Tuesday 28 June 2011

Why Oppose The Porn Industry? (Part 2)

EDIT: Since writing this post nearly two years ago, it has come to my attention that SnowdropExplodes is a complete piece of shit. Womanist Musings has the details:
"On said blog, a few years ago, he had written a piece, describing an incident in which he assembled a rape kit and stalked a woman, with the intent of raping and murdering her.  He did not in fact follow through with his intention. He claimed to have posted this piece in order to encourage other men not to rape and blamed this incident on depression."

SE has never acknowledged that he's the scum of the fucking earth, and so all the quotes from him should be read with the knowledge that this man sees no wrong with plotting to rape and kill women. I apologise for not including this sooner - I saw his name being excoriated in a blog I follow and literally only just found out. I'm now off to bathe in bleach for a month.

This is a response to a response written to my previous post written by SnowdropExplodes, which can be found here. It's a good post, and makes some great points, and I’ll try and keep my response short.
“She starts by quoting Dines and Jensen, which is always going to get on my bad side. I take nothing they say to have any validity. They are despised by the people they claim to want to help (sex workers) and they do not try to engage with the lived realities of those people - or, indeed, the men whom they appear to despise”
This is a criticism of a lot of academic feminists. However, that argument is to do with sex-workers. You can’t deny everything someone has created during the course of their career because you disagree with their views in one part of it. The article I quoted from Dines and Jensen exists to point out the hypocrisy of those on the left who oppose other industries that have harmful side-effects, yet have no problem with pornography, and yes, I find it a bit bloody disingenuous that people who will regulate massive parts of their lives according to their political and moral views, for example, being vegan because they are opposed to the side-effects of the dairy industry, won’t regulate their need to get off in the same way. I’m sidetracking here, but I will return to this point later. To reiterate my original point - criticising Dines and Jensen for failing to engage with the lived realities of sex workers doesn’t mean that anything they write about that involves the interaction between sexual organs is wrong.

”I'll draw out only one thing, which is Natalie Dzerins’ own extraction. She writes:
I also oppose pornography for the body fascism that is endemic to the culture and the way that it seeps over into the mainstream as a ‘norm’.

Except that in the porn I've seen, bodies have tended to be much less conforming to contemporary beauty standards than in womens’ magazines, or lads' mags. In general, the more mainstream the media, the more misogynist it is - hardcore porn, for all its surface problems, arguably has fewer bad messages about women than stuff you can buy in your supermarket.”
I’ve got two problems with this argument: Firstly, it assumes that I am only opposed to the porn industry. Of course I’m not. I’m equally opposed to any industry that fosters gender inequality. Saying that other people engage in the same nasty activities (by which I mean creating problems for women as a whole) doesn’t make it alright. Secondly, there is a seepover whereby what is popular in pornography becomes popular in the mainstream. I’ll concede that in pornography, things like a complete lack of body hair below the eyebrows was, to begin with, a cinematographic device (I understand it’s easier to see the penis/vagina interaction* if there’s none of that pesky natural hair in the way), but now according to mainstream media it is de rigeur for all women. I think that this occurs because softcore porn magazines (like lads’ mags) see this trend occurring in pornographic films, so reflect it in their pictures to make them more ‘edgy’ and more like ‘real porn’, and then this trend is picked up by womens’ mags, who say ‘this is what men like so you should do it’, and thus, another aspect of body fascism is born. It’s not how all body fascism comes about, but it is a cause of some. If there were no trendsetters, there would be no trend.
(*No, I can’t believe I just said that either.)

”The post's co-author Georgie writes:
In a culture of gender inequality it is impossible to make porn which isn't oppressive.

However, I was of the impression that feminist analysis (particularly of a Marxist type such as that described by Ms Dzerins) says that all media suffers the same problems. It isn't porn per se, but media in general.

This sounds like a reason to be opposed to any form of writing, television, movie-making, or whatever!”
As noted above, I am opposed to anything that propagates gender inequality, especially media propagation of such. However, porn is one part of the media. It’s possible to write books and make films that don’t propagate gender inequality, and for them to be popular, but I don’t believe that in this capitalist porn industry you can make porn that doesn’t. I feel I must reiterate that I’m not opposed to people watching other people fucking, and I don’t think that fucking inherently creates gender inequality; I’m opposed to this capitalist porn industry. I wouldn’t have a problem with people creating porn that didn’t oppress women, objectify them or create problems for all women, but the industry we have right now is not going to do it en masse, so I am opposed to the industry.

”She starts with the "choice" canard, as a common challenge to her position. I am not a fan of discussing this, because (as Dzerins points out) choices are not made in a vacuum, and it is also quite possible to say "I support your right to make that choice, but I think it is a poor choice to make" (or, as Dzerins puts it, "I do not oppose the womens’ right to be in the films, I oppose the films themselves.")

The question about choice and sex work, though, should be on choosing how to make the rent. Some people will be happier working in a shitty waitressing job, and others are happier to make their money by spreading their legs (either on camera, or for paying customers - porn or prostitution). Both are equally exploitative of poverty and, according to the socialist feminist position that Dzerins seems to take, it would appear that we should also be opposed to restaurants and diners for their exploitation of women who need to earn the rent.”
Of course I am opposed to restaurants (or any other businesses) that don’t treat their workers fairly. But this misses my point, which is about an industry that encourages the suppression of those who aren’t even part of it.
”I do not look at sex work as being about "empowering". It can be an empowered choice, or it can be a forced choice (see remarks above), but in itself it is not empowering. It is "empaychecking", as Renegade Evolution (porn performer, stripper and all-round sex worker) puts it, and as noted above, that is sometimes very important from the point of view of keeping a roof over one's head and food in the belly, and all those essentials of life. It can also provide the dosh to get nice things. If we are to be opposed to the commercial porn industry, then a lefty person really ought to consider how the men and women who earn their living from it should go about filling those gaps in future. As I wrote several years ago now, mining is a terrible job, but when the Thatcher government tried to close the mines, the miners fought tooth and nail for over a year to keep their jobs, despite how disgusting and dangerous and degrading the work could be. While the money may not be empowering, having it taken away certainly would be disempowering.”
Of course I agree that this should be a consideration. The reason I didn’t address it in the OP is because I was trying to write ‘anti-porn 101’, and it’s hard to get everything in. However, surely one argument against slavery (and I am loathe to make this analogy) is “well, who would pay money to employ the slaves if we free them?”. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t oppose removing this society-created ‘need’, but that we should make a better society to give these people more opportunities. I don’t want to ban the porn industry, I want to create a society where there’s no demand for this porn industry, and such an egalitarian society would have more opportunities, especially for women.


”I struggle with the concept of "female-friendly" porn, because I don't know what that means. There is something very clear that needs to be pointed out here: Dzerins’ position, going from this answer and from her post title, is about the current state of the industry. But many of her arguments are about the concept of pornography. The implication from Dzerins is that "female-friendly" means "non-misogynistic", but I think that usually it means "intended to appeal to women's sexual fantasies". The problem with the latter position is that plenty of women I know happen to like the fantasies portrayed in other porn, and find "female-friendly" porn to be boring. Other women don't like either, and other women like both, and some like the "female-friendly" stuff.”
I did mean ‘porn intended to appeal to womens’ sexual fantasies’. I find it trite fluff, intended to allay an entire industry built on oppression by one token gesture. I want to make it clear that these parts were my responses to arguments I see all the time, not things I’d necessarily bring up myself. Personally, I think that the equalising effects of ‘female-friendly’ porn are so inconsequential as to be removed from the debate entirely. It’s worth pointing out that the industry classification of this kind of porn as ‘female-friendly’ belies the fact that it views its other output as ‘female-unfriendly’.

“What if the women like being submissive during sex?

I have no problem with women enjoying submission during consensual sexual encounters which take place with the knowledge that the submission only belongs in the bedroom.

Well, gee, how magnanimous of you! D/s and M/s relationships do not always have scene-delineated premises. Sometimes the consensual power-exchange operates throughout the whole relationship. I suppose I could be generous and assume Dzerins means "the submission only belongs between her and her partner", and BDSMers (especially subs) usually know very strongly the distinction between "I submit to you" and "I submit to no one else".

But here's the question that you haven't answered: how that relates to men and women's desire for BDSM porn (which is different from rough sex porn and so on, but might fall into the category "depicts violence against women" if you're not on the same page regarding BDSM). Is your case that the moment a couple video themselves and share that video, that they are suddenly corrupting and destroying women's rights everywhere?”
“I'm sorry, but actually I do need to see images of humiliation, "violence" and (in some people's interpretation) objectification and degradation, because that is my kink. I am a sadist and a Dominant, and wishing my sexuality away won't make it change (Lord knows, I tried, and suffered because of trying - like trying not to be gay, I guess). To me, vanilla sex is not sex. If it hadn't been for sex education at school I might never have figured it out - sex to me involves pain and domination and bondage and stuff. The gender of my partner is secondary (although I go mostly for women, male subs interest me as well).”
I’ll admit I worded that one wrong. FWIW, I sub. I haven’t got a problem with people doing what gets them off, I really don’t. I have a problem with the industry that commodifies these kinks. What I was trying to say when I said ‘only belongs in the bedroom’ was there’s a difference between normalised and systemic abuse of women, whereby all women are targets for bad treatment (whether by violence or lack of opportunities etc.), and an understanding between two or more people that this will be done for the purposes of sexual gratification when I said ‘only belongs in the bedroom’. Even in the most extreme D/S relationship, the S can always back out of the agreement. Women can’t back out of inequal societal arrangements.
If a couple are into BDSM, that’s great. If they upload a video of themselves for their own gratification and the gratification of others, great. However, BDSM should be seen for what it is, which is a kink. The porn industry normalises small parts of it like they should be ritual in everyone’s sex life, and these are the parts that oppress women in the wider world, and that’s the problem.
”How do you distinguish in using peer pressure to make porn unacceptable, between "porn is not okay, but sex is"? Unfortunately, the same pressures that could be used to attack porn used in this way, would also work very strongly to attack women, because they would serve to make "slut" an even stronger assault. To make being openly interested in sexual material into a source of shame, one cannot avoid generating a sense of shame about interest in sex. And who already receives the most attack for being interested in sex? Women. That's why "slut" is such a nasty word in most usage. If the rest of the world weren't so sexist, this plan might work, but unfortunately, it is. And that's how come porn tends to be sexist too. Just to be clear - I think peer pressure against sexist attitudes should be used; but I think that peer pressure against porn would be a bad move.”
I think there should be a distinction drawn between making being interested in sexual material shameful, and making being interested in the use of an industry that is so harmful to women shameful. Obviously, for the reasons stated, it is the latter we propose, and as a sex-positive feminist, I see no shame in a person being interested in sexual material that is made in a positive and unharmful way. Saying that ‘the world is sexist so we should ignore this problem’ isn’t solving anything, it’s just continuing the same line of oppression that’s been going on for centuries. We should be fighting to change society, not just shrug our shoulders and say “well, that’s just how it is”.



EDIT: I just want to say that I know these posts have been very hetero- and cis-normative. I don't want to alienate anyone from the debate, but since the majority of industry output (and the stuff I have a real problem with) is hetero- and cis-normative, that's what I've trained my focus on.

22 comments:

  1. I think establishing a distinction between interest in sexual material and use of the porn industry would be very difficult. With the ubiquitous nature of industry produced pornography for many people it is synonymous with sexual material.

    If you hope to force a change in the morals of the general public you need to focus your target in a way that is unambiguous to prevent people interpreting it as sex=bad.

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  2. "I understand it’s easier to see the penis/vagina interaction"

    You must be amazing at "talking dirty"

    "If a couple are into BDSM, that’s great. If they upload a video of themselves for their own gratification and the gratification of others, great."

    This brings up an interesting point that I DO have some grounding in (read on, it's not what you think). The porn industry, like every other industry of late, have spent a lot of time complaining that they are losing significant business because of home made porn.

    Sites that are basically "YouTube" for porn (according to the porn industry) consist of either home made porn (which they don't earn money on) or copyrighted material (which they lose money on).

    If this trend of people uploading their own porn continues, is that what you are looking for?

    Incidentally, what is the difference between a single woman shaving her "penal/vaginal interaction area" because she thinks that's what men want, and my girlfriend wearing her hair in a certain way because she thinks that's what I want, or me shaving my facial hair in a certain way because I know she prefers it like that?

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  3. @John Bullock

    I think you mean penile/vaginal interaction area unless there is some kind of punishable offence involved.

    Sorry to be picky.

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  4. I'm kinda new to this as a subject of debate, so I'm not really up on all the ins and outs (pun unintentional) of the differing political takes on feminism, and the like. Strikes me though, that we need a good definition of 'industry' and 'amateur'.

    Amateur porn would be consensual from producer to user. The producers want<,/i> to be watched. Probably get off on being watched. The viewer, even at a distance, is part of the act. I'd even go so far as to say that it doesn't even fit within the common usage of the word 'pornography'.

    Re shaving: First time I encountered a shaved vagina I freaked. Literally, and totally, lost the mood. Looked like a damn prepubescent child, down there. Ugh!

    And at the risk of looking like a 'what about teh menz' troll, has SnowdropExplodes got any idea of how abnormal the men in these films are? Hate to break this to you Bubba, but most of 'em you'll ever encounter don't actually brush the knee...

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  5. @John I agree with Daz's definition of 'amateur porn' and don't really have a problem with that, since it's less likely to be the misogynistic, body-fascism-driven stuff that's put out by the porn industry. I'm wary of the sites that are like YouTube for porn, because not only do they (as you point out) reproduce copyrighted material (i.e. stuff created by the porn industry for profit), but are also inhabited by those who are uploading in the hope of breaking into the porn industry to eventually make a profit, not just because of the, as it were, love of creating the material. People in this latter category will also be producing material to the industry ideals. So, a site without these problems would certainly be preferable to the current status quo.

    Re: body hair - it comes down to personal choice, doesn't it? But what I will say is that women are constantly told that their body hair is disgusting and somehow unhygenic and undesireable - this is a criticism of society in general, but the no-pubic hair thing certainly does come from the porn industry. Now, if you know that your partner likes your hair/beard/pubes in a certain way and choose to indulge them, that's fine. But women are supposed to assume from the outset of a relationship that their (heterosexual) 'significant other' will prefer them with no hair down there even when the individual in question hasn't expressed an opinion, and it's become somehow normalised.

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  6. Thank you for your reply.

    It seems that a huge amount of the debate between us is the nature of the response to industry in general, and in particular the idea that some people treat pornography industry as a "special case" and opposed less, whereas I wonder at people who treat it as a special case that should be opposed more.

    "Firstly, it assumes that I am only opposed to the porn industry. Of course I’m not. I’m equally opposed to any industry that fosters gender inequality. Saying that other people engage in the same nasty activities (by which I mean creating problems for women as a whole) doesn’t make it alright. Secondly, there is a seepover whereby what is popular in pornography becomes popular in the mainstream.

    ...

    I think that this occurs because softcore porn magazines (like lads’ mags) see this trend occurring in pornographic films, so reflect it in their pictures to make them more ‘edgy’ and more like ‘real porn’, and then this trend is picked up by womens’ mags, who say ‘this is what men like so you should do it’, and thus, another aspect of body fascism is born.
    "

    I always thought that less body hair began with Baywatch and things like that, and then went both directions - maybe that's because of the way I experienced it, and because of the era in which i grew up. The fact is, a lot of the porn that I use has women with natural pubic hair in it and with natural figures, so I tend to be less convinced by these arguments. That said, I acknowledge that a lot of mainstream porn does use the heavily beauty-conforming model. My suspicion and belief is that these standards originate in lads' mags culture such as the Sun's page 3, and then porn producers tend to adopt them to appeal to what they think men want, just the way the women's mags do.

    "
    I am opposed to anything that propagates gender inequality, especially media propagation of such. However, porn is one part of the media. It’s possible to write books and make films that don’t propagate gender inequality, and for them to be popular, but I don’t believe that in this capitalist porn industry you can make porn that doesn’t.
    "

    What is different about porn that in your opinion makes it impossible to do this, when you can do it in other forms of media? It sounds to me from the OP that you believe sexual imagery need not be misogynist, so is it just about the possibility of making it commercially available?

    "
    However, surely one argument against slavery (and I am loathe to make this analogy) is “well, who would pay money to employ the slaves if we free them?”

    ...

    I don’t want to ban the porn industry, I want to create a society where there’s no demand for this porn industry, and such an egalitarian society would have more opportunities, especially for women.
    "

    As I discussed in my OP, I don't think the demand would disappear under any economic system. I think it might become less, and I think willingness to produce might actually go up, once patriarchal notions of "propriety" were abolished.

    We actually agree on what's wrong with the porn industry, and a lot of other industries as well, in capitalist society. As I understand it, your reason for singling out the porn industry is because you believe it has a unique role in oppressing women in wider society. That in itself is a complex debate with many aspects to be covered. Suffice to say that, at the moment, I do not believe that it has any unique role to play above and beyond the roles played by other media, and that I believe that if other media can be made non-oppressive and non-sexist, then porn can be, too. Porn reflects society, but I do not believe that it shapes it in the way that you believe it does.

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  7. @ Daz:

    I'm well aware of the unrealistic images of men in porn. Although one could argue that forming one's ideas about men and women from watching top-level athletics (or pro wrestling, or anything like that) would be equally distorting of one's perspective (I recently heard that a sponsor of a top tennis player asked him to stop wearing sleeveless tops because most men can't look as sexy and fit as he does in them, making the product very much harder to sell...)

    I am very strongly unhappy about the way that porn is taking the place of sex ed for a lot of people, and it's one of the ways in which I am in agreement that there are severe problems surrounding the porn industry that need to be addressed.

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  8. @Spudman101 - I encourage pedantry on anything I write. I'm trying to be a fiction writer, I need these mistakes pointing out :D

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  9. Nat: "Re: body hair - it comes down to personal choice, doesn't it?"

    For sure. I was just reminiscing, so to speak. My last few posts have been so formal, I wanted to let me hair (heh!) down a bit.

    SnowdropExplodes:

    "I always thought that less body hair began with Baywatch and things like that, and then went both directions - maybe that's because of the way I experienced it, and because of the era in which i grew up"

    As the apparently oldest poster here, I can, I think, answer this best, at least anecdotally. I've never been one for hard-core porn, but from what I saw as a teen in the late 70s, early 80s, it was definitely porn, then soft porn, then lad's mags/the Sun and the like. Not quite that simple, of course, but that's the general trend.

    My main problem with keeping up with this is going to be that I'm not sure what's 'mainstream' now, but from what bits I've run across, a lot of it would have been special-interest in my youth (ass-slapping being the most notable), but is now, as Nat says, portrayed as 'normal', which means lads are going to do it because they think that's what they should do, and lasses are going to accept it, whether they like it or not, thinking they're abnormal for not liking it. Not all, but enough to perpetuate the myth.

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  10. SnowdropExplodes

    Sorry, Missed your reply to me earlier. Greta Christina posted an interesting article along those lines, just the other day.

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  11. So, are you (Daz, Nat and anyone else on that side of the argument) placing no separation between thought and action?

    I hate to come back to this, but I don't feel it has been adequately addressed, and, to repeat my example, I like to watch action movies full of people getting shot, but I would never dream of picking up a gun and going on a killing spree.

    Regardless of the image of women pornography paints, the law prohibits the non-consensual abuse of women (or anyone, for that matter). Acting appropriately isn't enough? You people to "think correctly," also?

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  12. John

    Let me ask you one. If I were to commission a soap opera (perish the thought!) in which every single depicted Christian was a fundy whack-job who thought the whole country should be placed under Biblical law, wouldn't I, quite rightly, be accused of bias?

    Now imagine I commission a series of movies in which every single woman was up for sex at the mere sight of a bare male chest, acquiesced to any kinks the men involved wanted, including bisexual sex, light (at the very least) BDSM, and anal...

    As to your analogy with violence, it's possible to watch a non-stop diet of videos where all violence is casual, no one shows any remorse for their actions, etc, but you'd have to explicitly look for it. A normal variety of action movies will have at least some variety in how violence is portrayed. It's not possible, by porn's very nature, to find such variety in pornography.

    I've probably phrased all that really, badly. Got some sort of bug.

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  13. Daz,

    No, you phrased it fine, I understand your point.

    AREN'T all Christians fundy whack-jobs? Sorry, I have a special hatred for religion.

    OK, I see your point about pornography vs movies on that front* and we've already covered the sliding-scale-where-do-you-draw-the-line thing. To that, however, I would say that you should be ALLOWED to have a bias soap opera if you wanted to. Admittedly, you'd probably struggle to find a channel to show it, but it shouldn't be illegal (God TV, for example).

    Then we hit the how-serious-is-it argument. For example, in America, hate-speech is illegal. In theory, you wouldn't be able to have a show in which you preached death to all Christians, but, as pornography includes the consensual participation of the people it is supposedly damaging, can you really class it as up there with hate speech?

    *that brings up an interesting question. Where do you stand on "softcore" pornography, which typically has a storyline (admittedly a bad one), and COULD show the same kind of porn you wish banned, but in a format more like the action movie example you mentioned.

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  14. John.

    Don't start me on religion! We'd be here all day and so far off-topic we'd likely circle back round to it from the opposite direction. Hmm, Einsteinian meta-blogging; could be the next big thing! :-)

    You're running up the allowed/not allowed path again, yet we're not advocating banning, so the 'not allowed' option* isn't really part of the discussion. What we're advocating/hoping for is a society where viewing it is seen as socially unacceptable. No laws or bans needed. My anti-xtian soap would be rightly accused of bias, and probably wouldn't get much in the way of ratings, because of that bias. Well, not once the novelty wore off, anyway. What I was trying to show was that porn is equally biased in the impression it gives of what normal sexual behaviour is. Okay, the viewer knows that its to some degree a fantasy-world, but the degree to which it's fantasy won't be so easy to perceive.

    *On reflection, btw, I withdraw my statement that I'd ban porn if it were practical. Not sure where that came from. Maybe this damn bug was already fuzzing up the synapses.

    To go back to the violence analogy, we've all encountered at least some in our lives; seen or been part of pub-brawls, etc. We have a base-idea of 'real', to ground our ideas of what's obviously fantastical on. Sex, on the other hand, takes place in private for the most part. We get education (unless we attended an evangelical faith school or such) on the basic mechanics, so to speak, but not the practice. For that we have only our own limited personal experience and porn to turn to. So porn has a much greater impact on our view of the subject. And the base-normality portrayed in porn is that women are objects to be used as seen fit, and the ease of access conferred by the internet builds on that objectification.

    (Erm, as far as I'm aware, we have more hate-speech laws than the US does. Very hot on the free-speech issue, they are—to the point, arguably, of shooting themselves in the collective foot.)

    "as pornography includes the consensual participation of the people it is supposedly damaging, can you really class it as up there with hate speech?"

    And once again, you're talking about putative damage to the performer, while we're talking about the effect on the user. Indeed, my anti-xtian soap opera analogy would have made no sense if I were talking about the effect on the actors.

    Soft porn. Hmmm. We're back to fuzzy grey areas, but as a rule of thumb, I'd say that if its sole purpose is sexual gratification for a profit, then it objectifies people. This applies as much to the Daily Fail letching over an actress exiting a car and her knickers being vaguely visible for three microseconds as it does to porn; soft or otherwise.

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  15. WARNING: completely off topic

    Not sure how many links are allowed per post here, so I'm doing this separately just in case.

    I found this while I was looking for the article I linked above. If anyone has 15 min to spare, it's well worth watching. To quote the video's maker, it's a 'mindgasm'.

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  16. Daz,

    I'll admit that I've been playing devils advocate for the sake of education through a lot of these comments, but, don't worry, I think I've just about formed my own opinion. Thanks for the grounding :D

    A quick question on your response to softcore. If you leave aside the degrading side of porn, and look solely at your point that for profit porn objectifies the actors (I assume you mean both sexes), then what about sport for profit, or acting (in more mainstream film/tv) for profit. We watch all of these things for some kind of gratification.

    On the US hate-speech thing, honestly, I know more about US law than UK law when it comes to privacy/freedom of speech laws. My usual argumental hunting ground is technology (hence my concerns over censorship) and, unfortunately, most precedents in this field are set in America.

    With regards to the effect on the user, rather than the effect on the actor, I imagine there are two types of problem people here; men who treat women in this way, regardless of their consent, who are breaking the law in doing so, and women who consent to be treated in this way, despite not liking it, because they feel they should.

    On the first, well, they are breaking the law if they abuse a person against their will. There are other issues surrounding victims not reporting them, or assailants not getting punished, but they are different issues.

    On the second, as sad as it may sound, do we not have a right to be apathetic, if we choose? If someone is willing to put up with this kind of treatment because they feel it is normal, they should be educated (which I presume is one of your goals), but if, then, they still put up with it because their partner expects it, surely that is their choice.

    The view of your argument seems to be that men are the problem for forcing women to fit this mould. Obviously, a person like Nat will not be forced into any mould she doesn't like, but, in the case of my own girlfriend, who is NOT a feminist, and rarely gets passionate about political issues. She has told me that spanking is not pleasant, "despite what FHM says." She clearly is capable of thinking for herself without a feminist movement educating her. Shouldn't others be allowed to go with the flow if they wish?

    That argument was about 50% devils advocate.

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  17. John

    The 'this is what normal sex consists of' thing is in the nature of what I'd term a first order effect. It's the most obvious, and probably the most easily negated by experience, like your g/f saying no to spanking (if indeed you wanted to do so). The second order effect is the attitude it engenders; that women are there purely for sexual purposes, either directly or by viewing. That a woman's body and her capacity to please men are the most important things about her.

    I've spent a couple of days reading various bits about this, while trying to stay away from feminist/anti-feminist sources so as to remove possible bias, and I think I've found a good demonstration of what I mean.

    First make sure your girlfriend knows why you're doing this. :-)

    Go to google search settings and turn off the search filter. Google for 'upskirt' and/or 'downblouse' on either a video or pictures search. Ignore the celebrity-letching items and try to find (unfortunately, you won't have to try hard) everyday-user uploads. You'll find one helluva lot of content where people have uploaded pics or videos of women—and quite often girls that look to be, if not under-aged, then perilously close to it—taken of them without their consent or knowledge, from angles that they wouldn't normally expect to be viewed from. All in order for the uploader and his (I assume it's mostly 'his') viewers to gain sexual titillation from a peeping-tom view of a nipple, or whatever. These women/girls are being treated as objects. (Some are quite possibly staged, but only some.)

    That's the attitude we're talking about, and our contention is that the porn industry—displaying women as cash-commodities, existing merely for the viewer's pleasure—encourages that attitude.

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  18. Erm, I know I'm muzzy with flu, but didn't I reply earlier? I'm sure I remember making a point using user-uploaded upskirt stuff as an example of objectification.

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  19. You did, which part of my last comment are you directing that at?

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  20. Gawd I dunno. Me head's all out of kilter at the moment. It's just that I'm sure I've had a comment go astray. Common fault with Blogger, and I'm sure it'll turn up again later.

    Pass the paracetamol, will ya?

    Looking back at your last, I'm not sure what point I was addressing with it. It probably made sense to me at the time. If it reappears and it turns out I was off in a virus/painkiller induced haze and not addressing anything you said, I'll tackle it again later. Hopefully with more coherency.

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  21. Heh, I look forward to it. Feel better.

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  22. Soft-core/sport etc

    All else being equal, it would objectify both genders. But all else isn't equal. See 'male privilege'. Hmm, actually if there were no gender inequalities, probably porn wouldn't exist, as sex wouldn't be such a big no-no in 'polite society'. I'll stop there before I get into some SF Utopia scenario. Just want to point out that the objectification issue is my main problem with porn, rather than the degradation. I do think it's degrading, but that's more a problem with the human race's nonsensical view of sex as being dirty. But that's that SF Utopia creeping in again…

    Show me decent evidence that sport objectifies people and I'd be against professional sport, too. Slightly OT, but sport does have problems for me. I can see the reason for gender-specific 'physical' sports, but darts, snooker and the like…? Not to mention the fact that the female versions of gender-specific sports, with the exception of athletics, are almost ignored by the media.

    Do we not have the right to be apathetic...

    We have that right, yes. No one's saying anyone has to take up arms in this or any other human-rights issue. Or any issue at all, for that matter. I'm assuming this was one of your devil's advocate points? Otherwise you wouldn't be here discussing it.

    Your g/f isn't a feminist, eh? What are her views on, say, equal pay for equal work, maternity leave, her right to have you prosecuted if you beat the crap out of her, to name but a few? Is she happy to be openly ogled by every man she meets, have you or any other man treat her opinion as being less worthy because of the gender of the source and, again, many other things? If your and her view of 'what a feminist is' means banner-waving, blog-writing, politician-lobbying etc, then no; but I say she's still a feminist, just by wanting and expecting to be treated as equal to you.

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