Pornography vs. erotic fantasy

[mumwithdice]

Right, now, this may have been done before and if it has, please point me to the thread plus apologies for rehashing.

I was reading Caitlin Moran's book and her objection was that there isn't enough pornography for a female audience or something like that. When I read what she actually wanted, people making love, I thought a) there's plenty of that in Mills and Boon or any fanfiction/fanart (she mentions Aslan) and b) that's not pornography, that's erotic fantasy.

Given that I think Caitlin Moran is a relatively intelligent woman, I started to wonder if (and I really really hope this doesn't come across as patronising; if it does, I apologise) people who accuse those of us against pornography of being prudish humbugs have made the same mistake of confusing pornography with erotic fantasy. Thus they think that when we are anti-pornography we are anti any sexual fantasies and this is where the accusations of prudery come in.

Is this a possibility?

Who said Ban it All, SGB? You're taking it all very personally, I'd go as far as to say you're bleating and whining about it. If i remember rightly you're an erotic writer yourself? Well, even if you're not totally objective, at lest you're not a prude. Phew, eh

What SGB said.

Who said ban it, SGB?

Disclaimer: no, I didn't really report the post about Draco and leather trousers .... I was doing this thing called 'joking'.

I think this is yet another area where we need to address attitudes with education. In this case, I would say it would be helpful to encourage people to think of pornography as a drug (especially with the availability we now have on the internet). At one end of the scale it might be a little bit like caffeine - a light and enjoyable stimulant - but at the other end it can be pure Class A: the production makes unethical people rich, abuses the workers involved, attacks society and reduces the 'users' to hollowed-eyed wrecks.

Slightly OTT reaction there SGB. I already said I didn't think censorship was the way to go.

No one is arguing for the banning of Mills and Boon, which would be ridiculous. I was simply musing on how it's still a part of the whole thing, albeit at the extremely gentle end where it's doing no harm. Erotic fiction can fall anywhere between the two extremes. Some of it is nasty nasty stuff, some of it is nice. I think jenny makes a good point about how we should discuss this as part of a spectrum, with people free to make their own choice about where they fall in it but with an accepted awareness that the one extreme can portray extremely unhealthy attitudes towards women.

I thought you made a good point about we have books about serial killers, murders, horror, etc and how the people who read them are mostly perfectly normal, decent people who don't go round thinking it's acceptable to kill people just because they're read about it in a book. I read a lot of crime fiction myself and I've got no desire to go round killing people.

However, in horror/sci-fi books, the scenario is very different to the world we live in, so no one confuses it with real life and ordinary people. In crime fiction the killers are nearly always caught and punished. Good always tends to triumph in the end. In all these books there is always a plot and usually some sort of resolution in the ending, which more often than not has a moral judgement in it.

Most visual porn doesn't have moral judgements. Women can play out rape scenes for other people's enjoyment and no one gets punished. In fact the woman will have to pretend she likes it, and IMO that does contribute to rape myths, such as 'no means yes', etc. Murder is punished in our society. Rape and sexual crimes against women - not so much. Not by a long shot.

Now I agree that good erotic fiction isn't like that, and if people enjoy reading it good for them. But I make no apologies for feeling that the hard core stuff that plays into misogyny and rape myths should be treated with derision and come with a warning cover. If that makes me like Mary Whitehouse so be it.

Of course most will be middle-of-the-range stuff that reinforces gender stereotypes but isn't misogynistic. I think it's a lot easier to see through the stereotypes but still enjoy these if we make it clear that the nasty stuff is extreme and unacceptable.

The older I get, the more I think that Mary Whitehouse might have had some nebulous truth underneath all the behind-the-times crustiness we associate her with... Am I just getting conservative myself?

I'm also reminded, in discussions of this type, of the '64 Potter Stewart quote:

" I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [hard-core pornography]; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it..."

It is fiction no one is harmed in the "creation" of it if you don't like it fine but that does not make it wrong. Unless anything radical feminists don't like is just wrong wrong wrong basically our way or the highway?

Difficult to know what you're saying is or isn't fiction there GBDad. Any chance of a comma?

Gingerbread Dad you must have missed the posts that have explained why they perceive it to be harmful.

I really don't get it, not everything you don't like is wrong, works of fiction are not like pornography where there may be possible exploitation. It just looks like you want a authoritarian regime.

There are many books where the bad guy wins should we get rid of those as well? because they are not putting out the message you want. Whether you like it or not peoples tastes vary.

Yes I read the posts you have made previously

This is the problem with all art forms, surely? Where should we create the parameters for what is acceptable? Where do we draw lines for censorship? These are almost unanswerable questions...

Have you missed the objectification points made, then, GingerbreadDad? Because it seems like you have not really read the thread, just decided that the feminist prudes don't like sex and want to stop other people enjoying it. When in reality the discussion is a bit deeper than I Don't Like It.

I agree Jenny, censorship isn't the answer, because you are letting one person/a few people arbitrate for everyone else. (I mean if it was up to me I'd ban plumber based porn/erotica as I had an unsexy experience with a plumber once thereby pissing off all the millions of plumber-fanciers out there). On a practical level, censorship is impossible, now more than ever. But I think that we should collectively assert what we don't find acceptable. Much like we do with child porn, it's totally taboo.

Yup.

([German accent] I'm here to fix the washing machine... lol. Plumber porn )

This isn't a debate about censorship v anything goes.

I don't want porn banned. Not least because it will go completely underground which would be even more harmful for women. And if I don't want porn banned then I am hardly going to ask for erotic literature to be banned.

What I want is for some control over how the sex industry is marketed and how mainstream porn and erotica becomes as a result.

I don't know about you, but I don't want 9-year-old kids watching/listening to Rihanna writhing around talking about S&M. I've got no problem with S&M and I think open relationships can be a good thing. My young children already know the facts of life and when they become sexually active I will support them in their choices so that they remain healthy and safe. I am hardly a prude. But I don't want my kids growing up thinking that most sexual relationships involved bondage gear the way the current crop of female pop stars are portraying it. That's not healthy and no one will convince me that it is.

Someone will undoubtedly say "well don't let them listen to it then". OK, I don't. But plenty of parents will. The largest part of any pop fan-base is children, teens and the under 25s. It's a well-known demographic. Parental influence can only go so far and peer pressure is a well-defined and understood phenomenon. A whole generation is currently growing up being bombarded with these messages and thinking misogynistic terms for women - bitch, ho - are acceptable, that sex routinely involves bondage and burlesque gear, that women are basically prostitutes (kanye west, nelly), that it's fine for relationships to involve violence (eminem).

I'll give teenagers the credit they deserve - a significant amount of them are able to see through this. But an awful lot aren't.

One of the reasons so-called pornpop is so prevalent now is because porn has become so mainstream and acceptable in our society. I don't think trying to get it out of the mainstream is a bad thing. That doesn't mean banning it. It means making it private, between adults, not having it available at children's eye level in supermarkets or splashed all over daytime MTV or playing as soundtracks in soft-play centres and youth-clubs.

Now erotic literature is not in the same league, I agree. For a start it's less visual and you have to read it to take it in. You won't see kids absorbing through advertising and mainstream culture.

I said I hadn't made my mind up about how I felt it should be handled. I don't like it for the reasons I gave in my first post, but I am NOT calling for it to be banned. I was simply pointing out that it may be at the other end of the spectrum from hardcore porn but it is still on the spectrum. Therefore, if you're going to talk about erotic literature, to some extent you will end up having a discussion about porn generally.

I don't think that's a bad thing actually. Why we can't have a culture where we don't normalise misogyny but where you can still get hold of erotica?

You are now comparing child pornography to erotica? who is this 'we' by the way.

I am sure there are people who would find some of the things you have read unacceptable and would gladly like that to be taboo. Who decides what literature is taboo or not, whilst you are not into the plumber fantasy you acknowledge that there are probably a large number of women that are so why does your view trump theirs?

I agree totally Sunshine.

Thankyou Sal

No Gingerbread Dad. Read what I wrote. I am comparing attitudes towards child porn and erotica.

And I've already said - more than once - that I don't wish to ban anything. Because it's too subjective. That's what my post is about.

Well said Sunshine.

Two very thoughtful and reasonable posts from sunshine there.

Fair enough about pop culture etc I have no quarrel with that, I do however think that you are going to have to accept that people en masse are just not going to like the same things as you, especially with when it comes to works of fiction. The majority of erotica readers are adults and mainly women at that, and like you said you won't see children absorbing it from the media.

SinicalSal you said that you want it to be taboo similar to how child porn is considered taboo, which means you might as well ban it.

I don't see this ever being a popular view, it will just look like censorship to most people, a real person can't be used as a banner to show the harms of erotica since it is fiction, and there is no actual sign of it having any affect in the mainstream. And if that should be considered taboo what other genres should be. (That's not including that there are many people that like reading those works)

Anyway it has been an interesting discussion but I doubt any minds will be changing so best for me to leave you to it.

No not really GingerbreadDad, I do want people to stand up and express their disquiet at what they don't find acceptable, as that would be a collective decision, if you like rather than an individual censor's. It's difficult though as it's so normalised that only a prude/killjoy would possibly object. Not a perfect approach.
I don't think anyone is drawing an equivelance between porn and erotica, apart from the objectification argument - but it's relatively mild in erotica compared to mainstream porn.

"SinicalSal you said that you want it to be taboo similar to how child porn is considered taboo, which means you might as well ban it"

No it doesn't. It doesn't mean that at all.

What a wild extrapolation.

I'm glad there has been some acknowledgement that erotic fiction (or even pornography full stop) isn't one big homogeneous mass. There are many different shades of grey between vanilla handholding and, oh let's say, Poppy Z Brite's munting scenes.

Interestingly enough, while the debate on here is whether erotic fiction or written pornography is misogynistic because of how it portrays women, the places I read fiction have a similar debate from a completely different POV. Thousands of women read erotica that doesn't even involve women. Slash fiction is huge. The argument there is whether only reading or writing m/m porn is in itself a misogynistic act. That it's women hating not to celebrate female sexuality in some way, that women are showing an innate self hatred by reading erotic fiction that concentrates on male sexuality. The lack of het or femme slash is seen as a bad thing.

THere is a great deal of fiction that perpetrates 'bad' messages. All that fucking chicklit about how careers are irrelevant and career women either end up bitter frustrated lonely mentally ill lesbos or pack in the job to go and service a man and be a breeding machine. The endless depictions of paedophile serial killers - in quite a few novels they 'get away with it': quite a lot of contemporary crime fiction does not have a tidy little moral with the bad guys arrested and the heroic cop getting his wounds kissed better by the vapid shoved-in 'love interest'. Sympathetic terrorists. Extremely violent 'heroes' who rampage around killing people who just annoy them a bit.
But anyone trying to ban or censor or even just object to crime/thriller fiction just gets treated like a loon, whereas anyone having a whine about the horribleness in erotic fiction gets all the chin-stroking and the manufactured outrage on their side. What is the actual moral difference between writing a story about a horribly abused child and calling it a 'misery memoir' or a 'dark poetic expose of the wickedness of the modern world' - or calling it 'subversive erotica' -when it's the same story?