Bluesberry - it’s either extraordinarily naive or extraordinarily disingenuous to compare the local ladies’ burlesque group to the increasing violence and misogyny of hardcore porn. Can’t you see that? It only makes you sound very naive and not very knowledgeable about what’s out there on the internet if that’s what you think.
A few years ago on this board a woman who was an anti-porn activist posted a series of links about some of the material she was campaigning against (with suitable warnings). I took a look and honestly I wished I hadn’t. The extreme violence that’s out there - very easily found - men strangling women who were clearly drugged, learning disabled, even very clearly highly abused; men abusing female amputees; men seriously degrading very young women - really extreme violence. I thought I was actually going to vomit afterwards, it was so distressing and evil.
It’s been creeping into mainstream porn for a while now, and it’s getting everywhere, and whatever the BDSM enthusiasts say about consent, the entire point in most porn is for it to visually look like there’s no consent.
This simply wasn’t in the culture twenty years ago, and yes women could still do light BDSM and dress up sexily, but there simply wasn’t the same widespread culture of male violence in relation to sex.
None of us are complaining about women dressing up in a bit of lingerie or liking the odd light spank. We’re complaining that men and young women are increasingly culturally groomed to expect a degrading, violent, dangerous culture around sex which is the very opposite of true sexual liberation for women.
No one, absolutely no one, will convince me that hardcore porn in the form it currently exists today is anything other than the most horrendous social evil. Yes, it’s possible to imagine pornography and a sexual culture that is liberating and equal. What we currently have is not it, and men strangling women without consent as a mainstream part of sex is definitely not it.