More women looking at porn.

[MarquisDeCarabas]

Victory for female empowerment or treasonous complicity in the sex industry? What think you?

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/15/porn-women-web-searches-female-sexuality-50-shaphy-women-desire-exploitation-powerful-role-sexuality

You don't think that any members of the human race are capable of kindness without socialisation?

You don't think it would be good to encourage kindness in all children irrespective of their sex?

Without kindness and caring its very difficult to raise the next generation so they dont turn round and kill you while you sleep.

Read into that whatever you choose; violence is not the answer to oppression.

You seem confused, Marquis. Your thinking is very tied to the current structures, very binary, very wed to masculine / feminine. Try and imagine operating outside of the existing structures, and consider people as people, with their own traits and personalities, in a society that wants less issues like crime / violence /exploitation. It can be hard I know but is a worthwhile exercise Looking into some ideas around power structures generally can also be informative.

Some PEOPLE can be kind = good

Women must be kind = bad

It’s also the idea that women must put kindness before there own needs or boundaries.

So the idea is that the women remain what they have been socialised to be, and men are socialised into joining them?

No.

End male domination of women and girls. So men will be socialised out of dominating women and women will be socialised out of appeasing male domination.

Both will be able to be genuinely 'kind' rather than acting out a power dynamic that advantages males.

We could maybe allow people to develop their natural proclivities? Kind people could get on with acts of kindness, good mathematicians could study engineering, without anyone being shamed because they're not the right sex for that sort of behaviour?

If we didn't have a system predicated on the control of half the population by the other half there'd be no need for all the violence and predation to sustain it.

You don't think that any members of the human race are capable of kindness without socialisation?

Very little. As far as I'm aware from reading a couple of books on unfortunate children who have passed through the critical stage of development without any socialisation (confined in basements and so forth), they have no capacity for language, let alone imaginative empathy.

Without socialisation, there isn't much of a person at all, as awful as that sounds. There was one tragic case of a girl who had been locked up with dogs since infancy. After she was rescued her adoptive parents couldn't cope because she would bark, run around on all fours, and urinate and defecate on the floor.

Of course I think it's good to encourage all children to be kind. But then we're just back at my original point that we're all equal blank canvases and should be raised according to the same standards. That is equality.

Beyond our most basic functions and drives, we have no innate self. The self is created through socialisation.

But while we should raise everyone to be kind and caring, some people have to be in positions of authority; and no matter how well we raise people, human beings being human beings, some of those people will do terrible things with that power. It would be the same in a matriarchy. Imagining otherwise is absurdly Panglossian.

But if people have 'natural proclivities' then those proclivities will include proclivities for evil. Not sure they though. I very much believe people are created through socialisation.

I don't know if anyone is interested
But my dh stopped watching all the horrible stuff when we had dd, and watched amateur occasionally, it's quite rare now. he said he saw it completely differently and it had little appeal.
I think I might watch it slightly more.

those proclivities will include proclivities for evil

I dare say, but if we stopped valorising and rewarding them to the extent we do now (because patriarchy says men must be dominant by any means necessary) then they probably wouldn't be expressed as much

I mean, in some ways I do agree with you. Honestly. A more feminised society would be more civilised. No two ways about that.

What you've got to be wary of is this idea that if you give women power then they'll just carry on being all caring and good just as they were when they were at home looking after kids and doing embroidery. Part of the reason why women are so much nicer is that they DON'T have the same power and agency as men.

Why men are more violent and overall brutal with sex has got a lot to do with socialisation, but what is the interesting question is why some them aren't. Surely they'd all be so? And why do there exist women who are, for example, paedophiles. A woman down my road got done for downloading thousands of child porn images a while back. What on earth went wrong there? In either case, for better and worse, the socialisation hadn't worked. Those exceptions tell us that there are other things going on apart from this very simple process of gender socialisation. Even in a patriarchal society, it's not universal.

I dare say, but if we stopped valorising and rewarding them to the extent we do now (because patriarchy says men must be dominant by any means necessary) then they probably wouldn't be expressed as much

I completely agree.

As far as I'm aware from reading a couple of books on unfortunate children who have passed through the critical stage of development without any socialisation (confined in basements and so forth), they have no capacity for language, let alone imaginative empathy.

Language is one thing. On what basis are you claiming a finite window for ‘imaginative empathy’? The ‘let alone’ suggests you’ve simply decided to assume you can extrapolate.

I would assume (and I admit I'm assuming) that if someone has had no socialisation AT ALL, then they won't have any empathy. Empathy comes from socialisation. It's learnt. You can't empathise without a concept of another person.

Anyway, it's a bit of a meaningless argument because hardly anyone in the world has had no socialisation at all. You'd literally have to be locked in the dark for years with no contact from other human beings.

Ah, stupid argument number 7 or so - porn is only OK when the people who make it don't get paid for it. This is utterly, utterly wrong. People who perform to entertain others deserve payment - you wouldn't say that it's unethical to want paying if you make music which others enjoy, would you?
(Yeah, there are now going to be about 100 posts going 'but porn is different because PENIS waa waaa waaaaaa)

The single biggest reason to criticise Pornhub is their blatant copyright theft. The people who make ethical porn (ie with well-treated, well-paid performers) are forever getting their stuff stolen by Pornhub, who then profit from it without giving a penny to the producers/performers (in those cases when performers get royalties as well as a flat fee).

People who perform to entertain others deserve payment

I think the argument was that porn was only ethical when made by people who were performing to entertain themselves.

Although some good reasons were given upthread for having reservations even then.

Marquis I am actually with you about socialisation. I think it is very hard to put in at a later stage what was missing at the appropriate developmental stage - it is like permanent brain damage.

I know someone from a wealthy family, who's little brother was adopted from an orphanage, I won't go into to much detail about it, but the boy was left for a few days as a tiny baby and found in an abandoned flat, taken to an orphanage. The family are really lovely, extremely loving, kind people, but the boy just doesn't 'get' empathy. They can't teach him right from wrong because he doesn't get some basic human ideas like 'it is not good to feel bad', 'it is not good for others to feel bad' - they have nothing to build on and it is very distressing that the child seems so empty and there is nothing they can do to really humanise his feelings.

He is still a kid, but I wonder whether empathy will kick in, or if he will always be missing this ability to connect with others.

Someone being a goady fucker, so far as I've read!

And each time a goalpost is reached, it is then moved! Howls of laughter! Gods, this is Sooooo familiar, it makes me hoot with laughter!

Why is it unethical to be paid for performing? We don't expect musicians, dancers, artists etc to work for free even though they enjoy their work and in many cases do their stuff to amuse themselves as well as doing it for an audience. (Oh wait. Porn is 'different' because, waa, penis, waa, sex...)
(Actually, these days, there IS a problem with people expecting art/music/writing/performance to be available for no money. It's still unethical...)

Paid to have sex is different to being paid to to perform art.
As discussed upthread.

Even if people aren't being paid it's still commercialised sex. Pornhub are still making money.

When I said, "You don't think that any members of the human race are capable of kindness without socialisation?"

I didn't mean with no socialisation at all - like babies who are isolated from all human contact

I meant with no specific effort to socialise kindness. Although with a social creature, I think most people are exposed to various ways of behaviour.

I can see that didn't come across quite right.

It was in response to the idea that girls are socialised to be kind, while boys are not. At a group level. However it's clear that there are lots of kind boys and men around. And lots of unkind girls and women! We are not blank slates - and socialisation is imperfect. People fight against socialisation that goes against their nature, and are very unhappy if they have to adhere to it.