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.

Maybe that's it...
Maybe men still can't get their head around the fact women enjoy sex, and can have more sex than them etc..
Maybe lots of men still think women who like sex are dirty bitches...
It's almost like porn is a punishment isn't it, all the pain, degradation and violence enacted upon women.

Yes, who was it who said on a thread the other day something like,

"ok, you wanted sexual liberation, well take THIS, double penetration, cum shots, etc."

I don't remember the exact words but it was very well put.

I just read this article by Robert Jensen - it is looking at porn from a male perspective. I was asking myself the question 'why do men get off on this stuff?' and remembered he had written an essay on it. He writes about what a lot of bollocks masculinity is as a concept when it means things like pornography and glorifying violence (except he puts it a bit better than that ).

"Brothers, this matters. Please don?t let yourself off easy right now. Don?t ignore that question and start arguing about whether or not we can really define pornography. Don?t start explaining that social scientists have not yet established a definitive link between pornography and sexual violence. And please, don?t begin explaining how it?s important to defend pornography because you really are defending free speech. "

"ok, you wanted sexual liberation, well take THIS, double penetration, cum shots, etc."

That'D be me then. I just blather and I never know what people make of it. Nice to know I'm not mad.

Ah, thought it might have been you but wondered if I had mixed you up with ISNT - you have a similar way with words .

Those words really resonated with me.

Carmen to answer your question about why a contract to have sex isn't the same as any other contract of work, the reason is that unlike most other work, the right to change your mind about it in the middle of the work, is absolutely right, proper and reasonable.

If you are a surgeon in the middle of an operation, it is absolutely unreasonable of you to up and decide that you'd rather go and have a round of golf right now, because you actually can't be arsed to do this spleen repair. It's right that if you make that choice, you will be subject to professional sanction and possiblty even legal ones.

If you are a woman or man being fucked or sucking someone else's genitals, it is absolutely right and proper that you should have the absolute right to decide you no longer want to do this, without risk of sanction. Because the use of your body for sexual purposes, is completely different to the use of your body for other purposes. Because it goes to the most intimate, private parts of you that nothing else gets to, except the selling of body parts. Every other generation and culture in history, except those who didn't get as far as making the connection between sexual intercourse and fertility, has known this instinctively. Only our perverted culture questions it and I think it's important that we answer it properly. Words like sacred won't do, because our culture has become secular. But it still accepts the terms intimate, private etc. - for now. I don't know if there's any other terms people can come up with, that our secular culture accepts as valid.

Oh and a quick question Carmen - do you defend the right to free artistic expression of racists, paedophiles, anti-semites and homophobes? Or just that of mysogynists?

Sorry emphasises change your mind because you have stated quite strongly that no means no and yes means yes, as if the no and the yes are immutable and fixed once given.

In the RW, we know that's not true. A no can turn into a yes and become genuinely consensual, a yes can turn into a no and become rape. I would just like you to clarify whether you believe that once a woman has said yes, she then loses the right to change her mind and say no. Because that is slavery.

Sorry, am not attacking you, it's just that you've made some quite strong and interesting arguments (most of which I disagree with) and asked some valid questions. But I'm aware that it looks as if I've launched into a thread with a series of posts all addressed to you like a loon. Hope it doesn't look like that, but I've found your arguments most coherent and worthy of exploring (of the ones I disagree with), hence addressing my posts to you.

You're welcome - dittany linked to an even better one earlier by him.

here

"The pornographers want to label any collective discussion of the meaning of intimacy and sexuality as repression. They want to derail any talk about a sexual ethic. They, of course, have a sexual ethic: Anything goes. On the surface that seems to be freedom: Consenting adults should be free to choose. I agree they should. But in a society in which power is not equally distributed, ?anything goes? translates into ?anything goes for men, and some women and children will suffer for it.? Any society that claims to take freedom seriously must engage in a discussion about power, and take steps to equalize power. That means taking steps to end men?s domination of women."

I never had a problem with porn until recently (I think I only ever watched really quite soft stuff before). I think I never thought it was misogynistic because the woman chose to do it.

Anyway, the last time there was a thread about porn on here I had look to see what one could find on the internet - most of the stuff is, I have to say, all about the man. All you have to do is look at it for a microsecond to know that if those things happened in real life it would be called rape.

It is horrible imagine the situation but it is exploitation. Each time a director says I want you to do x because it is what people want to see, if the porn star doesn't do it there will be someone desperate enough that will and the bar will be raised to an even more extreme level and that woman that refused to do whatever act the director wanted her to do probably won't work.

Whether we like it or not it is a misogynistic industry and I am glad that there are people like dittany fighting for people to realise it.

Dittany - ah yes, missed that it was a pointed response - sorry!

why 'agog' sprogger? Victorian Britain's attitudes to female sexuality was a lot more complex than the poster's simplified statement... if you delve deeper into the history of the era, there's much evidence of an ideal of mutual sexual pleasure, albeit within marriage.

the notion that Victorian women were all forced by men to lie back and think of Britain while their needs were ignored is both naive and cliched.

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

'Says who' is an honest response to a ridiculously naive and ignorant statement. The truth of Victorian Sexuality is much more complex than Sakura makes out.

I researched the subject for a dissertation on Art & Pornography and was surprised by the era's duality of repression and sexual expression. There's a lot of contrast in Victorian society and it's a common misconception that all women were either chaste or prostituting themselves and all the men were uninterested in satisfying a woman or thoughtless about their needs.

Although on the surface, talk of sex was taboo, there was much erotica in Victorian Britain and studies exist today of women's orgasms.

The earliest known Sex Study was from this era, by Dr. Clelia Duel Mosher. Her career and findings are very interesting if you're interested in female social/sexual history. It seems that while the SOCIAL ideal was that women's sexual feelings be denied, the reality of everyday women and men was often very different.

And sprogger, as a side issue- England and Britain are not the same thing.

It's well-known that women could be committed to a lunatic asylum for having orgasms as late as the thirties... so not that controversial a statement.

However it's right that there were exceptions. Of course men and women still managed to have enjoyable sex with each other, but we don't know the percentages who managed to transcend the cultural messages they were getting about sex being sinful and women who enjoyed it being berserk, dangerous, unstable etc. Unfortunately, there were no mediaeval/ renaissance/ enlightenment/ victorian Kinseys. (And even he was quite dodgy with his data.) So we don't know if it was a majority or a minority of the population, who had their sex lives blighted by mysogyny.

and if you send me a link to read about the 'brain experiment' (unless you're talking about your own lobotomy), I'm happy to read it.

gosh, blinks, what a knack you have for turning a debate into something very unpleasant

I am really not sure where I stand on this one.

On the one hand, what consenting adults do or watch should be no one's business bar their own. On the other hand, pre internet, pornography used to be relatively hard to access and did not seem so pervasive.

I am not remotely concerned about adults but it does seem to be influencing the way young people have relationships (or don't). When I was at school, people used to have girlfriends and gradually learn about sex together.

I was recently chatting to my 18 year old goddaughter who attended a very expensive, relatively well known 6th form college in Surrey. She informed me of "stone faced" parties where a bunch of boys and girls got together around a table and the girls took turn to give oral sex to a guy under the table. Everyone had to guess which guy by the expression on his face (hence the name I guess). There were also "rainbow" parties where all the girls wore different colour lipstick and the guys had to accumulate stripes. I asked her how many people were formally "couples" and there were very few; it was all about hook ups and, frankly, BJs. I asked what the girls got out of the whole thing and she said it was just "fun".

I have to say that I was really shocked by the above and think that you have to look at the pervasiveness of porn on the internet and the excessive prevalence of sex stories across the media. There does seem to be a strand of misogyny within the porn too with just about every porn scene ending with the guy orgasming over the woman's face. I have no idea where that came from, or when. I do not think it has always been the case.

In conclusion, I don't think porn is per se wrong and men and women do use it and enjoy it. However, it is like the difference between having a drink and being an alcoholic. Recently we have become a pornoholic society and it is doing young people no good at all.

the jizz on the face does seem to be a peculiarly pornified thing, doesn't it

perhaps I am naive and/or prudish, but I just don't know what anyone gets out of that particularly disrespectful act < shudder >

unless the disrespect is the whole point ?

I think I have answered my own question

as you were