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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Not All Porn: Why the good parts don't matter

180 replies

AskBasil · 21/10/2014 22:48

This is one of the best articles I've read about porn. It just says everything so well

stoppornculture.org/2014/10/21/notallporn-why-the-good-parts-dont-matter/

OP posts:
ZombiePuffinsAreREAL · 25/10/2014 12:39

Loving the "commentators on CiF = serious pro feminist thought" idea.

Shows such a deep and thorough understanding of the issues. Such knowledge of that audience. And the level to which pro porn women sink in defence of their need to watch other women being hurt, harmed, abused and degraded.

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 25/10/2014 13:17

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MiniTheMinx · 25/10/2014 14:25

Claire sorry, but I am also of the opinion that you have not read the whole article. You are focussing on one very specific part of his argument. So lets start with your argument about his proposition that
"This is porn that exists, right now – and statistically, it’s what most men are watching"

He says "Go the front page of a porn site and just read the titles" He doesn't say "Go search for the kind of porn you like"

So, it still stands that if you go to the front page of a porn site the titles will be as he suggests "hate speech" (I can't be bothered to go into what is and what isn't hate speech)

How does it then follow that this is the porn that most men are watching? Well, the top sites come up in the top of the search do they not? The complexity of the algorithms that search engines use, ensures that those sites that are most popular, bring in the most income are also the sites that can afford to pay for hours to have web designers ensure they come top in the rankings and get displayed first. If you look at the front page of these sites you can only agree with him, the titles represent the acts, the titles are hate speech, so what follows is a manifestation of men hating women. It really isn't difficult.

MiniTheMinx · 25/10/2014 14:27

Oh I should also add, that even if you search "for the kind of porn you like" you will still be directed to the sites in the same way. So that if you go to the front page...it follows that what you read is...

MiniTheMinx · 25/10/2014 14:44

and Thank you AskBasil its a brilliant article, well written with a REALLY clear argument. The utilitarian logic that says "well its only a few women" or a bit of violence, but it's balanced by far more happy fluffy stuff, is just wrong thinking.

"so that all men and most women can have free speech, we will overlook the fact that there is a minority of women that won't have that same respect ( or is that privilege)" err, how do you choose which women? "oooh no we couldn't do that" but because the vagaries of the free market choose for us, it must be fair!

claireredfield · 25/10/2014 22:57

Web stat site Alexa probably gives the best estimate of what the most popular sites are and it would appear that video streaming sites and web cam sites come out top. Having had a look at some of those stream sites there is definitely some crude language being used but whether that is mysoginistic, violent or racist is highly debatable. Looking at some of the most popular original content sites, we have Playboy, Femjoy, voyeurweb, ftvgirls, MPL studios to name a few. None of these are violent, mysoginistic or racist and are what I would call 'good porn'. I thought the bloke in the article said such sites didn't exist or were extremely rare? Also doing his test of blanking out the pictures and reading the text only doesn't work out as he described for these sites.

www.alexa.com/topsites/category/Top/Adult
www.alexa.com/topsites/category/Top/Adult/Image_Galleries

so basically this guy is trying to pass off extreme porn as being mainstream and badging it as the 'modern porn industry' which is a totally untrue. when best estimates would indicate most people are actually looking at web cam sites and softcore stuff.

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 25/10/2014 23:10

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YonicScrewdriver · 25/10/2014 23:27

Claire

The second most popular link in your first link is YouPorn, which apparently is the 120th most visited site on the internet.

Is YouPorn full of "good porn" on its home page and beyond?

Oh, the first one in your examples I saw on the first list was playboy, the 3553th most visited site on the internet.

YonicScrewdriver · 25/10/2014 23:28

And YouPorn was the most popular site in your second link.

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 26/10/2014 09:55

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YonicScrewdriver · 26/10/2014 10:05

Thank you for looking, Buffy.

BriarRainbowshimmer · 26/10/2014 10:25

That's typical brutal pornspeak Buffy that can be see on any of these hugely popular streaming sites. I'm surprised no "teen" vids came up. I'm still traumatised from visiting such sites. I wish I had documented things when I did to show how vile it is.
It's always about "slamming" and "punishing" women. I mean sl*ts. If the actual videos on these sites didn't tell you enough, the language certainly does.

I'm thinking of those words used about women. Slurs are used to dehumanize the target of an attack. Ethnic slurs makes it easier to see others as truly "other", not human, and attack.

It's like, if women are slts and whres, they somewhow deserve brutality.

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 26/10/2014 10:29

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BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 26/10/2014 10:31

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BriarRainbowshimmer · 26/10/2014 10:39

To me these aren't just nasty words and pictures on a website, it's words used to describe, and footage of, real girls and women. Being hurt. Humiliated. Raped. At best, having sex they don't actually feel much like having for money. Or sex they wanted to have but the video was uploaded on the internet without their consent.
I used to be able to, but I can't go to a porn site now, too triggering.

I don't know what to tell you Buffy but I'm also grateful that someone was able to go look and report back the obvious facts.

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 26/10/2014 10:44

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BriarRainbowshimmer · 26/10/2014 11:06

Yes. Why can't porn be considered hate speech? Pornographer like to think about it as free speech. Is it the whole sex between consenting adults who totally enjoy slurs thing? But the women and girls in the videos aren't always adults, or consenting.

From my last visit to a streaming porn site, redtube or whatever. I couldn’t bring myself to document with screenshots but I wish I had.
Teen category + most popular = video description focused on how young and tiny the girl was and how the large adult man was harming her. That was the most popular video.
Categories for race. Standard.
Unsurprisingly, the view that women are bunch of wankholes for men. No actual promotion of sex as I see it or eroticism. Sex and women described as dirty. Not the men though.
”Woman friendly” category with just a few vids. Probably not aimed at women like I first thought, but just not obviously abusive.

Two ads I will never forget -
Ad1 A revenge porn ad with the face of a girl who looked about 12
Ad2 A cg art image of a male orc beheading female elves while raping them. Yes, really.
I will never forget this shit, and I doubt the site looks any better now.

YonicScrewdriver · 26/10/2014 11:19

Buffy, sorry to be confusing. I thanked you for looking because I wouldn't have wanted to type out the words you did.

I struggle with porn more that other forms of social Injustice (and yes, I have an iphone so am a hypocrite, blah blah) because the purpose of some of it is to watch the injustice happening and get off on it. The injustice and hate speech of "slam the sluts" type porn is the point of it, rather than a side effect.

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 26/10/2014 11:40

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msrisotto · 26/10/2014 12:10

I wouldn't visit that website, i've seen the kind of stuff on there and am not scared of seeing it again, but don't want to. Ever. It is threatening stuff.

SolidGoldBrass · 27/10/2014 00:17

I wasn't convinced by the article, either. I typed 'porn' into Google, which took me to Pornhub, the front page of which didn't list any clips featuring 'hurt' or 'punishment' apart from one on 'spanking', which is a fairly common consensual fetish. And he completely ignores the steadily-growing movement for ethical/fairtrade/feminist porn ie stuff made with willing, fairly-treated performers, probably because it wouldn't fit with his All Men Are Beasts APart From Me stance.

CommonPerson · 29/10/2014 22:00

His argument is invalid.

It seems to rest on the idea that porn is a single, unitary industry run by some kind of single, unitary authority, and that therefore if you condone or consume any part of it you are somehow responsible for all of it. Even if the porn you condone or consume is morally OK and victimless you are then supposedly duty bound to answer spurious questions about how much harmful, violent porn is "justified" by it.

Quite simply, if someone watches a piece of non-violent, consensual porn, then they are responsible for their OWN actions not anyone else's. If someone else somewhere in the world is watching someone being raped at the same time, and you disapprove on the basis of it being rape, then that has nothing to do with the other person. We're not morally responsible for the actions of other people doing other things.

In fact the writer gave the game away when he admitted that he doesn't actually accept that any porn can be OK. So, as is often the case with these things, his aim isn't really to make the argument he pretends to make. His true aim is simply to assert that all porn is bad. He would have been better off admitting that at the beginning and not clouding the issue with a poor argument attempting to show that "good" porn doesn't justify "bad" porn (which noone ever claimed it does, and there's really no reason why it should).

It's a bit like people who hold ordinary peaceful muslims responsible for the actions of Al Qaeda, and expect them to explain and justify how they can carry on being muslims when that makes them "part" of something so terrible. When you dig a little deeper into such "arguments", you invariably find someone that just doesn't like muslims.

SolidGoldBrass · 30/10/2014 01:01

Very good point, CommonPerson.

OctopusAndScrabble · 30/10/2014 08:57

[Disclosure: am male, have watched porn]

I agree with CommonPerson that it's a bizarre and specious argument. It really doesn't make sense.

I am actually amazed at the number of people who seem to think porn is, by default, rape. And that a large proportion of porn depicts rape.

Do you think porn generally depicts the female participants refusing sex and being forced to have it against their will? Struggling to escape? Being threatened with guns or something?

I genuinely can't picture what porn looks like in your imaginations. And it is happening in your imaginations because you're so horrified by the titles (the titles don't actually match the content by the way) you could never in a million years watch the actual porn. So you're left inventing porn in your minds. And yes, that porn is pretty repugnant.

The key fictional element in nearly all porn is women willingly, cheerfully having sex. For most men, that's enough.

But hey, if the mere existence of categories on a porn site featuring Black and Asian women makes you sick to your stomach, how can there even be a sensible discussion?

OctopusAndScrabble · 30/10/2014 09:12

Other things which have both good and bad aspects:

  • alcohol
  • driving cars
  • chocolate

I ask the pro-wine women a simple question: In your calculus, how many glasses of champagne per liver failure? How many cheeky Chardonnays per violent altercation? If one woman’s addiction makes ten other women have a great laugh out on the town, does that justify it? What about a hundred? A thousand?

If wine did not exist, the world would be a better place. And mumsnet has an icon for it.