for you, it certainly does make sense that you’d stop using it and be healthier. I’ve tried to be clear that I don’t think that everyone should use it, just because I think some people can use it healthily.
“I know that what goes on in my head when I climax and build to climax has a kind of Pavlov’s dogs effect on me whereby it becomes increasingly more associated with sexual arousal. So to me it seems likely thatthat is true for other people, including those who masturbate to porn.”
I think what you’re saying there (forgive me, I’m getting tripped up in the words and just want to make sure I have it right) is that the more you fantasize about something, the stronger your arousal to that thing is? And that that cycle can begin even if you’re looking at something that makes you uneasy or uncomfortable? Do I have that right?
That makes some sense to me, but I’ve really not found my own sexuality to be malleable in quite the same way. I’ve found myself turned on by images that disturb me, too, just as a sudden response that I feel I shouldn’t be having. And I can see how thinking about that over and over could be reinforcing. But for me… I never found myself obsessed with those images. I don’t know if I’m just different from you, or if it’s got to do with my attitude, or what. I tend to think that when I’m excited by an image I don’t politically agree with, that doesn’t really mean anything unless I do invest my time and effort in it.
I have changed my sexuality in small ways — for example, I knew that I was interested in SM and that SM is associated with leather, and that “the costume” might help me to signal interest to other people. So I trained myself to eroticize leather. But I did this through a conscious process of repeated fantasy and masturbation that I chose to do, and it took a fairly strict regimen to do that. So it’s hard for me to imagine that I, at least, could accidentally reinforce something that’s really bad for me knowingly. I can’t imagine I’d be comfortable holding myself to the kind of serious effort that would take.
And also, I think that only worked for me because it was intimately tied to an erotic interest I *do* think is more firmly anchored in my psyche than the stuff I picked up from culture. Without the link between that fetish and something that was already important to me, I doubt it would work. I’ve certainly tried to get myself to be more vanilla, and that never worked.
Hugo, I’ll give you an example of the ideology (and actions) of Dr. Jensen that repel me. In this account, he speaks of “engaging” women who perform and pose for an Australian website that focuses on “natural” nudity in what he calls a “serious respectful way”. Upon hearing from one of the photographers that he and his colleague has “upset the woman he interviewed, he asks rhetorically “what could be wrong” with the way he had spoken to them.
It took me some time to isolate the problem, which shows how deeply mired in various privileges my thinking can get. I strongly suspect that, if Jensen had said something which offended a female colleague in, say a women’s studies conference, he would not likely wonder (at least for publication) “what could be wrong” with what he had said. He would almost certainly respect such a woman’s right to her feelings, whether he felt a need to apologize or not. So why do the feelings of the working class women who pose for this web site somehow not matter? What gives Robert Jensen the right to decide that these women must “engage” him in the discussion he wants to have, when he wants to have it?
It seems to me that a whole raft of unstated, unquestioned assumptions about privilege, in this case the privilege of a well-funded educator to simply impose on working women at a time and in a manner of his choosing, a privilege I suspect he would never even think of extending reciprocally. He never asks what he would do if one of these women showed up in his class and “challenged” him in the name of “free speech”.
I’ll leave the point there for now, but I believe this kind of attitude raises serious issues about the overall approach of the “anti-pornography movement” toward the models and actors who appear in “pornography”, and toward sex trade workers generally.
Yeah Trinity we are all different. I think number 4 is about the most accurate description of what I have experienced and I did so at a tme when my sexual boundaries were very unclear to me. And yes, your interpretation of the Pavlov’s dogs type experience I described is spot on. I also found myself thinking/feeling with some part of me that womens’ bodies in these images were some kind erotic ideal or passport. I can’t help thinking that the rise in people going for porno pubes (which to me are worryingly child like) is some reflection of that; coupled with the wider availablity of porn seen in recent decades. But I do think from what you have said there is some self censorship: thae part where you don’t follow sexual impulses provoked by some porn because it ‘disturbs’ you. I allowed mysef to explore those disturbances and find out why these images had such a deep resonance with me. I didn’t become obsessed. But I think when people are saying that they are harmed if they can’t look at porn then that is obsession or something very like it. I find almost all the porn I’ve seen disturbing on some level just because it speaks in a short hand of lowest common denominators and doesn’t seem to reflect individuality. And to me the personal voice is the most valuable aspect of sexuaity.
John Spragge,
Thanks for bringing up that specific example. I’d been trying to think of how to explain why I don’t think Jensen is sincere about really listening to women who disagree, and I was having trouble coming up with more than “He really creeps me out.” Which is perfectly legitimate but doesn’t help me to explain why I think listening to him as an authority is really wrongheaded even for the people who like him.
But it’s that… he watches a movie and then he (rather breathlessly as I read him) will enumerate for you exactly what everyone is or should be thinking. And I just want to ask him where he gets those ideas. I mean, in one article he did report the feelings of someone who, if I remember right, was in porn and was hurt by it. But why is that taken to be representative of everyone’s voice? Where is the data to suggest that’s common rather than rare? I’m not even saying it ISN’T common here, just pointing to the way backing up one’s position often seems to me to be completely overlooked by many anti-porn feminists. The idea seems to be that this stuff is so upsetting that it doesn’t matter how representative it is or isn’t because it’s so awful.
And on the one hand I kind of agree — ANY rape, ANY coercion, ANY trafficking is horrible. But on the other, I’ve really come to think we need to know exactly what we’re looking at. If we’re looking at one person or one studio (again, NOT SAYING we are) then it seems the easiest thing to do is legal recourse. If we’re looking at an epidemic of abuse and coercion that cunning, conniving devils are careful to keep within the letter of the law, something else may well be called for. But I think the latter takes a lot more proving than, say, “hey, Joe Francis raped someone, I hope he does plenty of time and is blacklisted after.”
matey,
I don’t think what I was doing was self-censorship. I just mean that, well, if something I was reacting to bothered me, I wouldn’t usually pay much extended attention to it. The fantasy would stay in my imagination a few days, at most. And I really don’t think that’s unhealthy; I think that’s just part of what people do when they think about stuff. I only brought that up to suggest that my experience is different from “I saw this politically questionable thing in porn, and I had an orgasm to it, and now I can’t orgasm without it!” Because I never had that experience. I don’t really have recurring orgasms to things I don’t like.
Also… well, I haven’t read Jensen’s book Getting Off, but I saw a reference to how it ends with “I chose to struggle to be a human being.”
And while I don’t know the context and could be misinterpreting it, I have to say that that sounds a little bit like the creepy faux-apologies of Kyle Payne the supposedly “radical feminist” rapist, here:
http://kylep ayne.wordp ress.com/20 08/08/02/you-des erve-to-know/ [remove the spaces]
Payne says things like this:
“Despite the fact that I have spoken out regularly in the past about the pervasiveness of the “rape culture” in our society, and pointed out various ways men are socialized to objectify, degrade, and in a host of other ways, harm women, I failed to recognize and confront my own identification with sexism and male dominance. I forgot what should have been overwhelmingly clear from my involvement with feminism – that all men living in a patriarchal system, even those who struggle against it, act in ways that are sexist and benefit from these actions. But, even though no man is ever cured of his allegiance to sexism, he can consciously and consistently alter his behavior to reflect a more enlightened and loving way of life. Doing so requires a level of vigilance and self-criticism that I clearly did not apply when this incident occurred.”
What disturbs me there is this idea he offers that it’s really HARD for men to avoid sexually victimizing women. That not only would they do so with abandon were it not for feminism, but that they must constantly process and think about feminist theory so as to keep themselves in line.
And while I do think understanding feminism may help some men to behave in a more thoughtful way, this creeps me out bigtime. Because despite our living in a patriarchy and that affecting people, IT IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE NOT TO HARM WOMEN. It is not something men need careful regimens of repentance to avoid doing. Basic respect is NOT a difficult thing.
And I see that in Jensen: The big bad porn takes such CONTROL of me I have to struggle to be a person! Kindness is so TOUGH when gonzo might get me hard!
And… no. Just no. If what it takes for you to treat women respectfully is that you never see any image of women being mistreated, ever, because you know you’ll “slip” and copy it, THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOU.
So it really bothers me that Jensen is taken to be extremely selfless and kind. He’s not. He’s flat out admitting to being a habitual asshole, working on his asshole problem through intense regimens of asceticism.
And… I do think there are some feminists who think this kind of thing is “the truth about men” or that men all “hate women.” And those people would probably think I’m being defensive here or ignoring reality. But I really don’t think that is reality. Do I think men are sometimes ignorant because of privilege? Yeah. Do I think men have to never use pornography so they can START some PROJECT the endpoint of which is not being an asshole toward women? No.
Trinity: I didn’t mean people or I couldn’t orgasm without anything! where is your quote from? I just meant that these things shape desire and thoughts, as you have said the image stays in your head for a few days afterwards, things linger. And yes that’s part of what people do when they think about stuff, that’s my point. The image is unhealthy or however you want to phrase it and people have a reaction to that like they do with anything ‘unhealthy’.
If someone doesn’t bother with something on the grounds that it bothers them (is offensive in some way), even though it turns them on, then I would say that were some censorship in that action.
Trinity,
“And I see that in Jensen: The big bad porn takes such CONTROL of me I have to struggle to be a person! Kindness is so TOUGH when gonzo might get me hard!
Word. And I think you’re really on to something important with this, too
I do think there are some feminists who think this kind of thing is “the truth about men” or that men all “hate women.”
I think radical feminists especially do believe that there is “a truth about men” (they have actually bought into biological essentialism with respect to sexuality, but they can’t argue that. So they need to frame their perceived essentialist truth in nurture terms (and put some misapplied marxism on top, just think of “sex class”) and find a seemingly pervasive patriarchical framing device that could be used as an argument to explain “why all men hate women” without stumbling into alleged “biologist” territory: enter porn. How much sense does that make? Not much, particularly given that porn in the current setup is actually a consequence of feminist/sexual liberation rather than opposed to it, and certainly, in its widespread form, a cultural phenomenon of modernity, an era usually considered to be quite a bit less patriarchical than previous centuries…
Trinity,
““And I see that in Jensen: The big bad porn takes such CONTROL of me I have to struggle to be a person! Kindness is so TOUGH when gonzo might get me hard!”
And one more thing, I clearly don’t know, but I think this fits in perfectly with Hugo’s constant framing of sexuality as a spiritual force and rejection of pornogrpahy as a carthasis: The good sexuality needs to beat the bad sexuality so I can overcome myself and be a “coherent” person. As you say, nothing wrong with that perception as long as it’s helping and remains a personal matter - but I think it’s problematic when the preaching of ethics relies more on personal tastes than on abstract principles.
I affirm that, and I would like to take it one step further: it doesn’t require rocket science to set in place structures to ensure, to the greatest extent possible, that the performers and models in “pornography” give their informed consent. Photographers and websites already defer to US law and affirm their models have all attained the age of eighteen, because if they don’t, they won’t get access to the US credit card system or the US market. If the US and other governments agreed, they could put together laws and protocols mandating informed consent, affirmed in the presence of a third party. In fact, you could mandate a consent signed outside the presence of the producers or their representatives, signed only after informing the model or actor of available services for victims of coercion or trafficking.
I find it amazing that measures such as these do not even come up in passing during a discussion of pornography, and that when they do come up, they appear to take second place to some desire to save men from ourselves. To put it simply: if you care about women, you’ll put the women in the industry first. I have to say that I see Dr. Jensen’s expressed attitude to the women he spoke with symptomatic of a movement that simply doesn’t address any practical reform measures.
Trinity,
I have read Jensen’s book, Getting Off, and you are correct in your impression of it - or, in any case, that’s what I came away with after reading it. The main thing that bothers me about Jensen is how he refuses to listen to women whose experiences do not match up w/ the ones he outlines in his “work” with men who use pornography.
I just thought that I’d throw in there, in reference to matey and porn’s purported impact on mental processes, and the general line of argument that porn has the potential to alter male consumers’ behavior in ways threatening to women, that there is a counter argument. Naomi Wolf argued (here, if you want to see it), contrary to the arguments of Andrea Dworkin and others who claimed that porn led to men objectifying women, that it has had a contrary result. Porn may have the effect of de-sexualizing real women: presenting unreal and abstract images as fantasy objects to which the vast majority of real women will never compare to, and thereby deadening male libido with regards to the majority of women.
Obviously, this isn’t an unproblematic argument in a number of ways. To start with, we’d need more than bumping around college campuses for a weekend magazine piece as an empirical basis to test such a claim. What the social impact is of men being less capable of being aroused by and interested in the majority of women whom they will meet, if that is in fact what is occurring, might be a problem. But it does suggest that if the mechanism Wolf suggests does occur in any significant way, then porn may in fact be making women safer and less prone to sexual assault, violence, and exploitation, by making the majority of women less an object of sexual fantasy.
I should have also mentioned above the the evolution of porn today, in particular, the rise of amateur, “reality”, and other types of porn commonly available on the internet, deserve consideration as well if one were to examine porn’s potential de-sexualizing potential.
I hate that argument. It’s simplistic, and (frankly) stupid, and easy to take apart.
(1) Making women “safer” - the obvious counter argument is, which women? Because that starts to sound a whole lot like attitudes around the turn of the last century, where people were okay w/ there being red light districts in cities bc it kept “respectable” women safe from rape. So what about the women *in porn*? Are *they* “safer” under this asinine assertion? If one believes that participating in porn is inherently damaging to women, then the answer is obviously no and this is an unsatisfactory argument. I, as should be obvious by now, do *not* believe that participating in porn is inherently damaging to women - but that there are cases where it *is* dangerous, and that’s determined by what the work environment is like. Your assertion does nothing to address this.
(2) Making women “less prone to sexual assault, violence, and exploitation, by making the majority of women less an object of sexual fantasy” - This assumes that rape, sexual assault, and other violence against women are directly the result of some kind of unbridled male sexual desire. Which easily sets up the trope of it being the woman’s fault again - she shouldn’t have tempted him, how dare she wear that short skirt, he just couldn’t resist. Once again the man is a hapless victim of his desires - which is pretty insulting to men, and I’ve never understood why more men aren’t up in arms about this portrayal of them as mindless automatons. And remember, feminists have been saying for years that rape is ultimately about power and control. So does that go out the window?
(3) The wording “real women” and “the majority of women” - The former is dangerous bc it sets up women in porn as not being real women. Which is how they and other sex workers are perceived by much of society already. (I wrote about the “real woman” trope a while back.) The latter reinforces the incorrect stereotype that only a certain body type is represented in porn.
Finally, based on purely anecdotal personal interactions, I feel confident in saying I don’t know very many men whose attractions to “the majority of women they meet” have been diminished.
I don’t know whether this thread is still active, or whether (having only skimmed the comments) this is still relevant to the evolving discussion, but I’d like to recommend this book:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Once-More-Feeling-Tried-Greatest/dp/1841154377/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223295053&sr=8-2
It’s not an academic tome, but it is funny and thoughtful and might be interesting to many of the people commenting here.
PS Here is the US Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Once-More-Feeling-Tried-Greatest/dp/1841154377/ref=sr_1_36?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223295154&sr=8-36
Speaking of Jensen, there’s an interesting article today about his appearance at UNLV.
“I find it amazing that measures such as these do not even come up in passing during a discussion of pornography, and that when they do come up, they appear to take second place to some desire to save men from ourselves.”
I agree with that totally.
“Porn may have the effect of de-sexualizing real women: presenting unreal and abstract images as fantasy objects to which the vast majority of real women will never compare to, and thereby deadening male libido with regards to the majority of women.”
I like that argument about as little as Amber does, and here’s why:
There is PLENTY of unrealistic “fantasy fodder” out there in the world that isn’t sexual. Cartoons for kids. Movies. Novels. I grew up as a science fiction and fantasy buff. Did I wish I was a wizard, or at least a random crewman on the Enterprise? Sure I did, but I had no reason to think I really was one. And while I did sometimes feel that real life is comparatively dull and wish I could wake up at Hogwarts (okay, not Hogwarts, I was an adult by the time those came out, but you get the idea), I didn’t usually hate my life in the real world.
I don’t get why someone who idealizes his favorite porn star is supposedly someone who can’t enjoy sex with someone who doesn’t look or perform like her (or him, really — why are we not assuming gay men have the same problem and talking about that? This is why I really think this issue is a clash of mores among heterosexuals rather than a peek into any kind of “power of images” full stop.) I mean, I do think some people can get lost in fantasy, and I do think that a lot of men and boys use porn images as an excuse to criticize their girlfriends.
But the whole idea that boys and men have intense trouble telling fantasy from reality… well, it strikes me as the same exact mistake made here. People assume that men “get lost” in pornography and lose the ability to tell that what they’re watching is acting, and I don’t get that.
I mean, if someone has never had any sex ed whatsoever and has been taught sex is bad and shameful and not something to be talked about, then I think that person may find porn and come away with the idea that all women like ejaculate on their breasts. But I don’t think the solution to that is not making the movies, any more than I think the solution to some very ignorant person getting the idea that a Hollywood movie accurately portrays something they’ve never experienced is insisting on absolute realism.
I think the solution is better sex ed, and if possible, some discussion in sex ed classes of pornography and whether or not it’s realistic. I can’t remember at what age sex ed ended for me, but I think it was high school. I think it would be entirely appropriate for a class of twelfth graders, in health class, to have a debate/discussion of images of sexuality, what they think of them, and the ethics of using or not using pornography. In fact I think that would be a really good idea.
Exactly. And I think any sensible person should be able to look at that and tell exactly where the problem lies.
In case anyone can’t? Instead of demonizing pictures and videos of women with cum on their breasts, provide better, more comprehensive sex ed and remove the shame and stigma of discussing sexuality.
And although I’ve seen that Wolf article a hundred times and am really tired of re-hashing what I hate about it over and over, many of the people in THIS conversation haven’t seen what I’ve had to say, so let me say it again:
“When she showed me her little house in a settlement on a hill, and I saw the bedroom, draped in Middle Eastern embroideries, that she shares only with her husband—the kids are not allowed—the sexual intensity in the air was archaic, overwhelming. It was private. It was a feeling of erotic intensity deeper than any I have ever picked up between secular couples in the liberated West. And I thought: Our husbands see naked women all day—in Times Square if not on the Net. Her husband never even sees another woman’s hair.”
I’m really disturbed by this. Not because I don’t think that women can freely choose to share their sexualized parts — whether that be breasts, vulvas, vaginas, hair, necks, ankles, or knees — with one special partner. And not because I think Western culture/secular culture/”pornified” (hate that word) culture is better than other cultures. But because it seems to me that one of the things Western feminism gets RIGHT is the idea that creating a virgin/whore divide is harmful to women on BOTH sides. Wolf is forgetting that and seemingly advocating that women cover up, for the “mystery” of it all. She’s critiquing a culture of not covering up.
Honestly, I think I’ve seen that before, and I haven’t usually seen it from feminists.
And the idea that sex has no mystery, I strongly disagree with. “What body parts look like” may have no mystery, “exactly where people put their legs in X position” may have no mystery (though actually most porn positions require athleticism and flexibility, so I’d say that’s quite off base)… but surely what one’s partner likes and why is still a mystery and a treasure to discover. Are any of us besides Wolf REALLY lamenting that men see women’s hair?
And the other thing is that for all that Wolf sees herself as critiquing sexism, she doesn’t even address the idea of men being a mystery. What body parts can they veil deliciously for women or other men to unwrap? Why doesn’t she even think of this? She’s still trapped in a paradigm of “seeing the female body” as intense and erotic — she’s just flip-flopped from “Yum, see it all” to “Yum, unveil it in the bedroom.”
and just in case it needs repeating though Amber and Trinity have already said it…the women in porn? Are Real Women, thank you.
and why yes, porn is crappy sex ed.
Amber,
in case I didn’t make it clear, I was raising the Naomi Wolf point somewhat facetiously, but directly against the argument asserted or insinuated that porn necessarily puts women generally at risk of objectification and potentially sexual assault or rape by its consumers. It makes for a contingent argument: if you don’t believe that porn has that significant an impact on individual behavior, or don’t believe that men are or ought to be held to be so malleable and lacking in control over their behavior (which you indicated that you don’t), then both the Dworkin and the Wolf theses are invalid.
But… since we are going down hypothetical lane, and dealing with Wolf’s supposition…
The work environment of porn and the broader impact on consumers thereof are independent variables, or at least nothing requires that they be necessarily dependent. You said that you don’t believe this. Addressing the impact of porn on the women depicted in it can be done completely separately and independently of the issue as to whether it makes other women safer. I was discussing all women in the aggregate, however. If you want a real nasty but internally valid argument: if the number of women directly harmed or potentially harmed in the production of porn is less than the number of women who would be spared harm by the hypothetical de-sexualizing effect, and given the relative numbers of the relevant populations we’re discussing here, maybe thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of women in porn versus billions in the population at large, that’s highly likely; then even porn that has the worst and most destructive impact on the women in it would produce a net reduction in harm. Like I said, nasty argument, but there it is.
Again, I don’t disagree with you that men are responsible for their own behavior, but the Dworkin / MacKinnon-type argument holds that women are put at risk of sexual assault, violence and exploitation by porn consumers due to their consumption of porn. This contrary narrative challenges that directly.
And the “ultimately about power and control” claim, in my view, ought to have gone out the window, or at least come in for some serious evaluation with regards to its validity in the real world, a long time ago. I’m sure that it has some validity with regards to some rapes, but out of thousands or millions of rapes and sexual assaults every year in the world, what evidence is there that any one factor plays such a critical role in all or even a significant number of occurrences? Would a claim that all murders, or all of any other sort of violent crime, are ultimately motivated by one core cause, be so readily accepted without scrutiny? Did the original promulgators of the “power and control” line do any sort of empirical analysis before they said it? Sounds to me more likely like something that was probably said 40 years ago at a rally somewhere, and over time took on the undeserved mantle of some weighty sociological observation. The majority of rapes are acquaintance rapes, that occur when both participants are under the influence of alcohol or other drugs. Are “power and control” reasonably proximate and significant factors under that common scenario? And even if one should accept the “power and control” narrative, for the purposes of the porn hypothetical, which is dealing with sexual desire, the “power and control” narrative does not obviate or eliminate a sexual desire component in most rapes. Asserting so mistakes a debatably necessary condition for a sufficient one (i.e.: most or all rapes would still occur, absent sexual desire, purely motivated by power and control).
When I was using the term “real women”, I was speaking in reference to the putatively “mainstream” type of porn, airbrushed and trimmed and probably photoshopped to some extent, and all. In that circumstance, by definition, those aren’t “real” women and, in any circumstance, the argument remains that the depictions of many types of porn, particularly of the “mainstream” variety, depict scenarios unlikely to occur with great frequency in the real world. You know, the whole “porn tells lies about women” claim. Neither argues that somewhere behind the airbrush and the scenario, that there isn’t a “real woman” somewhere.
As to the second “majority of women” point, that’s part of why I posted my follow-up corollary on the potentially changing nature of porn. This may be changing as porn might be diverging and expanding beyond the “mainstream” type (including pro-feminist porn). Nevertheless, given that porn generally serves it purpose best for the consumer when it depicts participants who will be physically attractive to that consumer in some way, however expansive or limited that definition of attractiveness may be, and given that there are many people in the world who are not very attractive (sorry, but it is true), porn is, on the whole, always going to depict a non-representative sample of the human race. As Abraham Lincoln said, “The Lord prefers common-looking people, he made so many of them”.
In video porn, make up is worn. It gets rubbed and sweated off a lot too. Hard to airbrush moving pictures. Yep, lighting and all goes a long way…but in many ways…what you see is what the women look like, in make up and heels with their hair done. Photo porn, ala the playboy centerfold, is different.
Trinity: on mystery and veiled parts of mens’ bodies:
Where I’m from it is illegal to show an erect penis. I have seen only one on moving image (in Genet and Cocteau’s 1952 film Un Chant D’Amour)and I found this incredulous and I have seen zero in still shots or other images. I don’t know what the law is in the US but there is plenty of mystery surrounding mens’ bodies where I live. This is another reason I don’t find porn appealing: the absence of apparent male participation and ethusiasm signaled by flacid penis’s is very off putting for me as a heterosexual woman! so perhaps this is the part of mens’ bodies which is veiled, to be slowly revealed to us women…
Matey: You’ve seen flaccid penises in porn? I can’t say I ever have.
Well, maybe some SM stuff that doesn’t have a genital focus, but that doesn’t strike me as any reason to think of the guy as uninterested.
Maybe it was my imagination, but there were definitely no erect ones. That’s a disparity in representation that I can’t settle with. I’ve never seen any SM, seems far to close to real experiences of mine to be something I could enjoy.
Trinity: Oh, and am curious to know have you seen erect penises in porn? Is the law different in the US?
“The majority of rapes are acquaintance rapes, that occur when both participants are under the influence of alcohol or other drugs.”
WHOA.
That is completely and utterly false. Most rapes are acquaintance rapes, this is true. What isn’t true is that most rapes occur when one or both participants are under the influence of drugs alcohol. That is completely, totally, utterly, and absolutely false. Go tell every child who has ever been raped by a relative that they were drunk or that their rapist was drunk every single time that they were raped. Go tell every old woman that they were drunk when some man who was supposed to be caring for them raped them in a nursing home. Go tell every woman whose husband raped them in their own home that they, or he, was drunk. Go tell every teenage girl who has been raped by her boyfriend that they were drunk, or that their partner was. Go tell every woman who has ever been raped during war that they were drunk or that the soldier was.
I don’t know where men get the idea that most rapes occur when one or both participants are drunk (I’ve heard this before) but it is complete and total fucking bullshit.
Rape absolutely is usually about power and control.
“Rape absolutely is usually about power and control.”
Hell, scratch the usually part, rape is about power and control.