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

[AskBasil]

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/

Really? Do you really think that an animation is more harmful than real women being filmed being raped, spat on, verbally and physically abused, choked, put through body punishing sex and made to say thank you, they like it and they want more...?

I'm not saying that the Disney princess isn't harmful but it really isn't on the same level as what we see being done to women in pornography.

And the women in pornography are real. What's being done to them is real. Comparing them to an animation is so cut off from reality that it is scary - although to be frank, typical of those desensitized by pornography consumption. As is the oversharing as to one's sexual habits and preferences.

"I like anal sex" is not a robust argument to justify or rationalize the existence of "teen ass holes fucked till they gape" pornography.

I don't engage much in these threads anymore because I actually find it quite disturbing how cut off and desensitized pornography consumers are to basic human decency when it comes to justifying their porn needs.

I don't agree with the images of Disney princesses but I manage to multitask and not agree with misogynistic pornography at the same time. It isn't difficult.

There are two prongs aren't there and women can never win

Either anything beyond "vanilla" sex is "slutty", or if you aren't interested in anything beyond "vanilla" sex and you're a "prude"

And of course vanilla is not a fully defined term, but you know what I mean

And if you enjoy sex you are a slut, so you should engage in acts you are unlikely to enjoy (anal sex, deep-throating, having your face ejaculated on) (caveat: of course there are some women who genuinely do enjoy those things and that's fine).

Agree, Anethyst.

I see this a lot with my pupils. There is such a distorted view of sex and sexual behaviour amongst teenagers. I'm seen as a member of staff they trust and talk to openly but the things they discuss have me very worried for the future of feminism.

Such as body image, they all aspire to the prepubescent look of shaving or waxing body hair off, this is seen as normal and you're a freak if you don't. Boys expect it now as par for the course.

If they have sex they have to be seen to enjoy it and make "porn noises" (this was the phrase used) including the painful gasps etc which only continue the belief that painful sex is mainstream and desirable.

Anal sex is seen as a way of maintaining virginity or as a method of birth control as boys won't use condoms (again it was pointed out that it's rare to see their use in the porn favoured by teens). Anal sex is again becoming the norm and this has come from porn (and is linked to the painful sex mentioned above).

I am young myself (early 30s) but to listen to these young people talk about this as if it's a matter of course shocked me and highlighted to me how quickly things change and move on in the sexual/digital world.

beach

I didn't click on that link as I was concerned (bearing in mind the subject matter) with what I might be opening

Disney princesses...really????

Agree with what you have posted and amethyst too

That's what concerns me, the messages my children may get that if they don't want to partake in certain sexual practices that there is something wrong with them, whether that comes from their peers or society

It is a good article (about giving Disney princesses real waists) but the impact of this is probably more on pre-teens and body image than on teens and women and developing sexuality:

Yep read it now, still think porn is worse

crumpled

I missed your post but I agree with absolutely every word you have written

Scollops -

"Would the fact of her not enjoying large parts of it make it unethical though?" Sex is supposed to be pleasurable. These women are supposed to be portraying a pleasurable act. Of course the fact they aren't actually enjoying it is unethical. What kind of mental hoops do you have to jump through to justify it being ethical?

The very simple one of freedom of choice. What you're overlooking here is that people sometimes choose to do things they don't particularly like, for reasons outside of the thing itself.

Women have as much right as men to do things for any reason whatsoever, as long as they don't hurt anyone else. If a woman reasons that it's worth her while to have sex on camera because she can make a large amount of money doing so that will have a positive impact on the rest of her life that outweighs the boring sex - then that's her business not mine.

Rufus -

I didn't mention the part about being forced into it because obviously that's wrong and any product created that way couldn't possibly be called "ethical". I don't know anyone who would argue otherwise.

A lot of the rest is argument for better regulation of the industry.

Yep. Jumping those mental hoops again.

Why would something that is supposed to be mutually pleasurable be unenjoyable for one of the parties? And why is that party invariably the woman? Why is this OK in your head?

"Women have as much right as men to do things for any reason whatsoever, as long as they don't hurt anyone else." Yet it appears to be ethical for men to hurt women.

And that statement isn't true anyway. Women aren't allowed to have abortions when they want. People aren't allowed to sell their own organs or give consent to be murdered and eaten. We have to wear seat belts in cars. The list goes on.

Thank you common

I think my point was you could watch a video today that was "ethical" and looked like the actors were having a lovely time and find out two years later that the woman (or man) had an awful time hated every second of it and was irreparably damaged physically by what was happening

Last tango in Paris (I know that's a mainstream film and not porn) didn't that actress come out years later and talked about how unhappy she was, how certain scenes made her feel 'raped' and that both her and Brando had been manipulated into certain things

But I'm not arguing your right to watch lovely consensual porn, it's just how would you feel if you found out later that it wasn't.

And it's fine to say its a risk you are ok taking, because I think we all do that. Clothes and sweatshops for example, being a vegetarian and eating eggs and drinking milk

Commonperson it is other people's business when it is published/sold in the public domain as "entertainment" or free speech or anything else. It is everyone's business when it is all over the internet and readily available to everyone and anyone.

How women are portrayed and treated in pornography is not a private matter. I don't say that because I have a desire to judge the choices of the women in pornography. I say it because I judge the society that I am part of and have to live in, that my children have to grow up in and negotiate.

Beach you miss my point about the Disney Princesses.
The imagery that girls are exposed to from very very young, is one of perfect looking girls who need men to save them and look after them.
That teaches them their place in society and how they will be valued, long before porn ever starts to influence them. Magazines and media perpetuate this perfect body image that is impossible to live up to.
By the time hormones kick in and porn becomes a factor, they are well and truly set up to play the part of someone who just looks good on a man's arm, and knowing that her needs are always secondary to his.

If we want to fix this problem, we have to look at the influences at a much younger age.

Amethyst, I found this post of yours very interesting:
"And if you enjoy sex you are a slut, so you should engage in acts you are unlikely to enjoy (anal sex, deep-throating, having your face ejaculated on) (caveat: of course there are some women who genuinely do enjoy those things and that's fine)."
There's a mixed message in there, that while you accept that there are some women who claim to enjoy these acts, you don't actually believe that they could be enjoyable.

The whole slut/prude issue is an enormous problem that makes it completely impossible for girls/women to have a clue how to behave.
I also think it makes it impossible for boys/men, to have a clue how to treat women.
Removing porn won't fix this. It was no better before the days of easily accessible porn. Sex was for men to enjoy and women to tolerate, so not much has changed in that respect.
We have to learn to communicate better and teach our girls that being a man's accessory, is not their role in life.

Wine - I have a big reservation with that piece on sexual consent by Stoya, and that's the amount of responsibility it places on the partner who is uncomfortable with the situation to speak up about their boundaries and preferences. Here's an article from the Guardian (admittedly based on a report from 2009, but I find it unlikely that things have magically improved in the last 5 years) describing NSPCC research finding that 1 in 3 teenage girls have suffered sexual abuse from boyfriends and 1 in 4 have suffered domestic violence.

Set against that background, I think it's incredibly dangerous to put out a piece which effectively puts equal emphasis on defending boundaries to respecting boundaries. The onus should always be on the person suggesting the sexual act to ensure that the other partner is enjoying it, not on the partner on the receiving end of the request constantly having to defend their boundaries.

As with so many of these things, what looks at first like an admirably fair division of responsibilities (the partner doing the suggesting has to check for consent, the partner being suggested to has to be clear about their boundaries so no misunderstandings can ensue) in fact is an illusion of fairness based on massively underestimating the power imbalances in the real world. (And - fundamental feminist point - which way round is the power imbalance? Because I don't think anyone is seriously going to claim that 90% of the time, it's the girl saying "let me shove a dildo up your ass like I saw on porn hub last night" while the boy lies there thinking "actually, I'm not sure I want that, but maybe she'll leave me/tell her mates I'm a slut/ tell her mates I'm a frigid bitch" if I don't go along with this).

Yes lurcio

I think the advice and the responsibilities lies 100% with BOTH people.
The person wanting something must ask and be happy to accept a no.
The person be suggested to must be happy to say no.

We cant tell people they have to stop asking because it puts unreasonable pressure on the other person to accept.
We just don't teach our young people how yo be assertive, we still teach them to be compliant.

Wine - I completely agree with your last sentence (well with one slight change - I'd say we tend to put more pressure on girls to be compliant, and encourage boys to be assertive).

But that's the point - once you accept that society does that, you can't then turn round and say "the person suggested to must be happy to say no". There's a fundamental contradiction there: it's saying in effect "I accept that society currently (and wrongly) socialises people to find it difficult to say no" while simultaneously saying "they must be happy to say no."

Yes, we need relationship education from nursery age onwards which reinforces personal boundaries, people's autonomy, the right to say no, "it's only a game if everyone's smiling", "you don't need to kiss auntie Freda/uncle Fred if you don't want to", "you can't play kiss-chase if the other child is saying no". I think we both agree totally on that.

But at the moment we don't have that - we're a million miles from having that. We have a society that dins in the precisely opposite message - that girls say no but can be talked round (Bond films onwards), that girls should be conciliatory at all times, that victim blames, that... Basically an endless tide of crap which gives both sexes massive amounts of misinformation and dangerous propaganda throughout childhood and adolescence. You can't turn round at the end of all that conditioning and say "but the onus lies with equal weight on you to say no sufficiently clearly and forcefully that the other person doesn't sexually assault you."

Wine that's fair comment actually - probably I should have said "you should engage in acts without regard for your enjoyment".

Porn makes this more problematic because it portrays those acts in a way that suggests women either ought to enjoy them or deserve to have stuff done to them that they don't enjoy. I'm not saying no women has ever got pleasure from getting a faceful of spunk, say (sorry to be coarse) but there's no physical reason why the majority of women would enjoy such a thing.

There are a number of other reasons, of course: fulfilling a partner's fantasy in the context of a loving relationship, the thrill of doing something "dirty" and porny etc. But those are not really related to female physical pleasure.

"Porn makes this more problematic because it portrays those acts in a way that suggests women either ought to enjoy them or deserve to have stuff done to them that they don't enjoy"

Yy.

Wine, I can assure you that I didn't miss your point. I'm perfectly able to grasp it, and I agree with you that images such as those commonly seen in animations influence children and often not in ways that are healthy.

I just don't see the relevence to any argument that tries to make out that pornography isn't that bad really.

My position is that the Disney princess body type brainwashing of our young is bad and that violent, abusive, misogynistic, graphic images of girls and women being filmed having body punishing sex is bad. I'm not too sure what the two have to do with each other, other than both being part of a sad, destructive and anti female culture which is all pervasive.

Disney princesses = bad does not = porn = good/harmless. Weird argument IMO.

It just sounds to me like you are arguing that if we got rid of sexist cartoons, pornography would magically become non harmful.

Which is one of the oddest and weakest defences I have ever encountered of the porn industry, and I've encountered some absolute crackers.

SGB, I know that one of your beefs with the anti-porn lobby is that it includes extreme religious groups. But doesn't the "women who like sex should be shamed" meme in some of the YouPorn stuff also have a lot in common with extreme religion?

I do agree that porn sends very confusing messages to viewers, but it see it more of a symptom of a greater problem, rather than the cause. Go back a couple of generations and women weren't expected to enjoy sex at all. Their pleasure was irrelevant to the act. Now there is a distorted image of what women enjoy and some strange notion that all women are the same.

Pleasure is not all physical. I can look at a picture of a beautiful sunset and say that brings me pleasure without anyone doubting it, yet if I say that it brings me pleasure to be ejaculated on, that makes no sense to anyone who doesn't feel the same. Its like me trying to understand why my son likes the rather strange electronic music that he listens to. Just because it does nothing for me, it doesn't make the pleasure any less valid for him. So little of pleasure is actually physical in reality. I can feel real physical pleasure from something that doesn't touch me at all, and yes, that includes a faceful of spunk. Its all about the context and the people involved. A complete stranger touching my breast would freak me out, but my husband doing it, feels amazing.

There is also the very confused issue of pain. Pain and pleasure can be very closely linked. Lots of people feel pleasure from pain, but again, context is everything. I enjoy a little BDSM but other people would run screaming from the idea and not understand my pleasure at all. That's all OK if it wasn't for the fact that people don't generally communicate their likes and dislikes, desires and boundaries very well.

If men watch a lot of porn they would certainly get a distorted picture of what women enjoy and there is no doubt that causes a big problem, but the young men who embarked on their sex life before the advent of porn, didn't do much better. If they did consider their partner's pleasure, they assumed that the mere insertion of their penis would be more than enough to fulfill their desires.