straight pornography is male gay in sensibility

[Heathcliffscathy]

This came to me in a wave of inspiration...straight porn is a hypermasculinised view of sex. Hypermasculinity has it's place in the pantheon of what it means to be a gay male (not all, not every, by any means).

straight porn is totally phallocentric: penetrative to the exclusion of all else and the builds up to an inevitable anal sex finale, or blowjob come shot/facial.

the vagina plays second (third?) fiddle to anus and mouth and size is all. breast stimulation gets barely a look in.

bear with this as I know it's treading a dodgy generalisation line, but it does strike me that if you were to argue that male gay sexuality (as a generalisation, i know that there is a vast continuum out there that we are all on male and female) is the zenith of hypermasculanised male sexuality, then mainstream straight porn is pretty gay?

Do you think it's possible that the homoerotic is so repressed in 'straight' man that it has to find it's outlet in porn, which leaves women utterly hard done by porn wise?

i know there is a strong argument to suggest that straight porn is just about degrading women and undoubtedly that's in there a lot of the time but could there be another basis to it?

Milly: Actually I do know a bit about the methodology of some social science studies, and they are often pretty dodgy (quite apart from the fact that sometimes people conducting any kind of scientific study have either suspect motives or are being sponsored to find a particuar result).

Dittany: I have never at any point denied that therei is exploitation and abuse within the porn industry, or that this is a bad thing which should be stopped.
However, anti-porn campaigners seem unable to accept that some people want to make interesting, female-positive, sexually explicit visual material with willing performers and just fall back on wah wah wah, you can't possibly have sex in public or be paid for it, sex is about 'relationships' (never mind the damage the Relationship Industry does to women's wellbeing, peddling the line that romance is everything and inarticulate violent fuckups are 'psassionate' and desirable), with no good answer as to why those who want to do it, shouldn't do it.

im thinking two things
one is-im wondering how many women are actually ok with porn as im thinking that a percentage of the women that say theyre ok with it-aint.
reason being-they might be doing things to be just keeping their partner happy or are frightened of being called "boring"or "fridgid"!

the other thing is-im thinking that a lot of people have got desentisised-
reason being-i often chat to people on the internet-i chat because i like chatting to people and thats the only reason-im not into picking people up on the internet.
the amount of people that have asked me to set my cam up and whip my clothes off and do things is unreal[and yes i have told them to off]its like its a ok normal thing[to them]and im wondering where peoples heads are sometime.

Dittany: You have attacked swingers clubs as being 'all about male desire (ie women shouldn't like them of go to them ever)' and every time a woman says she likes anal sex/dressing up/sex in public/looking at porn, you're there to tell here that she doesn't really, that she's pandering to men, that she's dehumanized. I have never heard you say one positive word about any kind of male sexual behaviour - not just WRT porn, but anything a man might ask his DP to do, or appear to want. Are men acceptable if they perform cunnilingus? Is kissing mandatory? Is it OK for them to read an erotic story? Or is it Valeri Solanas all the way as far as you;re concerned?

i don't get pro-porn/anti-porn

pornography: "the depiction of erotic behavior intended to cause sexual excitement"

it's as old as time. it is not exclusively a male domain by any means.

'closing down the industry'???? are you absolutely nuts? as if prohibition will do ANYTHING to ameliorate the situation of those performers that are abused...far from it.

and how can you be pro or anti the depiction of erotic behaviour intended to cause sexual excitement. it is something that is as pervasive as sexual excitement itself!

Dittany: Dworkin is overbombing there (as usual). See here.
Or here.

And no one is disagreeing that the abuse perpetrated in the making of some pornography is wrong. People are disagreeing that the entire industry (and the entire concept of making explicit entertainment media) should be condemned because of the wrong done by some of the people involved in it. IN other industries where there is exploitation and abuse (clothing, food) people who care seek out ethical alternatives and do their best to boycott stuff produced by exploiters: that seems the best way forward for porn as well.
But as this discussion is getting utterly circular, I'm going to skip the rest of it.

SGB, why did you say spontaneity is a key ingredient for women's sexual pleasure .
I said it was a special ingredient that is eliminated in porn by default of what porn is.

SGB please tell me you understand that sheduling sex (which we all have to do with our busy lives) and spontaneity in sex are completely different things.
Tell me you understand the concept.

And are you still avoiding the question...

How does feminists condemning porn contribute to the notion that women don't enjoy sex?

Milly, sorry I didn't mean to imply you were an expert. I meant that if you have an academic background, you are better able that others to identify whether research is biased or poor.

SGB I think you confuse (as do many people) erotica and pornography.

""Feminists have made honourable efforts to define the difference [between pornography and erotica], in general asserting that erotica involves mutuality and reciprocity, whereas pornography involves dominance and violence. But in the male lexicon, which is the vocabulary of power, erotica is simply high-class pornography; better produced, better conceived, better executed, better packaged, designed for a better class of consumer."
-- Andrea Dworkin in Pornography: Men Possessing Women (1981).

www.againstpornography.org/definition.html

(From the bottom of the page but the whole page is interesting)

Beachcomber: But Dworking is saying that there is no such thing as erotica - that all depiction of sexual behaviour is pornography and unacceptable.
Sakura - what do you think spontaneity means, then WRT sex?
DIttany: Sorry, those links are not porn at all, they are links to etymology sites.
Sakura (again) The feminist anti-porn campaign always ends up saying (along with the rightwing nutjobs who are happy to jump on the 'feinist' bandwagon) that there are various sexual acts that women hate/won't do unless forced, and any women who say actually they do like these things are dismissed as liars, mentally ill, victims who don;t know they are victims etc.

And the reason why I keep defending sexually explicit entertainment media (not defending abuse and exploitation) is that a world without it is not a good one for women, or women's sexual pleasure for that matter. When all discussion and depiction of sex is surpressed, no one has much fun and people have nothing to compare their experiences (good or bad) with.