wanting to continue the porn discussion from "relationships"

[madamez]

Well, I don't think it's unreasonable to want to continue the discussion, or to bring it over here - basically was just indicating to the other discussers that I've staked out a table and set up the drinks, so come on and sit down and let's ... er... have at it again.

Muminfife: oh, you never know some folks find the idea of being filmed incredibly arousing... But I would like to know what MT meant by that, as well...

I suppose I could be a porn performer as I have had film footage taken of me in my undies by bfs, as well as "erotic" pics. I love it, feels very fun & sexy. Probably would look decidedly "readers wives" to anyone else!
I'd do if for money too, if I wasn't in a well paid job and I was svelte enough!

I've not read the thread but I am comfortable with porn (Legal and above board porn - consenting adults of any gender type porn).. I shall get a cup of tea and come back to digest thread...

Oh please madamez, how often d'you hear about women being trafficked to become actors and singers? Or how Hollywood A-listers ended up making films because they were sexually abused as children?

MT is right, porn is part of the sex industry, to ignore its context is just dishonest imo. Hope she comes on and expounds more because she's good on this.

Oh please. Working in a factory, however exploitative, is not quite the same as having your body invaded.

I think you will find that a higher proportion of prostitutes for example, versus advertising executives (no clever jokes about there being not much difference please) have been sexually abused as children.

OK let's discuss what's exploitative then.

On second thoughts, I can't be bothered I've got a cold. May come back to this thread in 2 days when I can be arsed.

The problem is Cali is that to get the best out of any argument you try to approach it from a neutral position. I've had this debate many times, on here and in an academic field and began from a neutral position; I've never felt the need to defend my own personal sexual proclivities, either way. Madame feels she needs to and fair enough, but you can't then pretend you are having a logical debate; it's an emotive one, and they have the tendency to go round in very frustrating circles. I don't like doing that for fun .

Sp we have Madame from the McNair side and me and you from the Levi side and MiF somewhere in the middle (?) ? I?ve referenced these writers many times in other threads. McNair asserts porn is fundamentally progressive and Levi that it is fundamentally commercial. On the evidence, I now agree with the latter argument.

McNair, like many porn advocates simply ignores the terrible human cost of porn and prefers instead to focus on the putative egalitarian elements ? when he uses gay porn to proof this he only proves himself wrong however as gay porn is now just as generic as hetro porn and has nothing to do with celebrating individual sexualities. Yes, you can find everything on the web, but as a business model the money goes on the meat shot every time ? cock penetrating female orifice (and the more cocks penetrating single orifices the better these days); who they belong to is immaterial.

The fact is porn is recorded prostitution. Recorded to maximize its commercial value. I?m not making a moral judgement about prostitution, I?m not saying it?s ?wrong? but, again, the statistics tell us that it is a very lucky prostitute indeed who lives a happy life free from the consequences of what they do, be it in their personal relationships with their partners, children or whoever. There is a stigma attached to the job no matter how liberal you are. This is a fact not an opinion.

I?ve said it before but it?s a good analogy so, if you?ll forgive me, I?ll say it again; the porn industry exploits our evolved biology and psychology, our desire to procreate via sex, in the same way that the food industry exploits our same evolved liking for salty, fatty food. There is nothing ?wrong? with sex. Porn however isn?t sex. It is porn. If you don?t know the difference then there?s little point having this discussion. Corporate business is not a moral enterprise, it is a money making one and it takes legislation to stop exploitation; business wouldn?t do it otherwise. Yes there is legislation about porn, and that is exactly why there is a thriving black market, a global market in women and children.

Oh god I?m going on ? apologies for the long post, I?ll stop now

MiF, do you honestly watch the Annabel Chong Story and see a woman in control of her sexuality?

Yes, life can be exploitative, captitalism certainly is and porn does very well by it. But a baby in my womb is also exploitative - I don't equate it to a pimp.

I think being patronised is preferable to being metaphorically (and in this context, literally) shafted up the arse. I?m not saying all people who engage in public sex are exploited, but the majority (and there is a wealth of evidence to back this up) of people in the sex industry are. That?s what industry is. There will be a minority of women who do genuinely enjoy it, probably those past menopause but they aren?t the models that make money. Jemma Jameson was gang raped and left for dead and then went into the porn industry. The fact is, victims of sexual abuse are massively over represented within the sex industry.

Male and female sexualities do differ. Porn inverts female sexuality and represents it as male. This isnt? to say women don?t have sex drives, aren?t randy or don?t like sex; but that the consequences for ?casual? sex are manifest for women in pregnancy. Something the male never has to factor in. This is an evolutionary position and it has resonance?s in our psychology today. To be very coarse, if women were as indiscriminate as men can be, there would be no such thing as rape. Women are choosy. They hold a resource that men want ? sex. Porn inverts this and very well, but it is a fantasy.

I really don?t like long posts so won?t go on. If you are going to cite someone like AC - and have a liking for academic debate, you really should read/watch your sources.

Forgive me, I have to go to bed now, I will respond to the rest of you post tomorrow. Sleep well. x

Monleytrousers: I don't think I've referred to my personal sexual proclivities in this thread (or, except in the most general of terms, in any thread). I would, of coure, agree with you that exploiting and trafficking unconsenting individuals in wrong, but it only ever seems to be sex work that gets people so agitated. Vulnerable, poor people are trafficked to work in the food industries, the catering industries, the clothing industries... if you buy a bunch of flowers, are you sure that they weren't picked by some desperate immigrant working for a gangmaster?
Why, then do you find it so difficult to accept that many porn performers enjoy their work, do it of their own free will, and, even if they don't find it one long orgasm, prefer the shorter hours and better money to a life spent stacking shelves or filing invoices?

Caligula, while people may not be trafficked to become actors and singers (because there's no shortage of willing volunteers), do you really think that people in the entertainment industry are never exploited, emotionally (or physically) abused, ripped off or traumatized?
The bottom line is, while exploitation is wrong, the porn industry is not the only place where it goes on - and not everyone who appears in porn films or pictures is a fucked-up, drug addled victim incapable of making choices for him- or herself. The same, incidentally, goes for hooking.

Monkeytrousers: bit of a cross-post there. Don't you think that Jenna Jameson might have chosen to use the porn industry to turn her life around? She is now wealthy, succesful and widely admired - while neither I nor (presumably) you are in a position to ask her about it in person, may she not feel that she's the winnner and she's thoroughly got the better of her assailants? And who the hell is anyone else to say that her way of coping should be taken away from her?

For every porn star who has profitted out of the porn industry and is considered usccessful and even powerful there are thousands of others in the same industry that have been exploited at the lower end of the scale. By taking part in this industry they are part of the exploitation.

*successful

just asking - dont rip me a new one.

but

can i go back to the exploitation bit v's success. surely most of us are exploited. only regulation stops (in this country) a base level of exploitation.

would it not therefore be reasonable to sugget that Porn per se isn't bad or evil - but the lack of regulation.

I'd agree with that Custardo so i'd say it was a reasonable argument.

aww ta ledodgy

Madamez, on the other thread someone mentioned it and you didn?t challenge it.

It is simly not true that it?s only the exploitation of sex workers that gets people ?so agitated? ? the fair trade movement is all about that kind of agitation, and there are plenty of other examples. Amnesty International agitates on many levels, for example. Yes many people are exploited in say ?the food industry? but the food industry isn?t as popular as the sex industry, which I think only tails after arms, oil and drugs. The endless relativism of your arguments gets us nowhere. There is always so absurd relativist stance to drag up, why you would want to is another thing entirely.

You make another incorrect ascertain when you ask ?Why, then do you find it so difficult to accept that many porn performers enjoy their work, do it of their own free will,?

I never said I did find it difficult to accept. Some, a minority, of performers will enjoy it. If they were doing it of their own free will then they?d be doing it for nothing, as a hobby ? hence my previous point. Porn actors are sex workers, and extensive research by such organisations as Amnesty (not me) tells us that, on average, these are not a happy bunch of people.

MiF, again research in rape from numerous sources tells us that many people in the sex industry have been victims of sexual abuse in their lives previous to them becoming sex workers. That research also tells us that these people are not doing so to take control of their sexuality, but because they are troubled and confused and know of no other way to reach out to people for validation, understanding or affection than via sex.

Another psychological point is that women aren?t men. Given the choice, women don?t make themselves open to sexual propositions from strangers they don?t even find attractive. To do so is incredibly stressful, hence the amount of prostitutes addicted to alcohol and drugs. Stacking shelves may be boring but it generally doesn?t predispose you to those kind of addictions to get through. That, again, is a fact, not an opinion.

Jemma Jameson has been interviewed many times and still appears very unsure of her sexuality and certainly displays psychological problems.

MT: I'm not sure what I did or did not challenge - was I supposed to?

Are you really trying to argue that everyone who loves their job should do it for no money? Is this some kind of utopian thinking which suggests that only those who do the unpleasant jobs should be paid (ie miners, nurses, etc). If so, I can see where you're coming from on ehtical grounds - the harder the work, the more the pay rather than paying people accordign to the prestige of the job. But if you think, as you clearly do, that performing for porn is such an awful job, then surely it should command more money?

You mentioned in an earlier post that you have had this sort of argument many times. Well, so have I. And I've never seen any kind of logical argument for treating "porn" as a separate category to anything else in the world. And WTF do you mean by saying that the "food industry" is less popular than the "sex industry"? Do you mean that fewer people buy food than pay for sex? Or that more people work in the sex industry and the arms industry than work in the food industry (which sounds potentially more sensible but I would like to know how you're defining these "industries" and where you're getting your figures from)
Most of all, though, I find your attitude towards both porn performers and sex workers highly condescending and misinformed: you're basically saying that they don't know their own minds and have no right to make decisions for themselves. While not all women like sex with strangers, some do. This is not dissimilar to the kind of nonsense some people post when the subject under discussion is SAHM - not all women enjoy caring for small children all day long, but some do. Just because you wouldn't like to do something, doesn't mean that anyone who does like to do it is immoral, too stupid to make choices, or mentally ill.

Well if someone says something about you and it isn;t true, you'd expect it to be challenged. That's the way things happen and we make sense out of them.

No I'm not trying to argue that at all. Your reductionsit style is getting a bit tiresome.

Again, there are ways, established systems, formal and informal, in deducing things about people and the situations they find themselves in. 'Choice' for example can be qwualtified by what people choose to do without incentive and what people will do if offered an incentive. It's a simple premise that gets more complicated, as lives are complicated, but it's somewehere to start in discerning what pleasure principle, if any, is being invoked.

You keep making the mistake of atributing personal opinions to me about porn. I only offer facts from studies and stats. If they differ from your opinions then that's not my problem.

I'm not being condesending or whatever, just basing my argument on facts not my own ignorance or my own personal opinion as you assert. There's really no need to get so excited about it. You're simply making a very common logical mistake of extrapolating a moral judgement from a statement of fact.

Monkeytrousers: I'm still lost as to what I'm supposed to have "not denied". I don't recall being accused of any particularly criminal acts on this or any other thread.
As to these studies you mention: well I haven't read every single thread you've posted on but no studies of human behaviour can be taken as being 100% accurate, not even if replicable and peer-reviewed (which is so rare as to be, oh, almost unheard of when it comes to pornography reseach).
And you still haven't come up with anything approaching a reason why "porn" is an industry totally unlike any other, whose workers can only prove they are not being exploited by working for no pay. If you're worried about the exploitation of sex workers or porn performers, why aren't you advocating that they get unionized, rather than that they work for free?
I have invariably found that people who campaign against pornography or demonize it (as opposed to simply not being particularly interested in it) have a very prescriptive, subjective view of sexual behaviour: if they don't like or wouldn't dream of trying any sexual practice, then they invariably assert that no one (more usually, no woman) could possibly do whatever it is without being coerced. Porn-haters who claim to argue from a feminist viewpoint rarely seem to see that the "no decent woman would do that" argument, particularly when connected with the "women are so biologically different from men that they're not actually the same species" argument is the sort of crap that's usually used to justify paying women less, denying them voting rights, etc.

Your posts are just getting more and more bonkers Madame - 'criminal acts'? Now you're just fantasizing. Anyway, this could go on for ever, and as I've already said, I don't do that for fun, sorry. Take it up with someone down the pub.

Ah well, same as ever, anti-porn arguments can't stand up to a challenge so those proposing them always either misdirect or retreat.