objectification!

Viz the thing that men can tell the difference between fantasy and reality and therefore aren't affected by porn, there's v. good research to show that habitual porn use affects the areas of the brain that control empathy and that habitual porn users are more likely to have mysogystic, hostile attitudes to women and are also more likely to be violent.

Given that in internet porn, almost 90% of films show something violent happening to women and whatever "harmless" porn you say you are wanking to, the majority of men accessing porn via the internet are jacking off to images of women being brutalised (because abuse is such a turn-on), your arguments are actually beginning to make me feel sick Dadof2. Particularly as I've spent much of the day reading Kat Banyard's chapter on porn, The Booty Myth. Try reading that and trying to convince yourself that porn is harmless.

I do think the ubiquity is part of the problem.
You'd perhaps get away with that argument in a time when pornography was relatively rare and had to be sought out, dadof2. No longer. The sheer volume of pornified images of women, (unavoidable nowadays, on billboards, in the newsagents, even in ad for mouthwash fgs), versus the numbers of ordinary non sexualised women skews perceptions of what's normal.

Men like looking at naked women, of course, and there's nothing wrong with that. But even the 'ethical' consumer, such as yourself, adds to the weight of objectification.

Then I have to disagree with you very strongly, dadof2 - I think you are extremely wrong. All porn DOES make women objects, it reduces them to things, rather than treating them like people.

I think sexuality should be glorious. I think sex should being people joy. I think sex should bring people delight.

I do NOT think it should degrade, exploit, humiliate, or harm people. And I worry for my son that his sexuality will be twisted by images of women being abused, degraded, and exploited in every day porn (and that IS what is happening) and therefore he will come to see sex - which should be celebrated and shared - as something to be forced on women, snatched or wheedled or cajoled from women, rather than enjoyed with a willing partner.

Don't try the 'if you don't like porn you're a prude' thing. That won't wash with me.

It doesn't matter if you're objectifying a chubby brunette's massive bush, you're still objectifying her.

do you agree with my point that ANY porn (of ANY kind of woman) treats women like objects, and therefore makes life harder for all women?

to frame it another way, dadof2ofthem, the fact that there's porn in the world is going to harm your DD. There will come a point in her life - frighteningly soon - when she will start to worry about her body. When she will hurt and twist herself to look more like the pornified pictures that she will have easy access to. And there will come a point when one of her boyfriends tries to persuade her to do something she might not like, because that boyfriend has seen it in a porn film and thinks (1) all women do it and (2) all women like it.

If you need something to help you stop using porn, imagine your dd at 15 being pressured into anal sex.

Hope this helps.

That's the articulation I have been looking for blackcurrants, thanks very much.

My boss is semi-computer-literate, he asked me to fix something minor on his machine some time ago. Found some unpleasant history. Makes me feel icky.

I like Catin's point "Women choose to do things that harm them all the time (think of all those who stick with abusive husbands, for example). This doesn't make it something to applaud."

Porn harms women. All porn. My partner doesn't use porn BUT still, all porn out there harms ME personally. Know why? Because there are men in my life who DO use porn - whether it's the man who sells me a bus ticket or the man who interviews me for a job - and THAT MAN's view of women will be warped and twisted by the women he sees 'being sluts' - being degraded and objectified - in porn.

Doesn't matter who makes the porn. Doesn't matter who the porn is for. Porn reduces women to their bodies, stops them being full people. And the men who use porn are accustomed to seeing women in that way. Which makes life harder for ALL the women around them, the women they drive past, the women who teach their kids, the women who work with them. You get the idea?

I agree with you totally celadon.

Dadof:

1.) and 2.) Porn made "for women by women" and the Chippendales male stripper thing seem to have the same explanation in my mind. It's a case of what HerBex calls "what's sauce for the gander is for the goose". Society in general sees nothing wrong with objectifying women; but it is now more acceptable for women to express their sexuality; thus, it occurred to someone somewhere that they ought to also have access to the same types of titilation as men do. So women are encouraged to objectify men in the name of "equality". I find this repugnant, as it tends to serve as yet another way for society to justify exploitive practises with the line "but women do it too!" (I bet you've heard that one before!) And as HerBex points out, strippers and porn aimed at women bears no comparison in terms of quantity or effect.
My view is objectification is bad whether a man does it to a women, a woman to another woman or to a man. It just has worse and more profoundly negative consequences when it is the man doing it to a women as it enforces and justifies existing prejudices and attitudes towards women that aren't found when talking about men.

3. "Exhibionist housewives" who "invite" objectification. I think this is the a deformation of the "she chooses to do xyz so that's ok then". Women choose to do things that harm them all the time (think of all those who stick with abusive husbands, for example). This doesn't make it something to applaud. I would be interested in knowing the reasons why these women choose to do this. are they doing it to please their partners (I'm thinking of reader's wives here)? Do they think that the only way they can get noticed or worse, get affection, is by stripping off and showing all?

No, it's just that continental women are more brainwashed that women being presented naked and objectified, is a celebration of women's beauty rather than a re-inforcement of their sex class status.

The whiff of hypocrisy as you call it, only remains if you don't understand the arguments.

I have not condoned the existence of male strippers I think the argument that men dehumanise women, so it's OK for women to dehumanise men, what's sauce for the goose etc. is morally vacuous. But I'm not going to pretend that the effect of male strippers on the perception and value of men in society, has the same effect as the effect of female strippers on women.

I don't think you can separate the porn made by women for women. It is still too closely associated with the rest of the porn industry, for me to feel it's OK to use. In theory there's nothing wrong with it, but in practice, why would you bother? No one needs porn and the harm it does outweighs the pleasure it gives. In a world where men and women were equal, where women were valued as full human being and where men were objectified as much as women, as likely to be strippers as women, as likely to be raped as women, then there would be no problem with ethical porn, voyeuristic stuff etc. But we don't live in that world, we live in the world we have and so everything we do is circumscribed and affected by that.

And also, I think that if we lived in a world where women and men were equal, the patriarchal urge to objectify human beings, whether male or female, wuold simply not be as socially acceptable as it is now - people would look at you with pity if you were so odd that you wanted to turn your fellow human beings into objects, why would you want to deny them part of their humanity? For me, an equal society isn't one where we still keep patriarchal values and say men and women can have an equal opportunity to dehumanise and be vile to each other, it's a society where that sort of sick approach to humanity just doesn't hold sway anymore.

And practically, porn which says it's "normal, exhibitionist housewives" or whatever, is actually usally professional. Porn made "by women for women" is usually made by men for men, pretending to be by women for women. So from a practical POV, you can't tell whether the porn you use is ethical or not, so it's best to avoid altogether. I'm sure that Tesco stocks some products which are ethically sourced and produced, but they're such a bunch of bastards that I'm not going to bother going in there and trying to work my way through their stock, to find the sort of products I want to buy, produced by the sort of producers I want to buy from. I'll just go down the market instead. If I were an ethical person who had an interest in porn, I'd apply the same rules.

Where have I condoned male strippers?

I've never seen the chippendales, I'm not interested in them. I'm not particularly interested in discussing male strippers either, it's not my battle, I'm not a man and I don't feel that the chippendales are a massive problem for men - their existence doesn't promote the view of men as being there just for sex, they are simply irrelevant. They are always brought up in discussions about porn and stripping, by people who either want to muddy the waters, or who are just woefully ignorant about the real issues around feminism, porn, sex, women's position in society, equality etc. But the existence of the chippendales does not impact on all men everywhere in society, because men have not had a long history of being objectified, whereas porn, lapdancers, female strippers, have an impact on all women everywhere because it reminds everyone that in spite of all the advances we've made in getting more control over our own lives, at base we're still just there to fuck and we shouldn't get too uppity thinking that anything else about us is more important. That is not the case for men.

— hypocrite adjective
1 : a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion
2 : a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings

Given your comments in this thread it is a term that I like well.

As I said - the power imbalance between men and women means that it is not a like for like comparator.

Personally, I would not go to see a male stripper, but until men start complaining about how it is contributing to men's inferior position in society, I don't feel inclined to worry about it.

Why should women have a view on whether the chipendales or other male strippers leads to the objectification of men?

If men were to start complaining that this is the case, then we will sit up and take notice, but until then we have no obligation to fight men's battles or resolve men's dilemmas for them.

If you can't see that men and women are treated very differently by society then you need to do a lot more thinking and learning.