To think that women 'people' - shouldn't be subjected to porn at a professional conference

[onebatmother]

Sweet Jeezum, would you have a look at this description of a mainstream, non-adult-industry tech developers conference in the states.

Porn (as it has always done) is powering tech development.

This guy's attitude speaks volumes both about what porn says about imaginary, abstract women, and - crucially - the real women who had paid to attend the conference.

Totally experientially it seems to me that the rise of the internet (I am old enough to remember before it) has corresponded with the pornifcation of mainstream culture. I would suggest that porn being available for free on the net at an impressionable age for young men has had a huge cultural and psychological impact.

Snorbs, it is a pathetic trick to say "I take your word that... but I think... but I can't be bothered to look it up" - either refute the point, or don't. I, for one, have no knowledge of the hard facts of this and would prefer to be informed on the matter rather than hinted at with vague suggestions that things might be different from the way other posters have said.

Sorry, just to complete the first point in my last point properly: in this sense the internet is closely associated with porn in culture at large, which is a different point from whether "the internet" is "sexist" or not.

Please can someone tell me about the "men on mn" thread? pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease?

It's a 'pathetic trick' to concede a point? Um, ok... [Hmm]

On the plus side, the rise of the internet (for me at least, I'm assuming for other women too) has given me far more freedom, information, connections and friendships than I would otherwise have got.

I hate to use the word "empowered" because it sounds so naff and overused, but I do think that access to the internet can empower a lot of people, male or female and levels the playing field in a medium where (unless they reveal it) you can't tell who is male or female, what social group they are in or what they look like.

Maybe I'm just a glass half full type person

No, Snorbs, it is a pathetic trick to pretend to concede a point while deliberately, but non-specifically
(and therefore unchallengeably) casting doubt on it. With a passive-aggressive smiley.

Obviously.

Rubberduck - I completely agree. The internet is brilliant. I love it. I use it every day, I always loved it and when I was immobile for a while I loved it even more passionately and every day I wondered what people did without it.

However, for some people internet = porn - weird, I know, given everything else you can do with it, but it is true and they insist it is true for everyone but weirdos (this is the thing about people who have cognitive distortion through porn addiction - they insist that everyone else thinks the same way except very few "weirdos" and most of those who deny it are lying).

I would suggest that porn addiction is much more common than it was, because of the internet, and that this has affected culture and all other media. I don't think "the internet" is sexist in a meaningful way; I think that our culture is sexist and the internet has first facilitated and then to some extent normalised an expression of this in a particular pornified way. And to many addicts - and there are many - this is the dominant impression of what "the internet" is, and this impression may be so prevalent that is even dominant in some sections of the industry (I suppose - I don't know about the industry really, I am talking about my impressions of overall society and culture - I only suppose that because that guy did the presentation, and thought he would get away with it, and to some extent did)

vezzie, it wasn't meant as a 'passive-aggressive smiley', not least because that seems to me to be an oxymoron. It was meant as a friendly, light-hearted smiley. Which is what I honestly thought smilies were there for.

I apologise if you saw my light-hearted concession of what I saw as a mildly incidental point as a passive-aggressive act.

To clarify what I was trying to imply with that smiley:

I'm willing to concede the assertion that the internet porn industry was the only consistently profitable one during the dotcom crash. My vague recollection suggests otherwise but I know my memory for such events that long ago is hazy and unreliable and I may very well be wrong. Moreover, the only way I could confirm or refute my hazy memories is to do more research than I am currently willing to conduct. Therefore I'll happily concede that I'm wrong on this particular point, so let's move on and tackle some of the more heavily disputed points.

Does that help?

LeninGrad, I'd broadly go along with that.

My personal experience is that the IT industry has (thankfully) got a lot better than it used to be and I suspect it's quite possibly a lot more progressive in this regard than many other industries.

Ten years ago I spent a while as the tame techie attached to a sales and marketing organisation. My word, there was a hot-bed of off-colour remarks and ingrained prejudice to an extent I've never seen among a group of IT professionals. It was awful.