I'm so glad you wrote this.
I worry about this too, as the mother of 3 boys. The lack of awareness of the woman's enjoyment in most video porn is appalling. I don't want their formative understanding of sex to be the distorted, frequently-misogynistic view presented by porn.
My only hope is in being clear and direct, to explain that porn may have its place, but the overwhelming emphasis on domination over women makes it cancerous to creating a real, healthy relationship with a woman.
To re-frame this in feminist terms: I worry what porn is doing to the way young heterosexual women learn about sexuality. Is it just a service you provide men? Suck a lot of cock, let them come on your face or in your ass? Even if this is not what your body actually likes to do?
And then even worse, those same young women become receptive to the cultural conservative notion that sex is icky and women should hate it because, well, who likes sperm in your eye? Clearly only really sick people would like that, right? Worse and worse.
I hate it that so many people think that porn is an accurate representation of sex. It's so confusing to me that men don't realize that the women in porn are being paid to act a certain way and that may not reflect the actual desires of the woman. I've met men who were genuinely shocked and surprised that I wanted to watch them take their clothes off or, ya know, enjoy sex for myself.
In porn, women are hot and men are generally mediocre because they're basically just placeholders. I don't watch much straight porn becuase the men simply aren't that hot. Even in the cases where the man is as hot as the woman, the camera is more focused on the woman. So of course men interpret this as "women don't like porn, and they must not like sex". The problem is that porn just isn't made for women.
I also get really frustrated about the anal sex thing. I'm sure some people like it and that's great for them, but I'm just no interested in doing it. However, at least half of the guys I hook up with insist that if I would just let them shove their magical penis up there, I would suddenly like it. I have no doubt that porn is responsible for this attitude. I'm very pro-sex and that's exactly why I'm not a big fan of the current state of porn. I like sex to be enjoyable for everyone involved, rather than a favor that one person does for another without enjoyment or pleasure.
Even mainstream movies and tv ignore straight female sexual desire. The men get an ordinary looking man to identify with and a gorgeous female love interest for the male character and the audience to ogle. The actress playing the love interest is often much younger as well.
Sometimes there are movies with handsome leading men, but the camera doesn't film them the way it does with women, making sure you get a nice long look at the chest and butt, having them wear skimpy clothes. Even in R rated sex scenes the focus is on the woman. We get to see her and not him undressing, moaning, etc.
Another scary thing: Many (most? all?) of our desires are formed from experiencing the world. Boys and girls who see porn (or have contact with porn culture) may catch on that this is supposed to be exciting and arousing, but is forbidden to them. Desires will be formed that are hard to undo.
Beautifully, sadly written.
I've a 13 year old daughter who is just on the cusp of curiosity. I dread the impression that she'll get from the subhumanizing, omnipresent porn. Her sexuality, self-esteem, and health of her future relationships can be so casually destroyed my the mindless porno-bulemia of our culture.
We have been worrying and fretting for fifty years that through media saturation we would get to a point where people were no longer easily able to distinguish between fact and fiction, myth and reality.
I think every indication is that we have arrived.
We have publishers putting out non-fiction books full of myths and made up stories.
The news media has moved through the infotainment stage to propaganda.
Carefully scripted shows are presented as "reality" teevee.
"Scientists" use scenes from films and teevee shows to support their arguments regarding social interaction as though it were representative real human interaction.
At the highest levels of government they are arguing that if it didn't kill you it wasn't torture.
Porn is obviously torture, but since the woman smiles and we assume she gets paid for her pain and humiliation, it's just another form of entertainment.
yes there are alot of assholes in the world. and alot of bad porn. no shit. why not just come out and ask people to recommend good movies instead of saying all men, sex, porn and climaxes are negative, humiliating, slutty...(all the while saying you dont mean to say what your saying)
and plenty of films do show women being pleased. hell the summer indie hit 'away we go' opens with the young husband going down on his wife.
why not just come out and ask people to recommend good movies instead of saying all men, sex, porn and climaxes are negative, humiliating, slutty...(all the while saying you dont mean to say what your saying)
You talking to me? I didn't say any of those things, actually. In particular, that "all" word wasn't used.
"porn is called porn and not art, say, for the very reason that it cuts out everything but the purely instrumental use of another person (or persons) for the purpose of getting an orgasm."
and there you have it.
first rather than just saying that most porn is bad art you claim that all porn is no form of art at all.
see what I mean about that too broad brush? if you were painting windows you'd be all over the glass.
art: is simply self expression.
thats all. it might be good or bad, simple or complex, stupid or genius, found, folk, modern, abstract...natural, semantic, sexual...but pretty much everything is art.
art is a neutral word. it requires adjectives. people make the same mistake with the word 'love'.
next you claim that no erotic representation has existed in the history of humankind which depics both sex and compassion. pretty sweeping wouldnt you say.
yes I'm talking to 'you'. although yes you using anothers quotes.
and I dont mean to be mean, just short and clear.
...(all the while saying you dont mean to say what your saying)
'you' meaning your post.
anyhoo..have a nice night. i'm just passing thru, didnt mean to ring the bell or wake the dog.
...and 'wake the dog' was a figure of speech, um...which had nothing to do with you [woman starts beating stranger with cast iron frying pan]
no. no. really it was just a non-gender oriented figure of...oh fuck it..[stranger starts running]
oh fer appears to be one of those I was just speaking of who cannot tell the difference between scripted behavior on film and actual human behavior on film.
I don't imagine they can tell the difference between a woman smiling while under threat and a woman smiling who is pleased either.
Porn is the graphic representation of the torture and rape of women.
Sometimes men and children as well.
Kinda hard to see past that to some dehumanized art concept.
wow. you poor thing. your head must hurt
No. Porn is the graphic representation of sex. thats all.
if its good sex its good porn if its bad sex its bad porn.
oh theres my bus...[wanders off]
"too many confuse...images with real [life]."
yes. and?
thats the story of:
-film
-IKEA instructions
-bible
-constitution
-songs
-dance
-...
yet you know what? Some are not confused. And some media are not corrupted. so theres that.
and cheese raviolis...they solve everything. with some fresh chopped tomatoes spinach and seasalt. (good with eggs too) mmmm.
note: I understand your general concern about male-centeredness of things as illustrated in the classic cartoon of two women talking about actually finding a movie in which the women discuss something other than men (see link).
I understand male-centeredness can be a problem in life, in films, and specifically in films with sexual content. Firstly many people who are men are inconsiderate. Secondly everyone wants to be able to see people like themselves in life, in films, and in films with sexual content. Yet the larger problem is inconsiderate people. after all do you like inconsiderate women? hopefully not. thats all
http://petitesophist.blogspot.co...08/09/
rule.html
"Even mainstream movies and tv ignore straight female sexual desire. The men get an ordinary looking man to identify with and a gorgeous female love interest for the male character and the audience to ogle. The actress playing the love interest is often much younger as well."
Oh, I know! It's everywhere, even game shows. On Wheel of Fortune, men get Vanna White to look at, and women get Pat Sajak. On Deal or No Deal, men get 50(?) beautiful, skimpy models to ogle, and women get one middle-aged bald guy to look at. It's the same situation with most news anchors, too.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ziz...yphus/34585797/
Porn is the graphic representation of the torture and rape of women.
Sometimes men and children as well.
No. Porn is the graphic representation of sex. thats all.
This is my biggest problem with the Great Porn Debate.
There doesn't seem to be any agreement as to how to decide whether a particular film/video/etc. is pornography or not, and the participants (including, unfortunately, Echidne) don't ever bother to say how they define "pornography." Everyone seems to assume that everybody already knows what pornography is, but they all apparently assume something different. It makes the whole discussion sound a bit psychotic.
For example, if you use the first definition quoted above, it's hard to imagine how there could even be such a thing as "feminist pornography."
I also sometimes get the impression that some participants are happy to be vague as to what they mean, so that the word can mean whatever is most convenient for them at the moment.
Great post, Echidne. I agree with your point, which I haven't seen elsewhere, that the presence of feminist porn doesn't solve the problem if the young consumers are going to be consuming the other kind.
I've seen some porn scripts and yes, most do depict the (almost always female) recipient of facials or anal sex as being used or being a slut to be dehumanized. Whether or not the actress is consenting doesn't make this a good message.
AMM, the second definition applies to porn in theory. The first definition applies to porn in practice.
In light of the fact that human trafficking is at epidemic proportions, how does anyone know if the porn they watch has not been made by women or girls forced into these acts? This would make anyone buying or watching this garbage an accessory to a crime, as far as I'm concerned.
Apparently ethics, morals, and a personal conscience are things we all extract and put on a shelf when it comes to this "degradation-of-women" type of entertainment. Men have their needs you know, therefore cannot be held responsible...
amongst his/her flurry of noise making, oh fer makes one point I agree with:
"too many confuse...images with real [life]."
yes. and?
thats the story of:
-film
-IKEA instructions
-bible
-constitution
-songs
-dance
-...
I think the primary problem with porn consumption isn't that there is crap out there (there will always be crap) but that there is very little porn (or erotic art or whatever) that values women (and people in general). I agree completely with echidne that there is a real threat that bad porn can negatively influence young people's perception of sex... but if there is a true marketplace of ideas about sex people will not be brainwashed by a single distorted view. At that point they may have several views to choose from, but will abandon those that don't feel real in comparison. This would not eliminate the association between sexist porn and sexism (as those who are sexist will still seek out sexist porn - since it feels more "real" to them) but it could reduce causality - i.e. it could cut down on the possibility of misconceptions by naive people due to porn (by having less naive people).
As usual, talking to kids (and others) about such issues (love, sex, sexism, media, crime) could also help significantly. How many people, for example, are consumers of porn without fully realizing its common connection with sexual slavery and exploitation? Perhaps also porn needs to be more above ground - regulated like organic farming or other consumer products - so that a consumer could consciously choose porn confirmed to be free of criminal elements. Suppression only feeds oppression.
Everyone seems to assume that everybody already knows what pornography is, but they all apparently assume something different. It makes the whole discussion sound a bit psychotic.
For example, if you use the first definition quoted above, it's hard to imagine how there could even be such a thing as "feminist pornography."
I also sometimes get the impression that some participants are happy to be vague as to what they mean, so that the word can mean whatever is most convenient for them at the moment.
A good point. The meaning I attributed to porn when writing the post was what you would find if you seek what's called vanilla porn by some on the net. The sites are not making movies with a plot. They just show sexual acts of various types, and the vast majority of them are geared towards getting a straight man to orgasm, not towards other goals, artistic or not.
Those sites are not the ones which explicitly trade in pain, humiliation and suffering of women.
No. Porn is the graphic representation of sex. thats all.
if its good sex its good porn if its bad sex its bad porn.
Good sex for whom? Bad sex for whom? It's quite possible to show sex which is really good for one participant and really bad for another participant.
Good sex for whom? Bad sex for whom? It's quite possible to show sex which is really good for one participant and really bad for another participant.
Echidne | Homepage | 09.24.09 - 4:04 pm | #
That, to me, is part of the problem with this argument.
The "good sex" idea is not about the actors, but rather about the viewer.
The actors are doing their job, purportedly voluntarily, for money. They are making a product for sale.
They may be making a good or bad product, but their pleasure in the process is beside the point.
The viewer decides if they have been deceived sufficiently to believe the actors are enjoying themselves.
It is called "suspending disbelief". We do it when we are reading or viewing a story that we know to be fiction.
It astonishes me the degree to which people will argue that what they choose to believe about what they see in a film is accurate, while what the people say who made the film is not.
The viewer decides if they have been deceived sufficiently to believe the actors are enjoying themselves.
But in the actual porn it's not really even quite that. It's whether the viewer comes or not, ultimately, and that depends on how the actor playing the viewer's role appears to be enjoying it all. The other actor/actors are kind of like dildoes.
I believe it was Twisty who said, "if it's not degrading to women, then it's not porn".
Personally, I thought that was fairly accurate, as referring to intercourse with a pro-all-human slant as "erotic porn" or "feminist porn" misses the entire point of what most people have internalized nowadays when they hear the term "porn". It's one of those linguistic whatchmacallits, like pleasant murder or dry water.
The advantage to cease using the term "porn" and to begin using a new term when referring to pro-all-human intercourse is that it creates a definitively seperate space. That harmful crap is over there, wallow in the dirt all you want -- we'll be over here having lots of luscious pro-all-human sex. (Obviously, it needs a snazzier term than "pro-all-human" sex, but hopefully you get the idea.)
To me, "feminist porn" only sounds like a weaker version of regular porn.
"Even though, from my perspective, the implicit argument---that women who have a lot of sex, or with a lot of men are sluts who deserve humiliation---is anti-sex. In other words, for all the sex in porn, much of it adheres to the "family values" narrative, where a sexual woman is used up and deserves nothing but abuse. Being truly pro-sex, in my view, means believing that women who have sex, a lot of sex, or a lot of partners do not forfeit a single ounce of their dignity or humanity. "
I am totally stealing that. And not giving Amanda a link back unless I am feeling extremely generous. Because normally she's a total handmaiden of the patriachy. And the people I am going to share that with, don't need yet another source of feminist lite.
In most porn the "actor playing the viewers role" is the camera lens. Viewers prepared to view sex are accepting the role of voyeur. I hear a lot about the so-called "diversity" of porn, but when the sexuality of all consensual porn is exhibitionism that expands into everything else viewers see, I doubt true diversity can come from such a narrow starting point.
Voyeurism is a sex act, and 99% of people viewing porn 99% of the time don't get the permission of the people they're watching get fucked. Porn-watchers assume because of the fact of the filming that people in porn have given permission to everyone viewing them, but viewers don't learn their real names or seek to verify their willing involvement in porn.
The De Anza case was about a gang-rape at a party. Most people walking into a situation where eight men were gang-raping a drunken girl wouldn't stand by, watch, and decide to masturbate. Yet I guarantee that no small number of times porn users are getting their voyeuristic sex on they have done exactly that, walked into a situation where a woman was being raped by multiple men, assumed consent to their voyeurism where none is given, and started masturbating.
It's an acceptable area of concern that women might be pressured into accepting sex acts they find degrading or unpleasurable because of what's seen in pornography. However, people discussing this effect often gloss over that porn is used as a tool to "break in" prostitutes and that prostituted women endure more sexual violence prior to entering prostitution compared to the general populace. If the "average" women might be harmed by re-enacting porn with their boyfriends, then what terrible sufferings must prostituted women be experiencing as they endure triggering sexual violations by strange men while their pain is preserved on film forever. Research finds prostitutes who are filmed for porn have worse PTSD than unfilmed prostitutes partly due to a relentless, lifelong fear of limitless voyeurs of their shame.
Factor in the profit motive driving pornographers to hurt prostituted women in ways it doesn't drive boyfriends to hurt their girlfriends, and feminists should be seriously more concerned for prostituted women performing in porn than in “average” women being unfinancially pressured to imitate those non-recorded acts with their lovers.
How el bizzaro. I swear I posted two comments.
Factor in the profit motive driving pornographers to hurt prostituted women in ways it doesn't drive boyfriends to hurt their girlfriends, and feminists should be seriously more concerned for prostituted women performing in porn than in “average” women being unfinancially pressured to imitate those non-recorded acts with their lovers.
These are good arguments for writing more about how prostitutes are treated. But it is not necessary (or even desirable, from my point of view) to rank the concerns in a particular way. For one thing, changes in general norms about what sex means for women affect billions of women if they are successful. That's why the possibility of such changes needs to be discussed.
This doesn't mean that what actually happens to unwilling or mistreated participants in the filming of porn wouldn't be an outrage of a totally different level, for each individual so affected.
In other words, work needs to be done in more than one direction.
Also, if the general ideas about what sex is become more woman-loathing (to use a word I know might be attacked), then one of the consequences of that is that the female actors in porn will face ever worsening treatments, too
haloscan is being wonky, it keeps saying "one new comment, click here to refresh" and when I do there is no new comment.
And when I clicked closed and then opened again, the last 5-7 comments disappeared again.
Haloscan does that, m Andrea. Sometimes. I could use the Blogger's commenting system, but it's slower than molasses in January.
I agree the problem is multifaceted, and I brought that part of it up because the blogger discussing only porn's harm to non-porn women said in response to her boyfriend's claim the 'actresses' are all consenting, "DUH, I KNOW THAT." [sic]
She doesn't know that. There are many excellent reasons for a feminist discussing the harms of porn to conclude opposite-wise about the women displayed in it that went unheeded.
Maybe it's hopeless, as m'Andrea sez, to rescue the term "porn" with any qualifier. Films deliberately designed to excite men and women to orgasm have definitely gotten nastier and nastier (and less and less sexy as a result, IMO) over the years, as Echidne sez.
We definitely need to find a better word for genuine eroticism than pro-all-human tho.
I think that there's a major brainwash problem here. When you , me, or one, or anybody watches sexually exciting images, very deep structures of the psyche get activated. Otherwise, what's the point.
Mix that with the sadism -- a nice exact term -- that Echidne is describing, and you combine an open read-write channel to program the brain, on one hand, with a visual or situational trigger to activate sadism in other (real sex) circumstances on the other. In short you're both associating erotic energy with sadistic energy and programming erotic situations to trigger sadistic scripts.
You could do it in a lab and I'd bet a good chili dog you'd get reproducible results.
And that really stinks for us as a society. Take something good and fundamental like sex. Link it to something nasty and counterproductive like sadism. Program it deep into the limbic systems of young and old. In a couple of generations sex could very well come to "mean" sadism.
Some very smart people have already suggested that, operationally, the equation already holds (Andrea Dworkin, I'm remembering you). And while I don't think it's come to that in individual lives, I can see her point when looking thru a larger social lens.
Not all sexual film is like that. The single greatest predictor in a sex film of sadism versus what I think of as genuine eroticism is, in my amateur opinion ...
The gender of the filmmaker.
Now who would've guessed that.
The second greatest is the presence or absence of men in the film.
It makes me think about the screwfly solution.
Or the Screwtape solution. It's an unpleasant note when some people can get rich really messing up the brains of masses of other people.
It is also important to remember that the effects of pornography are not just limited to the bedroom. Once you are willing to act sadistically to another person to get off the old hard on when else will you start to think (if you don't already) that the ends, what you want, are more important to the means? It will spread through the rest of the relationship, sex is not cut off from that.
It is not just the one relationship either. When people say "oh, it only effects his girlfriend/wife/friendw/bennies they have this consensual thing going on,(or, oh, it is no big deal he only does it for a wank by himself)" ignoring whatever you think about consent, it is ignoring that once a man is used to treating/viewing a woman/women in a specific way what is to stop him from having the line blurred between that and say everywhere else. Like I said, just because that door to the bedroom is closed doesn't mean it can't get out. Like men who insult women with porn tropes, or even something they don't think is an insult, or even just joking "among friends." So even if you have this great consensual thing with your boyfriend or whatever, no one else consented. No one else consented to up the skirt "shots" with cellphones, being stereotyped due to porn tropes (coed sluts, sexy librarian, hot lesbian, etc).
No. Porn is the graphic representation of sex. thats all.
if its good sex its good porn if its bad sex its bad porn.
Good sex doesn't necessarily make for good TV. I mean, much of what I find pleasurable wouldn't show up well on film because someone's head would be in the way.
When people say "oh, it only effects his girlfriend/wife/ ..., it is ignoring that once a man is used to treating/viewing a woman/women in a specific way, what is to stop him from having the line blurred between that and ... everywhere else?
It's the same reason it's a good idea to prohibit violence against even people you think deserve it -- because once you start giving people permission to do awful things to one set of people, who's to say they'll stop there? Or, as I like to say, "if they'll do it to anyone, they'll do it to anyone."
Wehret den Anfaengen!
I've kept this post and comment thread open in my browser for days now, and keep re-reading, because there is so much here that is very well-said.
Thanks everyone for your comments on this thread, and for the excellent post that started it.
Tonight my husband and I discovered that we needed to have this discussion with our 12 year old son upon discovering his most recent internet usage. Thanks to this, we actually were able to articulate exactly what we felt and and wanted him to know about this.
Serendipitie.. we luvs it!
It's one of those linguistic whatchmacallits, like pleasant murder or dry water.
That's an oxymoron. Like military intelligence as my friends in the Navy ROTC unit used to mutter.
for "oh fer crissakes"
art 1 |ärt|
noun
1 the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power : the art of the Renaissance | great art is concerned with moral imperfections | she studied art in Paris.
• works produced by such skill and imagination : his collection of modern art | an exhibition of Tibetan art | [as adj. ] an art critic.
• creative activity resulting in the production of paintings, drawings, or sculpture : she's good at art.
Nowhere in the dictionary is porn relegated to art. It will never be in an Art History Course, or a Museum. It is not self expression, as the actors are not expressing themselves, and the generally is no script. Porn would never get any awards for it's "artistic merit." It is fiction, yes. Art, hell no.
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