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.

I haven't changed tack anywhere.

I have consistently disagreed with women (or men) being forced or illegally coerced into doing anything.

I have consistently questioned why sex is different from other forms of work, but accepted that it may well be.

I have consistently defended humans having the right to express themselves however they want and to have full agency over their body and how it is used or portrayed so long as they are of sound mind and not illegally coerced.

I have consistently insisted that women and men have free agency over their body. Their yes means yes and no means no. Assuming there is no illegal coercion.

I have consistently suggested that the capitalist framework of compensating workers with money for resources they would not give freely is probably unethical at its core, but that this is how current society operates. A fact I am unhappy with but can do little about. (Although I'd suggest having freedom of expression allows me to do more about it.)

None of this makes me inhumane, callous or any of that sort of crap. It just means I have a different point of view from others on this thread. I never said life's a bitch, suck it up. But I do say that having free agency over your body allows you to make choices, good and bad. We can't stop people making bad choices without removing free agency but we can help, support, educate etc.

Dittany, you confuse asking questions and challenging opinions with defending another position.

I asked "Why?" a lot of times there. I never said this is how it should be.

I don't think there's much more to add to be honest. My arguments are all there on the table. You can carry on misrepresenting what I've said or what you think I said, but my position hasn't changed. Enjoy the rest of your evening.

women do it too IS an argument against a narrow minded poster who continually brings everything back to the porn industry being all about men who profit from the abuse of vulnerable women.

you don't portray a true and rounded picture of the adult entertainment industry.

we all know that there are victims of porn, both female and male. anyone who says differently is an idiot but there are also women AND men who freely enter the industry and remain in it without coercion or manipulation.

i wouldn't want to do it, i don't have a porn habit and i would be pretty displeased if either of my daughters made that choice. it remains however your right to make that choice.

as for the people who use pornography- they are as mixed and varied as any group of people. porn caters for men, women, couples, lesbians, gay men, fetishists, voyeurs, sad bastards, sickos etc

i bet a fair few are misogynists but chances are they are also the guy next door/your husband/brother/boyfriend/dad/mum/sister/friend etc etc etc

i don't care dittany. you're the only one with empathy, remember.

disingenuous means not being truthful, being insincere. you're using the word but not properly.

yes, i mean you dittany. you are very narrow minded.

for someone that goes on an on about lacking empathy, it's interesting that you also lack empathy when engaged in a debate. i've noticed that on other threads. you're mind is very fixed on who's the baddie and who's the goodie.

love it.

i disagree. you always pop in a wee personal dig along the way so you're no saint.

glad you admitted your mind is fixed though, that's progress.

i actually really like your passion but your fixed-ness does always get my goat.

again i disagree- alot of feminist sexology and the writings of feminists like gayle rubin challenge ideas of female and male sexual expression.

I noticed how blinks and Carmen neatly side-stepped the evidence in the Equality Illusion which shows that men who view lots of media images of naked women file women in the "tool" compartment of their brain.

Been thinking more about this thread.

Until about 100 years ago EUropean and AMerican men didn't believe women enjoyed sex. They didn't actually understand that women had their own sexual preferences, sex drives etc. They though women had sex for sympathy, money, or children ; OTherwise they were raped and coerced.

Since the Victorians, women have been trying to get the message accross that women not only don't mind sex, but they love it and have a whole different world of sexual needs that society cannot contemplate, and does not address.
Early feminists tried to show that monogamy did not suit most women, that many desired their own sex, that women could have a lot more sex than men, had fantasies of their own etc...

Porn is reversing all the work the feminists tried to do. Every time a woman receives cash for sex it reinforces the myth that women must be coerced into the "act", and that women are merely instruments of male sexual desire. Some pro-porners argue that women enjoy porn. Well yes but it's only coincidence that their enjoyment happens to coincide with male sexual fantasies. Women's sexual fantasies are rarely addressed. Never addressed in any of the porn I've seen. SO the male orgasm is all the porn industry cares about. Carmen, you mentioned lesbian porn. THe market for that is men, you know.

THere is no difference betwen porn and a woman lying back and thinking of England while her husband has sex with her. Economic dependance forced the wife to submit to her husband in the past, and exactly the same dynamic exists in porn.

So porn is not liberation, not for women. I would like to see the day when all women, finally, can have sex for reasons other than money.

Dittany - agree with your stance on porn, but disagree with one of your comments - "a feminist in the feminist section whose mind isn't fixed on what is sexist and what is harmful to women would be in need of finding somewhere else to post"

There are plenty of people on here who are here to learn, to debate, to explore and formulate a POV, so I'm sure you don't mean to suggest that they have no place here. Its a fine line between engaging and preaching - I think that to say that anyone is constantly fixed on a POV and never open to a different POV might come across as very narrow-minded and blinkered. Indeed, I think earlier in the thread, you yourself said that you changed your POV on porn, so others surely are allowed the same leeway.

'Until about 100 years ago EUropean and AMerican men didn't believe women enjoyed sex'

says who?

I also mentioned lesbian porn and you are talking shite sakura. there is actually a whole section of porn catering for lesbians. it is generally made by lesbian women.

i'm not talking about the girl on girl stuff- that is for men/couples.

LIterature, documents, statements, history books...Have you read D.H Lawrence? He finds the possibility that women enjoy sex repugnant. Men couldn'T get their head around it.
Feminists tried to change that by showing that women have a sexuality of their own. It began in the UK, I believe, with the bohemians, Virginia and Vanessa Woolf had multiple partners, Vanessa had children from more than one man, Virginia had a public lesbian relationship. Feminists have been trying to put forward the idea that sex doesn't have to be on men's terms for over 100 years. Porn is undoing all that.

Ooh, now your here blinks, what do you make of that brain experiment?