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.