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?

Intent, I suppose Springchicken.
Or maybe what they pretend is intent. You're supposed to cry over the abused child, not get off. Maybe the details are different, descriptions are more salacious or condemned. I don't know - i don't read either.

SinicalSal: But the author's intent doesn't necessarily affect in any way what the reader experiences. Same as the intent of an artist who makes a picture (painting, drawing, computer-manipulation of images) might mean one thing by it and it be interpreted in a totally different way by a viewer.

WRT misery memoirs (I am counting these in with fiction as so many of them keep turning out to actually be fiction or at least very much exaggerated) I sometimes wonder what percentage of the sales are, in fact, to individuals who like to have a good wank over depictions of suffering - talk about safe, legal, easily accessible abuse-porn! Thing is, even if there are a lot of unsavoury types jizzing all over these things, is that a reason to ban them or restrict their sale?

SGB good point about misery memoirs.

I think Sal has a good point though. I think the author's intent does affect perception, even if some viewers/readers chooses to interpret in a totally different way.

Misery memoirs make no bones about the fact that abuse is wrong, even if the person reading it gets off on it. And chick lit may be harmful to women in the sense that it paints them as only ever wanting a man to be really happy, but that's much more about gender stereotyping than it is about misogyny. Most chick lit doesn't encourage rape or violence.

Again though, I'm not calling for the banning of anything and I wouldn't make a ridiculous suggestion that something like M&B should only be available in sex shops.

What I'm saying is that if you restrict the venues that visual porn is sold in, you can leave erotic literature where it is. You send a clear message about what is considered acceptable in mainstream culture without having to resort to banning anything. Popular erotic literature like M&B is a much gentler genre than soft-porn mags or lads mags anyway, and if magazines like Playboy become harder to come by, the covers of erotic literature will become tamer still and leave the real erotica on the inside pages, where it belongs and where it is not subconsciously assimilated by children. Likewise, pop may start becoming more child friendly too.

I don't think author intent does affect perception that much, at least partly because to a lot of authors, the intent is the story. Sure, some authors set out to write something that transmits a message eg all priests are nonces, greed is good, everyone needs to get a little jeeeezus in their lives, but the more an author is trying to Send A Message with a work of fiction, the more crap the fiction, on the whole. Good stories, even when dumped/tweaked into fitting genre publishers' rules, remain good stories, explorations of What If?

There is such a thing as Tony Blair + Gordon Brown slash fiction. I just thought I'd share that with you.

While I understand the points about objectification, Mills and Boon pushing very dull ideas of female sexuality, I think the point being overlooked is that for many, erotic fantasy is a place for people to sexually explore in a way that they probably wouldn't want to in real life, while not actually hurting anyone.

SBG - I still lol at 'Two bob for a hand job on Shit Street'.
Aside from that, you have a point about censorship of violence vs cenorship of sexual material. I can't have been the only one to notice that newspapers have become far more graphic when describing murders and other violent crimes.

GAG: Yup. I can just imagine... No, actually NO! Don't make me imagine it .
Mind you, talking of things DC perhaps ought not to see, what about the proleporn mags so brightly enticing on the newsagent shelf? I picked one up today - 'Dad Paid 50p to RAPE me' Explain that to your 7 year old...

I remember when my Gran used to read Take a Break (that was it then). It was mainly short stories, puzzles, one uplifting story (usually about a baybee), one sad story where someone died tragically and some recipes.

Now magazines of that ilk are full of true crime, child abuse, violence and incest (one magazine seems fixated on the latter). I do wonder about all this purience being marketed to women. Why is it happening and what does it mean?

You know, thinking about the various newsagents/magazine covers, which do you think is going to upset your early-reading bright 5 year old more? 'Hypothetical Heidi Gets Her Tits Out' or 'Evil Dad Barbecues Babies'?

The latter, definitely.

I am really pondering this now. Why have that section of women's magazines become like this? It is graphic violence as tititlation being sold to women. And those stories are gruesome, with a level of detail that used to only be available in true crime magazines.

I am no fan of lad mags, but their premise is clear, to take an already existing desire (looking at attractive women) and fulfill it in a 'fast food' manner.

Whereas I have no idea what need grim stories in 'proleporn', with each issue seeking to plumb the depths of the nastiest abuse, the most outrageous incest stories etc, are meant to satisfy.

Oddly, the magazines have joyful titles like 'Take a Break', 'Chat', 'That's Life', yet their contents are anything but.

I am unaware of any feminist analysis of these magazines, I would be very interested to read some.

Me too, now you mention it. There was always a fair bit of 'Hubby threw bubs out of the window but I still wuvs him' in those mags, but there was usually a vibe of overcoming tragedy and the importance of forgiveness and all that crap.
Wierdly, now, along with the nasty incest/child abuse/completely gratuitous cover shot of some woman's fanjo that got detonated in a bizarre unlicense beauty salon incident, they do seem to run the odd useful/even feminist campagin.

I'd see the rise in graphic descriptions of violence and the salacious nature of the red-tops as very much linked to the mainstreaming of porn culture. You could argue the same about the rise in misery memoirs, which have seen a huge growth in recent years.

One of the main ways in which people justify the presence of increasingly graphic media is that there is already something else like it out there. Then they push out something that's similar but just that little bit more. It becomes a continual exercise of pushing boundaries. That's what I think is exactly what's happened with the mainstreaming of porn - as a result the pop genre, tabloids, etc have all become more graphic.

Nobody wants to go down the road of censorship (it never works anyway) and I don't think there's any need, but unless we want the pornification of our society to continue unchecked, we do need a grown-up, non-reactionary discussion about it. It is possible to protect freedom of speech, expression and sexual liberty while also placing limits on the accessibility of pornographic and violent media.

Do you not think that it is a self limiting phenomenon? I've wondered about this in the past. There have been some very liberal, decadent periods of history (or at least that's what we've been taught, the actual day-to-day reality may have been different IDK) and at some point there's been a backlash and a rise in more puritan mindset. There's a certain small paranoid part of me that's waiting for it - that sees the media overstepping so many marks - that worries that their bad behaviour will lead to a massive overreaction in terms of censorship, and that the private will be punished and clamped down upon as well as the public.

I agree, we do need a rational discussion on pornography and violence within the public sphere or we may find that the choice gets taken from us.

I blame Murdoch for a lot of it. This isn't about porn, this culture of prurience and hysteria, sentimentality and spite. It's about getting people to switch off their brains and deal only with their emotions, therefore becoming easier and easier to manipulate.

Yes SGB that's quite similar to my thinking on it. The mainstreaming of porn is a symptom rather than a cause I feel, though now it's become established it's self-perpetuating. We could do with a massive investigation into all forms of media/publishing, the role they play in society and how that reflects or drives cultural norms and political ideology.

I also think MrsDTK that you are right about the possible danger of any backlash. I don't think anyone who cares about women wants to see a rise in the abstinence movement or the demonisation of any form of sex that doesn't take place in a married relationship. These sorts of approaches have always been used to control women as well as stigmatising huge sections of society of both sexes. I'd far rather see sane people changing things so we have protection for the vulnerable and punishment for abusers while allowing personal freedom to everyone else.

yes, I agree with that SGB, and MrsDTK.

I blame Jeremy Kyle for those taB type mags - I think he even has a problem page in one of them.

It's nice to say "I blame Murdoch etc" but there is a sense in which the suppliers are just taking advantage of an avid audience--it's the essence of capitalism that willing buyers purchase from willing sellers. Yes, the demand is created to some extent by advertising, but there's really a whole web of supply and demand, to the point where I don't think it's fair to single out any one part. How about blaming Murdoch and Wade (yes, Wade) along with every one of their subscribers? We don't have to buy their stuff, but a lot of us happily do.

"Nobody wants to go down the road of censorship..." well actually some people do, but as you say, it never works. But people will consider it because they can't think of an alternative.

It's a circle all right Teitetua between supply and demand. My feeling is that this race-to-the-bottom stuff is just dollar-chasing driven by business rather than thrill-chasing driven by consumers.

I don't really have anything to add, but I'm pleased to be reading the discussion. As I usually kill threads, it's nice to see one go on. So thank you all for reading and posting.

Murdoch and his ilk have been deliberately driving this culture, though (and the supreme tosspot Blair was very keen on it) - not just encouraging people to want to know stuff that is actually none of their fucking business (ie slebs mental health issues, 'ordinary' people's sexual preferences that do not involve harming anyone else) but exhorting them to work themselves up into a frenzy over it. All this shit about how if you are not screaming and shitting your pants and blubbering in the street about a particularly photogenic murder victim or some spurious 'threat' to 'everyone' you are an emotionally crippled sociopath, or 'out of touch with ordinary people' - basically this bombardment of everyone with the message that emotion and the display of emotion is far superior to logic.... well the idea of that is that you can get away with absolute fucking murder in terms of ripping people off and taking away their rights if you get them all revved up and convince them that thinking is Bad and feeling is superior.