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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Math Magazine and 'good' porn.

582 replies

MrsToddsShortcut · 20/08/2016 10:28

While I can see what she is trying to do, is the concept of 'nice'/'good' porn still not skirting around the same ballpark as all the hideous, damaging degrading stuff? It's still effectively saying porn is okay. Or would you say this is closer to erotic writing, I.e no real people involved? Is it just the wide end of a very nasty wedge? Genuinely not sure how I feel about this.

Huff post article about Math magazine

OP posts:
Bitofacow · 31/08/2016 20:15

Sillage - I work with young people, mainly teenage boys, I have two sons. I utterly reject your idea of "porn hungry teens" and your demonising of "young male sexual desire".

I work with conflicted, confused young humans. They try and they fail and then we help them make better choices. We do not do this by working with them not 'othering' them.

Bitofacow · 31/08/2016 20:21

Oops. We (do not) do this by working with them not 'othering' them.

Felascloak · 31/08/2016 20:21

ghost because everyone's bought up from very early to understand the difference between a story and reality.

The women in porn aren't acting the sex acts, just the enjoyment bit. In porn you are watching a real person really doing that act. In erotica you are reading what one person thinks it might be like to do that act.

Although seriously Hmm that I'm having to explain the difference between fact and fiction here

TheGhostOfTroubledJoe · 31/08/2016 20:48

ghost because everyone's bought up from very early to understand the difference between a story and reality.
Although seriously hmm that I'm having to explain the difference between fact and fiction here

I get, given your sarcastic sceptical face, that it seems very clear cut to you. All I'm saying is that it seems much less so to me. Porn is as much a fiction as a written story isn't it? Just because something is filmed doesn't make it real. I don't think porn could ever claim to be in any way realistic. That plumber who turns up at the housewife's home with his top off and an oversized wrench in his hand ? I never really believed that he was corgi registered.

What I think you're saying is that in a porn scene depicting a rape, because you actually see it played out it is harmful in a way that reading about a rape is not?

Bitofacow · 31/08/2016 20:49

Corgi registeredGrin

Felascloak · 31/08/2016 20:55

Obviously I'm not talking about whether the gas man is really corgi registered.
The sex in porn is real. That actress is really getting her head pulled back by her hair or jizzed in the face, or any one of a number of degrading or painful things. It's not acted like a sex scene in a film. It's not fantasy like a passage in a book. A woman somewhere really did that stuff.
Like I said, the only acting in it is the enjoyment.

Storytelling is a huge part of himan culture. So we can all separate a story from reality.
We also learn factual stuff from observation so I'm not too surprised that watching someone do something violent to a woman will produse a different effect than reading it.

Felascloak · 31/08/2016 20:59

And if you think that filmed porn is equivalent to written erotica, why do you think there's been such a huge move to filmed porn showing explicit detail of penetration? Surely people would be satisfied with film sex scenes, where noone is running the risk of getting physically hurt, pregnant or catching diseases?

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 31/08/2016 21:11

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TheGhostOfTroubledJoe · 31/08/2016 21:24

And if you think that filmed porn is equivalent to written erotica, why do you think there's been such a huge move to filmed porn showing explicit detail of penetration? Surely people would be satisfied with film sex scenes, where noone is running the risk of getting physically hurt, pregnant or catching diseases

Sorry Felascloak it might just be my tired head at the end of a long day but I'm not sure what you're asking me here. I don't see what link there is between erotica and a change in the filming style of porn.

TheGhostOfTroubledJoe · 31/08/2016 21:36

Thanks for the interesting further post Buffy Some big questions in there that I'm far to stupid to have answers for! Smile

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 31/08/2016 21:43

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Felascloak · 31/08/2016 22:41

I mean, if erotica is the same as porn, why has hardcore pornography with all the attendant risks to the actors become so popular? Why isn't erotica/fully acted sex scenes enough?
I think it's because consumers know that erotica/films are fantasy and they want to see the real deal - actual sex. Hard core porn gives them that. But it's dangerous beca use the "reality" it depicts is damaging especially to women. Hope that makes sense!

sillage · 01/09/2016 00:51

I would add to Felascloak's questions, why aren't the tens of millions of pornographic scenes that have already been filmed enough?

For as much as men whine about movie reboots like Ghostbusters, they're able to consume vast quantities of "porn scene reboots" that are essentially the same stock scenes over and over (and over and over) again with slightly different-looking people. The only novelty is the consistently fresh supply of victims.

Italiangreyhound · 01/09/2016 01:44

Just to say totally agree with MatildaOfTuscany re BMJ article.

I do find it very bizarre the BMJ article does not make a stronger link between non-consensual anal sex, young women, and males who consume porn; because the young women themselves do make that link. But hey, why would we listen to young women about this stuff!

Maybe this article makes a stronger link fightthenewdrug.org/sex-before-kissing-15-year-old-girls-dealing-with-boys/

Someone up thread said no one wants to ban porn. I would, if I could. I think it is very, very harmful for all concerned, those who are in it, those who watch it and the rest of society who interact with (especially male) people who have watched it.

And in answer to the percentage of women who watch porn, who says that even watching porn is consensual for someone women. If your abusive, aggressive male partner says your watching a porno together, maybe you don't get to say no to that either.

It's a fucking sick world we live in. Sad Angry

Felascloak · 01/09/2016 08:20

Yes I wondered what percentage of women watch on their own greyhound

LassWiTheDelicateAir · 01/09/2016 09:09

Someone up thread said no one wants to ban porn. I would, if I could

I would too. Nothing to do with prudery. There's nothing wrong with sex, nothing wrong with casual sex as long as it's concensual and not cheating. Porn does not promote sex as good fun for all concerned.

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 01/09/2016 09:23

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MostlyHet · 01/09/2016 09:34

I've been following this thread with interest. As I mentioned near the beginning I read and write erotic fanfic (and I'll be the first to say I'm probably a lousy writer...) I should also say (someone quoted Bindel as saying "erotica" was a euphemism for porn which tried to dress porn up as arty) that I'm using erotica simply to mean "intended to arouse sexually" rather than carrying any connotations of art (believe me, most fanfic is about as far from art as you can get). So I'm interested by the discussion of whether written "porn" (I've put the word in quotes because obviously there are no images involved) is the same as, or as bad as filmed porn.

Filmed pornography is different from written erotica in one crucial respect because it can be and often is filmed evidence of sexual assault and abuse taking place - and the ethical consumer argument is hard to uphold because for the end user, it is impossible to tell the difference between a sexual assault and good acting - the user simply cannot distinguish on the basis of the product alone. (This is why I do not and would not watch it). It is, however, similar to written erotica in that both can and often do (in fact in the case of filmed porn, the majority does) uphold misogynistic attitudes towards female sexuality (the attempted eroticisation of rape and acts of violence and humiliation). But again, it's worth noting that written work doesn't have to be erotica (in the sense of written with the express purpose of sexually arousing the reader) in order to do this - romance books of the old-fashioned bodice ripper genre often also depict rape as a step towards the woman "melting into the hero's arms" rather than as an act of violence.

I do think though that even when (at its worst) written erotica seeks to defend and eroticise sexual violence, it lacks the immediacy of visual pornography. The act of reading puts the reader at one remove from the action and puts in a layer of interpretation whereas film puts the watcher in the scene in a way the written word cannot.

Sorry, this is an epic post and a bit of a brain dump. Going back to the original post, if you want to look at female-driven porn (and I'm deliberately not using the phrase feminist porn, for reasons I'll get to), fanfic is the perfect place for a sociologist to go looking! Fanfic is, on the whole, a female space on the internet (a rare beast, as we all know), written by and for women. And as a feminist, when I first got interested in fanfic, several things struck me. One was the ubiquity of the male gaze - a lot of fanfic is still written from the man's perspective, even though it's being written by women for women. It's almost as though we are so conditioned that what counts as sexually arousing is defined by "what a man would find sexually arousing" that even when on our own it's incredibly hard to step away from this. (A classic example would be the sort of story where there is loads and loads of build up, then the end consists of our heroine giving the hero a blow-job - where's the female orgasm in that?)

But the other thing (which I personally find terrifying) is the percentage of rape fantasy on the major fanfic sites (it's a minority interest, but a sizable minority). There are, as far as I can see, two conflicting explanations out there among women within fanfic who bother to think about these things. One, driven by "sex positive views", is that it's all down to sexual repression - we are so conditioned to think of sex as shameful that for some women the only way they can give themselves permission to enjoy sex is if they can pretend they're being forced into it. The other, which I think is more plausible, is that it's a form of society-wide Stockholm syndrome. Because of the ubiquity of male on female sexual violence in the real world, some women cope (in a cognitive dissonance sort of way) by eroticising the violence they can't escape. (As an aside, it's worth noting that among the writers and readers of rape fiction, there are quite a high percentage who have actually been raped and are using writing as a form of therapy to explore their conflicted feelings - to the extent that there are debates about whether having been a rape victim justifies enjoying this stuff, or whether it's just a sexual preference - as one woman put it "I'm fed up with having to show my 'raped-enough-to-ride card'". Personally I find myself wondering if it would be healthier for some of these women to be able to access decent therapy and get help to reset the damage to their sexuality - the tumblr blogs on this sort of thing remind me uncomfortably of pro-ana websites).

I guess where I'm going with this ramble is to ask what the best way of tackling women's own attitudes to their sexuality is. There is a view in the fanfic world that "your kink is not my kink and that's okay" - but I've never subscribed to it. I think some kinks (rape fantasies) are dangerous - both because they reinforce the women having them in a sexuality which is ultimately damaging them as individuals, and because within a rape culture, they can be used by predatory men to attempt to legitimise rape myths - "see women do say 'no' when they mean 'yes'". But I don't think (hears the ghost of Mandy Rice Davies murmuring "she would say that, wouldn't she?") that this means all written erotica is a bad thing.

thedancingbear · 01/09/2016 09:40

I don't know about that Buffy. It's difficult to imagine now but before the internet reached a level of sophistication whereby it was possible to stream video, I'd vouch that most people had not come across hardcore porn, and wouldn't know where to find it. That's not such a distant, halcyon time - maybe 10 years or so.

I think if the main free streaming sites were blocked, there'd be a collective 'harumph' and a few people bleating about civil liberties etc. but I don't think it would be coterminous with the collapse of patriarchy. I think the shelved plans from a few years ago, to force broadband customers to opt-in to 'adult content' would have got us maybe 70% of the way there.

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 01/09/2016 10:02

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Bumbledumb · 01/09/2016 11:03

I think if we ever reached the position where banning porn was something that might happen, patriarchy would be in its death throes

I wouldn't count on it. Your biggest allies in this campaign are conservative religious groups. A vote to ban pornography is a vote to repress sexuality, and history shows that this invariably leads to the oppression of women.

BuffytheReasonableFeminist · 01/09/2016 11:17

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VestalVirgin · 01/09/2016 11:25

MostlyHet, I agree with your points about why erotica fanfic is different from porn, and would like to add another. As this poem:

points out, fanfic is people in context. Those are people, not just wank fodder. Even if the individual fanfic author does not describe their rich inner lives, people read fanfic because they feel like they know the personalities of the characters.

This is not true for written porn as consumed by men (if modern men are even interested in that kind of thing), I suppose, but it is true for fanfic, which is probably the written erotica that most women consume.

A vote to ban pornography is a vote to repress sexuality, and history shows that this invariably leads to the oppression of women.

Haha, no. Oppression of women leads to repression of women's sexuality. A vote to ban porn would be a vote to repress patriarchal, male sexual power fantasies. We haven't tried that like, ever, in written history. Would be interesting to see what comes of it.

The conservative religious groups wouldn't vote for a really efficient ban of porn. There's statistics that shows that the most religious States of the US download most porn. Sure, they'll be in favour of banning porn, officially. But only as long as they can be sure they can still access porn in secret. They might vote for a ban on online porn, but only as long as they can be sure that all non-religious men still outnumber them and feminists taken together.
A bit like those who claimed to be for Brexit because it made them popular and they felt sure it wouldn't happen.

Only, after Brexit actually happened, I see no hope this kind of thing will happen anytime soon. As soon as there's any realistic chance that there could be a ban on porn, religous conservative men will turn around and declare porn necessary for a happy marriage, or whatever.

VestalVirgin · 01/09/2016 11:27

You equate porn with sexuality? Why?

To some men, wanking to porn is the only sex life they have. Even wanking without porn seems impossible. I suppose that's the line of reasoning.

Italiangreyhound · 01/09/2016 11:51

Bumble I'm 'religious'. A practising, commited Christian from the evangelical tradition. I don't care what consenting adults do in private. I do care, a lot, about the harmful effects of porn. I doubt repression would work these days except for those from very strict, religious or otherwise, back grounds (which I am not from). In fact telling people 'don't do that it is naughty" may well inspire them to just do that more!

Mostly, erotic fiction IMHO is not nearly as harmful as porn. No young women were fucked up in the process of writing this book...... Except maybe the writer if she thinks writing about rape is OK. So, to me, written fiction that dehimanises anyone is bad but not as bad as filming it. A picture tells a thousand words but rape dehumanises all.

The idea that women need to feel they are being raped to legitimise their desire is, IMHO, absolute cock! I am pretty prudie, and not ashamed of that, and I don't need to pretend I have no agency in desire to allow myself to feel sexual! And as a member of quite a 'sexually repressive part of the church' (for those who are unmarried) I could daily have loads of hang ups! Maybe I have my hang ups, like all of us, but I know right from wrong. Ask any mother or father if they would want their daughter treated like the victims in porn. We all know enough right from wrong, it doesn't need to be a religious issue. But religious people will share this issue with us feminists. Use their/our support if it helps.

In terms of people who have been raped, I too believe counselling would be more helpful. But they are doubtless still being used and controlled by men, because porn is not any women's friend.

Lastly, Mostly, you say you are not a good writer and you seem to not like erotic fiction, why do you write it?

Smile good to know so many women see porn for what it is.

We are all humans, just as all children deserve protection from abuse and assault, don't all women and men? I wonder if one day porn will be recognised as being as vile as child abuse. I wonder if I will live to see the day.

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