Attitudes to sex: is it maybe a cultural thing?

[WidowWadman]

As per AF's suggestion, I'll just repeat my thoughts from the facejizzing thread and we'll take it from there:

As an aside - I wonder whether it's also a wider cultural thing aside from female/male dynamics - as in, as a German, I find the overall attitude to sex in Britain weird - it's either being ridiculed or talked about in very negative terms, and overall it's all pretty taboo.

Would a feminist from the continent look at it in a different way? I've been living here longer than I've been interested in feminism, so didn't have these discussions over there really, but the general attitude to sex and talking about it seemed/seems much more open than over here.

"I'd like it to be easier to pay one's way through one's astrophysics course by doing something more useful than enabling a wank, especially when the 'collateral damage' can be so devastating."

Don't disagree with you there at all, sinicalsanta. I personally wouldn't put those who prostitute themselves due to economic pressure under the group of women for who it was a real choice.

I don't think that it's realistic though to believe there would be ever a society in which there is no market for sex work of some sort. I'd rather have this market being catered for by those who want this line of work, than by those who are pressed into this.

Forgot to say.

When I mentioned slavery and apartheid earlier, I mentioned them because they are manifestations of white supremacy at societal level.

The institution of prostitution is a manifestation of male supremacy at societal level. Sexual violence is the cornerstone of male supremacy. Racial violence is the cornerstone of white supremacy.

I am not equating these manifestations on every level.

I am just pointing out that if you are against a system of oppression, it is highly contradictory to support its violent societal manifestations and the nature of the violence which underpins the system.

the demand for misogyny in sa comes from the patriarchy and men. not from it's visitors, if no one ever visited it would still go on. however the demand for porn, prostitution and lap dancers comes directly from it's 'visitors'. if no one ever 'went to' these things they would cease to exist. that's the striking difference to me.

however condoning and justifying the treatment of women in SA would clearly not be feminist and that's the only analogy that fits with defending porn and prostitution.

and i could choose to kill someone or i could choose to save someone. it's not that i make a choice that determines what i am it's what choice i make.

Ah right. Women don't wank or ever get stimulated by depictions/descriptions of sexual acts. If they do, then only because they've been socialised to do so. By men. Who are the only ones who actually get something out of sex

And if everybody thought hard enough about it, they'd cease to be interested in stimulation outside the bedroom. They can always wear a cilice, I guess.

A total eradication of the sex market seems impossible to me, that's why I prefer improving the working conditions of those who work in it, and make it a choice rather than forcing anyone into it. I wouldn't choose it for myself after all.

oops - misread. Thought you said the demand in porn came only from men, didn't spot the "sa". Sorry.

where the hell did that come from widow? who said women don't get stimulated or sex is just for men?

x posted. ok, i was confused as hell till you explained

It may be impossible to eradicate the market for the sexual abuse and exploitation of women, sadly. It is impossible to stop all manner of abuse but that doesn't mean society condones it. I don't see people saying it is impossible to stop domestic violence so we'll just have to hand out mouth-guards to women.

Prostitution is a human rights travesty - I don't really see how you can improve the conditions of abuse. You may be able to improve the environment in which the abuse takes place but the abuse itself remains the same.

I find it intolerable to think that we will just accept that there is a whole group of women who must service men and it is just a question of circumstances whether you end up being one of them or not. Having sexual access to another human being is neither a need nor a right.

As long as men can pay to abuse women, women will always have low status in society and we will never achieve gender equality.

Thank you SGM.

I've been thinking a bit more about the Saudi Arabia thing, and I think there are a whole bunch of reasons why there is no boycott or organised sanctions against this regime.

Firstly we don't boycott them because...oil.

Secondly like proles and yellowraincaot said, it is because the oppressed are women. And that is the bit that I've been thinking about. Of course there is the obvious fact that woman are subhuman in patriarchy so nobody gives much of a shit when we are oppressed and imprisoned (its our rightful place in the natural order after all).

And then there is another reason, which gave me a little lightbulb moment because it suddenly made a whole bunch of stuff, that I had been grappling with , perfectly clear. I was thinking about why people don't care much about prostituted women, women in porn, etc and I sort of figured that it is for the same reason as people don't care much about women not being allowed to drive or go out without a male chaperone.

It is because they think we choose it, or at least, don't have that much of a problem with it.

People will justify the institution of prostitution with the happy hooker myth. People will justify FGM by telling you that it is the women who keep this tradition going. They will turn a blind eye to the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan because it is a cultural thing and the women say they don't mind (no shit sherlock, I would say I didn't mind too if my life depended on it). And if the women minded that much why don't they leave, do something about it.

It is EXACTLY the mindset that a lot of people have about domestic violence. And rape and all the other shit that is done to women.

Women like it.

And that is why porn is so dangerous, because it sends out a resounding message that women like abuse, violence, being dominated, being raped, being sneered at, being lower status and fulfilling masculine desires. Prostitution is the same - women choose it so therefore everyone else can turn off their moral compass and their brains and say 'well it must be alright then'.

It is all the same thing.

Which of course brings us on to the concepts of internalization, normalization, socialization, choiceless choice, consent and coercion. And obliviousness to privilege and being blinded (wilfully?) by privilege.

yup. nodding along here.

Yes, Beach, yes to all that.

I also thought that part of the answer to 'why is no one protesting what happens in S.A??' has to be that DV-equivalent "Well, we're not going to go into their house country and tell them how to threat their wife women" - even if folks don't go so far as to rationalize that the women choose that life, they do think, 'well, we do as we like to our women, they do as they like to their women. What's the harm? We like to display our women being beaten and spat on for our sexual pleasure, they like to make it illegal for their women to drive. S'all cultural innit?'

In none of these thought processes are the women people. But then, if we thought of women as people, really people - even poor women, foreign women, trafficked women, women on drugs and women who aren't attractive ... if we thought they were people we couldn't support systems that violently abuse them, like prostitution and pornography. We just couldn't, surely?

Well, there is the issue that we feel a bit embarrassed about marching into someone else's country and telling them how to run it, or taking over and running it for them and killing anyone who objected. Whatever happens in Saudi Arabia, it's authentically their own.

Which is different from the other SA (South Africa) where we said that the white people shouldn't be running the place and killing anyone who objected. But that was because we felt responsible for what they were doing, in a way that we don't and aren't in Saudi Arabia.

Not that I'm saying we should keep totally silent about injustices in foreign countries, but we have to remember our own record of injustice in those same places. It's very difficult to answer the response that "You white people just won't shut up about how we live, will you?"

off topic but re: Saudi - there was a bit on woman's hour this morning about whether they should be barred from the Olympics.

Link here - scroll down and it's chapter 2.

Interesting that Saudi has come up on this thread - DH and me could have gone to live there when he came out of the Air force ( for him to work there) tempting as it was from the financial pov (we'd have been able to pay off our mortgage in 5 years) I couldn't bear the thought of living in a place where women are seen as possessions.
I'm ashamed of visiting Egypt a few years ago, I had no idea that 90% of women there, Muslim and Christian, have been victims of FGM. We took my FIL with us and it used to creep me out when every Egyptian man we spoke to, thought that I was my FIL's wife.
There are a fair few places I would like to visit but won't , Thailand being one of them, Brazil another, anywhere that is "famous" for sex tourism.
I was hugely shocked by the amount of prostitution in China too, it was highly visible in the hotels.

Not visiting places doesnt help the women who are exploited or abused. That stance irritates me, sorry.

Agree with all Beachcomber has said.

Well, it helped in South Africa when they brought down Apartheid, Shoopaloop.

The point about Saudi is also that white and/or western people are massively part of the problem. Live their longer than a week and you'll see plenty of people who you previously considered your liberal brothers hiring a "maid", paying her a dollar a day and making her work day and night.

Saudi has a massive expat population.

agree shoop - doesn't achieve a thing.