Vile vile Ann Summers product

[Dillytante]

Apologies if there has already been a thread on this.

Bj strap

I actually don't know what to say about this.

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"Asking for it to be removed would simply have meant that it was not in a high street store, and would have to be purchased from somewhere that was only visible to adults."

Do you reaheally believe that a teenager today is more likely to have a snoop in a physical Ann Summers store, than on the interweb? Like that place they can browse around in total privacy without anyone gatekeeping (I don't believe that netnanny etc works for anyone who's averagely computer savvy).

LeBOF -"disingenous means "Not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does."

I don't buy that there is no moral judgement. And I don't buy that those who claim they don't judge are unaware that they do.

I think the fact that the object is 'endorsed' by Ann Summers might be seen to give it some kind of fun normalisation, or credibility, redwine. So your point would still be valid.

I am not making a moral objection. I have been very clear why I object, and to what.

No, I am certain that if one of my children was looking for things to do with sex (the younger one is too young, but the older one is 13), they would look on the internet.

And they are aware that the social legitimacy of things on the internet is entirely different to that of everyday life in shared spaces like the high street. I think they would find it threatening (as would I) if shared public spaces were like the internet.

Which is why I am more concerned with the sex industry being in public spaces than I am about less mild stuff on the internet. Deciding not to go on various parts of the internet or only to go on them for short periods of time to look up something you are curious about is entirely different to being presented to them in public spaces whether you want to see them or not, be that ever or at that particular moment in time.

LeBOF, I think it means that people sometimes feel uncomfortable when behaviour is named and analysed.

Of course BDSM is abuse/abusive. That doesn't mean that it is abuse in the way that domestic violence is (although it can be) or emotional abuse is.

The difference is, of course, consent and fetishization. I am perfectly aware of that.

As people have taken great pains to point out, BDSM is generally a practice between consenting adults. I just think it is extreme cognitive dissonance to claim that consent changes the nature of the acts. It changes the way the acts are experienced by the people involved, but it doesn't change the acts themselves.

I find it rather dishonest and deluded frankly to try to argue otherwise.

"I just think it is extreme cognitive dissonance to claim that consent changes the nature of the acts"

Are you being serious?

WidowWadman I can assure you that I am being perfectly candid and sincere. Why wouldn't I be?

I make no moral judgement on people's personal consenting happy sex lives.

I'm talking purely in terms of gender politics (cos that's what feminism is).

Yes of course.

Hitting a person or tying a person up, is the same act of itself whether it is with consent or not. The motivation, experiencing, sensations, emotions and feelings around the act will vary considerably depending on consent, but the act itself remains the same.

If I punch you in the face because you ask me too and you like it, I'm still punching you in the face. Non?

It may be a lovingly received consensual pleasurable punch in the face, but it is still a punch in the face.

My children are way too young to be searching for sex on the internet, but I am more concerned about what they would find online than what they would find in Ann Summers.

I have a friend with a 10 year old son. The class teacher asked to speak to eight parents in her son's class, including her son, because they had been joking about anal sex during breaktime. He said that he had heard about it from his friend, who had found it on the internet after clicking on links from sites. The internet can lead you onto subjects that you never knew existed - there could easily be a sixteen year old girl (or six year old) reading this thread and googling some of the terms. That six year old girl would be very unlikely to wander into Ann Summers.

Yes, there are things on the internet that many people, of many ages, would rather they hadn't come across.

Why is that a reason to put them on the high street as well?

The things on the internet are much worse than the things in Ann Summers. AS is positively virginal in comparison.

I think the economics at the moment are worth giving a big of thought to here actually.

Are AS stocking this on the High Street or just online? If it is just online, then its telling imo. I would imagine its an economic decision to try and get a bigger slice of the market and compete with the online retailers, rather than rely on their high street market, which undoubtably is going to be massively squeezed atm with bigger overheads and lower turnovers.

I would imagine that the average Anne Summers customer tends to only buy one or two products, but they appeal to a much bigger market generally. The problem is when people's money is being so squeezed, they are going to have to turn to the more specialist market where the money still is, simply to avoid financial problems. They desperately need the repeat customers who are perhaps more demanding and more into niche areas - they perhaps need to stock things they haven't done in the past as a result and they need to avoid becoming perceived as too vanilla by those customers. I truly think they have a very difficult balancing act in this regard. If they are doing this as an online only thing, they can probably maintain the balance of not putting off or shocking too many people in their shops at the same time.

Its all very well saying that the Anne Summers brand is about 'fun' and that by introducing a product like this they somehow normalising or 'endorsing' it. What it may come down to is if they don't consider doing this, maybe they think the business as a whole is at risk are they of going under.

And if they do go under where does that leave the rest of the market in terms of whats on sale? The entire market would be more hardcore and all online.

The would imagine the reality right now is that Anne Summers is probably about being between a rock and a hard place.

I think that we need people to go into AS to do research and find out whether this is being sold in any actual AS shops. Who wants to volunteer?

Well yes, it's about money.

It's certainly not about freedom.

AS may be virginal in comparison, but that doesn't explain why some posters think the internet is in any way a reference point for deciding what is and is not on the high street.

Beachcomber

This really reads to me that you argue that consent doesn't matter, which I find very very difficult accept.

Consent is what makes the difference between assault and mutually agreed actions. Sexual intercourse, if without consent is rape. So consent does matter and changes the very nature of the act.

I'm not saying that consent doesn't matter.

I think you don't really understand what I am saying if that is the conclusion you have come to.

I know what I'm saying here may be outside of some people's Overton Window but it isn't anything terribly controversial in terms of radical feminist analysis.

What's an Overton Window?

CoS, because it was used as an argument that teens go into Anne Summers Stores and get their education about sex toys there and use it as a measure of whats 'normal' and usual sexual behaviour.

Which as a reference point, for 'normality', is frankly is a pretty loopy idea when there are so many other influences out there.

People might not want X, Y or Z on the High Street because the idea makes them feel uncomfortable but I have to say, in honesty, its a bit of a silly reason if retail in general is moving more and more towards to the internet. These days, so many people will window shop and then compare online by habit before making a large percentage of their purchases anyway.

Of course whats being sold online by the biggest retailers, regardless of whether you are talking about sex toys or bras is relevant because the two are directly linked.

I find the not on the high street argument very much a "not in my back yard response", that makes very little difference to anything ultimately. It just moves the same issue somewhere else, away from the eyes of the disapproving. So, apart from play to the sensitivities of a particular part of AS's demographic (or MN demographic), it does nothing to affect how people are influenced.

Just because the majority of sex toy retailers are online does not make them somehow seedy these days. They aren't quite the same dirty little sex shops that were around 20 or 30 years ago. They have pretty reputable and respected brand names. They have Sexperts who give advice on This Morning (Tracey Cox does a range for Lovehoney and was part of my reason for bring up This Morning earlier in the thread).

Ultimately, I personally, don't get why we have a greater sensitivity to whats on the High Street.

Hang on, you can say either consent never changes the nature of an act, or it does. You can't say that your view on consent only applies to the acts which support your argument, that's cherry picking.

An analysis which is so heavily biased and starts at the conclusion it wants to arrive, and picks and chooses accordingly is pretty worthless.

We have a greater sensitivity to what is on the high street because

a. children are on the high street, and young children generally have restricted and/or monitored internet use.

b. I am on the high street, as are people like me, and I don't want to see women being sexualised and/or portrayed as submissive.

So moving the problem elsewhere makes a huge difference to me and people like me. It is not really a NIMBY issue because nobody actually lives on the internet, so moving the problem there is not the same as me insisting that I don't want a BDSM shop next door to me so it has to open up next door to somebody else.

We all have to share public space. There is no reason, given the internet, for adults who want to view sexualised, submissive women to have that made available to them in shared space when there are plenty of sex shops and websites where they can get access to that material.

I've never seen children in Anne Summers, and the toy range is not displayed in the shop windows, but further back. Or is it the display of more or less tacky underwear you object to?

If a man presents his girlfriend with something from Ann Summers, it has a rather different sense of normality that is he presents her with something from BDSM-r-us.