Porn

[msrisotto]

Tentative!

Um, the way I see it is that a lot of porn (I have heard) is appallingly violent and degrading for women. This stuff, ideally wouldn't exist and should be banned (how, I don't know, but ideally).

However, the porn that I have seen or enjoyed is not. I wouldn't enjoy porn that is degrading.

So, why is all porn bad? (in some people's opinions?) If it isn't degrading and is equal in its approach, for the entertainment of others, then I don't see any harm.

Is the argument that you don't get the 'good' porn without the bad?

Don't flame me please, I really want this to be a considered conversation.

Yes, so I suppose the argument is state/society V individual. So if you are more of a socialist/Marxist like me then you believe the individual must cooperate more with society. Others believe individual freedom overrules societal impact.

I believe socialist/Marxist pro-state and society ideologies benefit women as a group.
Capitalist, individualist ideologies benefit men as a group

IN other words, I think an individual should suppress their whims and desires for the good of the group. So a rich person should pay more taxes to be distributed among the poorer. And a person who was an exhibitionist at heart should try to find another outlet to express themselves if the impact of their exhibitionism would negatively affect society.

Again the problem with the voyeurism/exhibitionsism stuff is that it is in the public domain.

If people want to film themselves having sex and then make those films available to other adult viewers who wish to see them and have actively sought them out, that is none of my business.

However once stuff is on the net anybody can access it or be exposed to it.

There are loads of websites for viewing films by streaming, for example, which have links to webcam sites. Why should a person (particularly a teenager) who wants to watch a film be exposed to adverts and picture links showing people flashing their bodies or women sucking penises?

Nobody would think it was right for a child to be allowed to go into a sex shop and be exposed to porn so why is it alright on the internet?

As I said earlier there is a lot of work done to try to keep the referencing system of google being chock full of porn - this operation costs a lot of money. That money is recouped through advertising gain. Why should it be for the people who use the internet for legitimate purposes such as running small businesses to pay to stop the www becoming the world wide porn web.

Sorry to go on about this but I was quite taken aback by the scale of the whole thing and the costs involved. (and lots of this is cluttered up by Mr and Mrs average having fun with their webcams)

"Nobody would think it was right for a child to be allowed to go into a sex shop and be exposed to porn so why is it alright on the internet?"

Totally agree. We need to be campaigning for internet service providers to make porn an "opt-in" service that only the person paying for the broadband can access.

Have a look at MNHQ's latest campaign idea thread. That convo seems to have gone a bit cold - don't think it is in active convos anymore but I am sure lots of people here will like to add to it.

This was Justine's OP:

"Following on from our Let Girls Be Girls campaign, we're thinking about what we might do next in the area of campaigning against premature sexualisation. We know that many of you are concerned about explicitly sexual imagery on the covers of lads' mags and the Sunday Sport, particularly when these publications are displayed at child's-eye level. We also know that some of you are worried about the ease with which children can access frankly pornographic imagery - some of it violent and disturbing - on the internet, whether on PCs or mobile phones.

We'd like to canvass Mumsnetters' views on these and related issues. Are you angry or embarrassed about lads' mags in plain view, or are you not too bothered? Do you consider the Sunday Sport or Zoo magazine to be pornographic, or merely cheeky? Is child access to internet pornography something that concerns you? If so, who do you think should be responsible for filtering out this content: parents/carers, or the internet service providers? If you have already set up parental controls on your computers at home, how effective do you think the filtering software is? An internet entrepreneur in the US has just started selling domain names ending in .xxx, with the intention of making this domain the "red light district" of the internet - see details here; does this sound like a good idea to you?"

I know we're going back a bit here but this has been bugging me. You know when Sunny cut and paste a whole load of out of context quotes from an anti-feminist, misogynistic website? Well, I was very struck by the Marilyn French quote about all men being rapists.
I've read the Women's Room and that line is spoken by a character in a novel. A character whose daughter has been brutally raped. A character who is so traumatised by the experience and by seeing her daughter then subsequently mistreated, disbelieved and generally treated by shit by the police and the legal system that she becomes a militant feminist and becomes involved in armed combat.

I suppose my point is that taking the words of fictional characters from novels and attributing them to the author as evidence of the author's thoughts is a very dangerous path to go down.

Maybe it wasn't worth engaging with Sunny's post at all since it was a cut and paste job from a misogynistic website (which I'm still a bit and about TBH) but I actually think it's a really important point and seeing that quote out of context like that made me really angry.

"I think that's more of a utilitarian position than a marxist one tbh"

Thanks Proles! I still haven't looked properly at Marxism since we last talked about it so I will stop putting it in the socialist bracket until I've read more about it!
The word "Socialism" has communist/labour undertones, which is why I try to soften it by adding the word Marxism.
But this is def a society/state V individual question.

You are right about that quote Rosa - I have brought that up before on MN with a poster who likes to quote from MRA websites.

The words are spoken by a fictional character in a work of fiction but routinely attributed to Marilyn French as though they are her opinion.

It is just like if author X wrote a book in which one of the characters says they want to kill their mother and then everyone goes around saying that author X wants to kill their mother .

Glad you brought it up - I meant to say something earlier but forgot.

I can't be bothered to examine the other quotes but I have a problem with people being quoted out of context like this (especially on websites with a misogynist agenda).

I suspect this out of context quote of French's has been manipulated as part of the 'feminists think all men are rapists' myth (although I know the words of Dworkin and others have also been used for this purpose).

Look at this one for example;

"I claim that rape exists any time sexual intercourse occurs when it has not been initiated by the woman, out of her own genuine affection and desire." -- Robin Morgan, "Theory and Practice: Pornography and Rape" in "Going to Far," 1974.

With regards to pornography and prostitution I think this statement is true.

I think the problem is more that most people have a skewed definition or rape rather than that there is anything to take umbrage at in this quote.

People stick to the actually quite limited legal definition as though there is no other. A woman who consents to sex acts in a porn film in order to fund say a drug habit has, legally, not been raped.

The legal definition has to be concrete in order to stand up in court but I think we need a 'social' definition which expands on the notion of coercion and consent to include how finances and other elements can influence a person.

Exactly Beachcomber. I'm feeling a bit naive that I'm so that a) anti-feminist websites exist and that b) people quote from them on here and then continue to engage in the debate like it never happened .

I just finished reading the Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver in which a character who is an author of fiction is persecuted by the Macarthy House Un-American Activities Committee and words spoken by a fictional character in his novel are quoted out of context as his words and taken as evidence that he is anti-American/communist.

Sunny's post really struck a chord and made me think of that.

It just seems like a very dangerous path to go down.

Fair enough. That's why I didn't question it at the time as I guessed there was a good reason why everyone was ignoring it!

Just felt the need to get it off my chest though.

I've been thinking more about my society/state V individual thing. Feminists are going to have to go for that argument in public to be taken seriously.
We know why we want the porn industry banned, but that is always going to get distorted by the patriarchal press and media.

I can't count the amount of times on MN a pro-porn poster has acted as though I'm a Christian right wing wacko. That's all part of the backlash. It was used against Dworkin too. The prude/hang-ups argument.

So the political stance has to be that women/feminists believe individuals should forfeit their own right to pleasure for the good of the group. Not eliminate their freedom of expression, but simply find a more socially acceptable outlet.

Now, all the captialist/individualist stakeholders are going to trot out the argument that an individual's rights are more important than the group's. That's why everyone's got a gun in the US. They don't realise that an individual's "right" to own firearms creates a society where gun-crime is rife.

So, feminists: start swotting up on left-wing ideology.

I think it's a gross oversimplification to make this a black and white pro or anti porn debate.

I'm neither anti nor pro 'porn.' The term is being applied with too huge a brush and by saying that any material produced for the purposes of sexual enjoyment is wrong removes everyone's sexual freedom. Including women's.

I believe that we (as women) have a right to sexual freedom. But defining that is complicated.

I don't like the fact that the pornography and prostitution industries involve blackmail, violence, drugs and so on. However, I don't like the fact that Nike, Gap etc. rely heavily on sweatshops or that Nestle et. al rely on marketing formula milk unethically.

I don't really care that people are paying for sex. Your body is yours to do what you want with and part of the resources you have as a person (including your brain, ideas and time) which people may pay to use, whether you're a model, a soldier, a medical research subject or a prostitute. I still don't see a difference. To my mind, the whole system of selling these personal things in return for money is unethical. Sex is no better and no worse.

I also don't care that Sunny and Mr Sunny and their friends get off by looking at each other on webcam. Who the hell cares? This is just an expansion of what they do in the bedroom with extra technology. If you limit this, you start judging what is good and bad sex.

And I do see an undercurrent of that judgementalism here. What everyone thinks of as good or bad sex is different. Some people want loving relationships. Some people want anal fisting and one night stands. That is sexual freedom.

There is an inability in some arguments to accept that women are free agents who are totally capable of making a choice what to do with their body. The argument that they are 'conditioned' to enjoy anything whether it be webcam exhibitionism or full on S&M is revoltingly oppressive.

Once you start talking about banning perfectly harmless activities for 'the good of society' you are being more oppressive and harmful than the 'patriarchy.'

And I consider myself far more aligned with socialist values than capitalist values. The capitalist values would like us all to aspire to Barbie-like porn stars. I'd much prefer we have the sexual freedom to express ourselves however we want - butch, femme, hetero, gay, bi, trans... to indulge in whatever experimental activities and fetishes we choose.

Instead of blanket banning sexual material, we should be expressing our own sexuality and enjoying it. That's where empowerment lies, rather than merely deciding that all erotica is about men's desires.

"It is a legitimate philosophical and political argument that if the majority is doing something which causes harm to a minority, it should be stopped."

I was thinking more along the lines of:

A minority of women "enjoy" being in porn even though it looks like the majority are being abused and hurt.
But that minority are being held up as the reason why it can't be banned. So then you have to bring out the social consequences argument i.e yes, we know some women enjoy being in porn , (even though they're not doing it for free so can't be enjoying it that much ) but our ideology is that just because an individual enjoys doing something doesn't mean society has to accept it. Beachcomber gave the example above of the effect of porn on teenagers.

"The argument that they are 'conditioned' to enjoy anything whether it be webcam exhibitionism or full on S&M is revoltingly oppressive. "

You see, Carmen, you think I'm a right-wing Christian wacko. That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about.
NObody is saying women's sexual expression should be inhibited; we are saying porn does inhibit people's sexual expression, especially men's, actually. I said upthread that men who like porn are shit in bed because their imagination and ability to empathise has been stifled.
I would like my daughter to not have to put up with these men who learned all they know about women and their bodies from porn.

I like S & M. I am not in any denial about where my sexual tastes came from.

I mean, clearly they have come from society. I didn'T invent BDSM paraphinalia myself did I? I didn't design and manufacture it ergo it is not my sexual expression that is being represented, even though the pleasure itself is real enough.

Eh, Sakura? Where on earth did I make any comment about either your religious preference, politics or mental state?

Actually, people ARE saying women's sexual expression should be inhibited on this thread and others. There have been several threads on here that are anti BDSM in any form. There are people criticising Sunny's webcam use.

There are people suggesting women only consent to appearing in porn (or doing numerous other sexual activities) because they have been conditioned to do so.
This offends me deeply as a woman. We're all affected by society but to suggest that I have been affected to such a state that I am 'conditioned' to not know my own mind and not be able to consent freely is offensive and infantilising.

Er.. I don't understand the BDSM paraphernalia argument. What about the people who are using skipping ropes or scarves to tie each other (or themselves) up long before they've even heard of BDSM as a lifestyle/sexual preference? If BDSM /does/ come from society, it certainly doesn't come from BDSM material manufacturers who are generally pretty small businesses.

TBE, that's a really interesting argument about the majority doing something which affects the minority.

By that argument, you ought to ban the alcohol, tobacco and gambling industries before you ban porn. They take far more lives per year and break up more marriages. And fast food. And any sweatshop clothes manufacturers.

So your argument is that BDSM has sprung from my own imagination, no influence from society whatsoever ?

And I'M saying I am not arguing any of the things you are saying I am, that the ideology behind my motivation for banning porn is to inhibit sexual expression. I don't care about people's sexual expression, I care about the effect of porn on society. And I think it's childish for some adults to argue that their right to sexual self-expression is more important than the minds of teenagers. We're not teenagers ourselves. We have to be aware of the butterfly effect.

Yes I am against most of hte things on your list. I am totally anti-capitalist. It'd be hard giving up alcohol because I love it so much but if banning alcohol means a man isn't going to get pissed and beat up a woman or glass and knife a man, then that's a price I'm willing to pay.
My narrow desire to want a drink is offset by the massive negative social consequences of alcohol being acceptable.