On Z Magazine’s website, Gail Dines and Robert Jensen are criticizing the left’s attitude towards pornography:
All those media products are critiqued by leftists precisely because the fantasy world they create is a distortion of the actual world in which we live. Police and prosecutors do sometimes seek justice, but they also enforce the rule of the powerful. Individuals in capitalism do sometimes prosper as a result of their hard work, but the system does not provide everyone who works hard with a decent living. Some tiny number of Arabs are terrorists, but that obscures both the terrorism of the powerful in white America and the humanity of the vast majority of Arabs.
Such fantasies also reflect how those in power want subordinated people to feel. Images of happy blacks on the plantations made whites feels more secure and self-righteous in their oppression of slaves. Images of contented workers allay capitalists’ fears of revolution. And men deal with their complex feelings about contemporary masculinity’s toxic mix of sex and aggression by seeking images of women who enjoy pain and humiliation.
I think they make a good point. Partly, perhaps, as a result of the polarization caused by the “porn wars” in the 1980s, and the desire to avoid even a hint of censorship, lefty defenses of porn sometimes seem more knee-jerk than thoughtful. But you don’t have to endorse censorship to critique the sexism, misogyny and racism found in a lot of porn.
Where Dines and Jensen fall down, in my opinion, is in not providing a working definition of what pornography means. The truth is, porn – like “partial birth abortion” – is one of those terms that is used so loosely, it has become impossible to be sure what any particular author means unless they explicitly define their terms.
For myself, I think “pornography” is any media produced with the intention of being used as a masturbatory aid by the audience. But my definition of porn includes material that contains no violence and is not degrading in any obvious way (for example, Colleen Coover’s comic Small Favors), while Dines and Jensen’s analysis doesn’t even seem to acknowledge that there could be such a thing as non-degrading, non-violent pornography. Does this mean that they see all sexually explicit materials – even something like Small Favors – as degrading and implicitly violent? Or are they not counting such material as “pornography” at all?
Two cover-my-behind points. First of all, I’m not denying that there’s a lot of porn out there that is disgustingly violent, and disgustingly misogynistic. Just clearing out my spam makes it clear to me that porn makers believe they can generate a lot of business by appealing to misogyny: “come see this bitch get nailed!” is if anything a mild example of the misogynistic language typical of much porn advertising. Assuming that market incentives work, the high prevalence of this sort of advertising indicates that there is considerable profit for porn producers who make direct appeals to woman-hatred. And there seems to be a similar, although perhaps slightly smaller, market for overtly racist porn.
Secondly, just because a piece of porn is not overtly misogynist or overtly degrading, doesn’t place it beyond feminist criticism. For instance, a lot of porn (such as Playboy-style naked posing) endorses not only very traditional ideas of what is or isn’t attractive, but also implicitly endorses the idea that sexuality is something possessed by women, which men must pry out of women. To me these ideas are problematic; they support a narrow and limiting idea of sexuality, which I think is harmful to society. However, this isn’t a problem with porn qua porn; the same harmful ideas I dislike in even “non-violent” porn, are also found in abundance in non-porn media like “women’s magazines,” “men’s magazines” and popular sit-coms. So although I think this is a legitimate critique of a lot of porn, it doesn’t make sense to single out porn in general for this critique, since these flaws are evident in virtually all of pop culture.
Regardless of what definition of porn Dines and Jensen are using, or if they’re overlooking the existence of non-degrading porn, it’s clear that their critique is applicable to a lot of the porn out there – and that there’s no reason that leftists should give racist and misogynistic porn a pass, when we don’t give racism and misogyny in non-porn media a pass.
UPDATE: Tiffany at blackfeminism.org weighs in, and also discusses “the virgin-victim-whore trichotomy.”
Speaking as someone who has defended a lot of porn in a lot of situations, I couldn’t agree more. In essence, in fact, this critique of porn is also my defense of porn: lots of porn is racist and misogynistic, and that’s awful and should be rightly attacked, just as lots of non-porn media is racist and misogynistic and should be attacked for it. This doesn’t mean that all porn is bad any more than it means that all television is bad . . . but I’ll tell you, damn near 90% of television is bad, and should be called such.
—Myca
Myca, the article’s point is that leftist criticism of pornography it pitifully lacking. It’s all well and good to say something obviously sexist or racist should be criticized, but the problem with pornography being discussed is that there’s a gaping hole of silence regarding the left’s refusal to hold pornography to the most basic standards of other media.
Very few things are all or nothing, so when do we decide that something has reached the point it’s worth taking action on and do you really think the production and consumption of pornography would fail to meet that standard? If 100% of rapists were male instead of 97% would it really change much about how to approach the problem of rape, or do we say that until it’s 100% we must look at rape as a gender-neutral phenomena because every man and woman can go either positive or negative?
Amp wrote:
Er, I think that you meant “pry.” :/
[Whoops! Thanks for pointing that out; correction made. –Amp]
I think that that’s a reasonable complaint, to a point (although it does strike me that one of the things that ‘the left’ has been doing lately that irks the fuck out of me is, in fact, to attack video games in ways that I find unfair), but I think it’s worth looking at what those standards are that other media are held to. In most discussions of pornography I’ve had, I’ve found that what has been advocated is to hold Pornography to a standard that’s actually pretty far above other media, legally.
Now, YES, morally I sure think that there could be a lot more public criticism of porn, I’m just wary because in general our government can’t seem to hear criticism without regurgitating legislation, and except in situations where the activity being filmed is illegal (child porn, bestiality) or the method of filming is illegal (violence, blackmail, drugs), I’m not sure that porn needs more legislation.
It’s not the ‘do something’ that you and I would likely disagree on, but more the specific ‘what to do.’ Just as I think the best reaction to violent and offensive books and films is to produce/purchase/consume positive, life affirming sorts of books and films, so I think the same is true of pornography. I do not believe that violent porn should be banned. I do believe it should be criticized harshly and attacked and lambasted and made socially unacceptable, but I don’t think it should be restricted via the government any more than I think the works of the Marquis deSade ought to be.
—Myca
I really liked the article.
Amp, though the authors do not provide a definition, I think they are pretty clear that they are talking specifically about the for-profit industry. They say “mass market” in several places, refer to trade publications, etc. Their blanket denial that porn is produced by auteurs in garrets is maybe imprecise, but it serves to underline that they are not talking about those auteurs who are working in garrets to deal with the mysteries of sexuality: either they’re not talking about that kind of porn, or they’re saying that’s not porn. Maybe a clear definition would be better, but I didn’t feel confused about what they meant.
I think the criticism is right. I think that porn ought to be subject to criticism like other media is when it’s crap, when its elements or metamessage move us backwards (which is overwhelmingly the case with mainstream porn, as the article says).
The authors do say one thing that I think would be better said differently: they make the point that perhaps lots of men on the left defend porn uncritically because they get off to it. In my view, this is probably true. But then they say that the answer is for men to “get over the obsession” with getting off.
I hope the authors didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Opposing porn is not anti-sex. Telling people, men or women, that getting off is an “obsession” to “get over” is anti-sex. I think the better answer is this: men who are getting off to porn that is bad for women and bad for all of us need to find better stuff to get off to. And if it’s not out there, make it: whether film or photo or audio or text, we need to create and enjoy sexually explicit material that speaks to real sexuality, in which all participants’ subjectivity is acknowledged.
Now, the authors don’t explicitly deny that such material does or could exist, and to the extent you read them otherwise, Amp, I think you may be reading something into the text which isn’t there.
I’d go further than that.
For me sex is something people do together for mutual pleasure. When you accept that someone is doing these acts for money instead of pleasure, you are in fact masturbating with someone elses body as your sextoy.
We now know how intercourse without pleasure can damage the female body and lead to such things as vestibulitis and other illnesses. How can we then accept getting pleasure from watching the pain and/or (at best) discomfort of our fellow humans?
And I totally agree with Thomas that we must be able to find alternatives.
Maybe amateur videos, maybe animated porn, litterature or paintings -but not something that hurts other people.
I rather think that when the authors of the article were talking about losing one’s “obsession” with getting off, they meant getting off at any cost.
On a related, if not feminist, note, David Wong wrote about porn addiction in the context of challenging some ‘net buddies to go without for as long as they could. Note that this is not a feminist critique of porn, but rather an approach to addiction in general as something to beware of. (Don’t read it expecting feminism, or much sympathy for the average woman’s POV when she has a male porn addict in her life. You’ll be disappointed.)
http://www.pointlesswasteoftime.com/pornoff.html
Here’s a question- what good will liberal criticism of porn do? What’s the desired end result? Lets say we find some mysogynistic porn. Easy enough to do. Ok, it’s bad. It puts women down. we criticize it.
What’s the goal of the criticism leveled at it? Who are we trying to convince, of what are we trying to convince them, and how are we going to go about it?
Josh, I think we mostly ought to be talking to feminist and lefty men. If enough of us provide an audience for a real alternative (not Suicide Girls, which is porn industry with tattoos), then someone will serve that audience. If someone is serving that audience, the alternative will start to be visible, and can draw more folks away from mainstream porn, and ultimately, parts of the industry may change to accomodate the demands of the audience.
However, it’s a lot more effective if the mainstream doesn’t have to guess what’s going on. If Vivid gets letters saying, “I don’t buy your product because I think it doesn’t value women; I’m getting off to material that I can feel good about,” and they see the impact of that in sales (even a comparatively marginal impact), I think they’ll pay attention. Or they won’t, in which case we’ll just have to keep going around them.
My standard line on pornography is “the problem with mainstream pornography isn’t that it’s sexually explicit, it’s that it’s fucking sexist.”
I’m not sure if I understand the ‘leftist don’t critique pornography enough’ argument. Personally I very rarely critique out right grossly sexist material of any sort, because that would involve watching it. I can get into extended debate and critique of any of Joss Whedon shows, more easily than I can tell you what’s wrong with the common ideas in an Action movie. Honestly I find the buying and selling of women in mainstream commodified sexually explicit material so disturbing that I find it very difficult to get close enough to analyse it. And I frequently articulate the reasons I feel this way.
But one of the reason I have huge problems with anti-porn feminism is is that often I don’t see that much analysis of sexually explicit material in the way you see analysis of Ally McBeal. The fact that it is ‘pornographic’ is considered in itself enough to condemn it (I’m not necessarily talking about academic work here, which often goes into more detail – I’m talking about discussion between feminists and material produced as part of a campaign). Unlike Thomas I can’t presume that people can make a distinction between the sexism and the sexually explicitness.
Which is a long winded way of saying I agree with Amp that hte problem with that article is that it doesn’t define pornography – and pornography is a sufficiently vague word that, to me, that’s a major flaw.
Thomas: Sounds reasonable. I prefer my smut to be mostly written anyhow, so I doubt I’m the target audience. But what he hear you saying is that you think that porn is OK, as long as it treats the subjects respectfully (this presumes that this an be done at all) and that it presents them in a non degrading manner.
I think the idea of actualy promoting a certain class of porn as acceptable, where another class is not up to our ethical standards is such a convoluted nightmare of ethics that I’m not even going to try.
But if you want to, more power to ya. Before you get started though, a word of advice: if you havent’ already, start talking to some people who work in the porn industry. Ask them about what they do, how they feel, and what things are like for them. Read a few porn star blogs. Get to know the industry.
If nothing else, you’ll be better educated as to why something is or isn’t objectionable.
Gee, I dunno’, J. For starters, maybe a goal could be letting liberal and lefty women know that liberal and lefty men can tell the difference between fantasy and reality– between fake depictions of female sexuality and the real thing. Also, maybe a more detailed critique would remove the protective barrier that too many liberal and lefty men place around the porn industry– as opposed to other industries. If you ask me, far too many refuse to examine the reality of how the industry physically harms the women in it. The same folks who can give you fifteen talking points in fifteen seconds about the nastiness of Nike’s obsession with profits above all else simply refuse to treat the debate about porn as anything that has effects on the physical plane. Somewhere in all that lofty talk about the First Amendment and the joys of the unfettered imagination (yeah, like the average porn film is sooooo creative), it gets lost that pornographic film is a *for profit industry*, in which real people “star” ;And that real people are physically damaged by doing so– so only a few at the top of the heap can reap huge profits.
Oddly enough, Josh, I wouldn’t expect too many blogs by stars of adult film to be terribly clear-eyed about the realities of the industry for the majority of the women in it. Just like I wouldn’t expect a blog by Phil Knight to be terribly clear-eyed about the realities of life for the shoe assemblers in the average Nike factory. Strange though it may seem, I think that the average highly-paid poster child for the industry probably doesn’t want his/her cash cow scrutinized too closely. Witness, for example, Dr. Chyng Sun’s article about porn industry earlier this year in Counterpunch:
http://www.counterpunch.org/sun01312005.html
And Nina Hartley’s utterly pathetic response, in which she immediately opted to smear Sun as some kind of Trojan Horse for the Christian Right, smugly glossing over pretty much all the points that Sun tried to make:
http://www.counterpunch.org/hartley02022005.html
Myca wrote:
Myca, you can’t be serious. If you haven’t seen it, you haven’t looked very hard. Just for an example, go google Nikki Craft’s name. You may not agree with everything she says about porn– I’m not sure that I agree with every last bit myself. However, just because I might not take all of it unreservedly doesn’t mean that it’s not real analysis.
I’m not sure why . . . I mean, isn’t this what we do in all other areas of our lives? I think Harold and Maude is acceptable, while The Triumph of the Will does not meet my ethical standards. I find hybrid vehicles acceptable while SUVs don’t meet my ethical standards. I find The Once and Future King acceptable, while Mein Kampf doesn’t meet my ethical standards.
—Myca
I am utterly serious! All the time! About everything!
Even more so because I didn’t write the stuff you attribute to me. That was Reddecca.
;-)
—Myca
D’oh ! Sorry. Must get coffee now. :o
One interesting point for me is that much of “what gets me off” could absolutely fall under the heading of violent or misogynistic, seeing as how I’m a BDSM dominant, and I enjoy bondage, spankings, and other things that, were they nonconsentual, would most certainly be considered torture.
This has bothered me in the past, and it’s meant that when it comes to porn, my options are either violent & misogynistic porn on the one hand, or porn that doesn’t really address my kinks on the other. Of course, even the violent/misogynistic porn doesn’t really address my kinks, as part of what turns me on is having a happy, aroused partner, and most of the porn out there that does feature my kinks has tended to feature them in the context of **SEE this abducted teen girl abused by two men!!** or something similar.
Why I bring this up is that there’s been a somewhat recent development in the realm of BDSM porn, and it’s a development that I see as overwhelmingly positive. Rather than play-act out a rape or abduction or something, I’ve seen lately much more BDSM porn that maps pretty closely to actual BDSM scenes, including the pre-scene negotiation and post-scene come-down and cuddling. That is, it portrays bondage/spanking/heavier stuff as something that two people who both enjoy it choose to do together, not as something that one person does to another. Also, it puts the consent and safety concerns way up front, which is where they belong. Also, it models responsible behavior for anyone out there who might be trying to figure out whether or not this is something they’re interested in. Also, it’s much more likely to feature gay and lesbian sexuality in a respectful, realistic way. Also it’s much more likely to feature participants of variant body types.
Also . . . it’s hotter. It’s more arousing.
It’s better porn.
—Myca
“However, this isn’t a problem with porn qua porn; the same harmful ideas I dislike in even “non-violent” porn, are also found in abundance in non-porn media like “women’s magazines,” “men’s magazines” and popular sit-coms.”
It seems like erotica involving high male dominance and initial female reluctance are much, much more common in womens’ romance novels than in porn geared to men.
\drift
There is nothing inherently “respectful” or “realistic” about lesbian sexuality in BDSM porn. It is porn, made for an audience. If there is a marketable niche, then there is nothing realistic about the scenes portrayed. Nothing. [unless you delude yourself into believing there are no directors, klieg lights, or money changing hands]
/drift
HNS wrote:
Doesn’t seem that way to me. Both seem equally obsessed with it. The primary difference is that bodice rippers tend toward pretty-pretty euphemisms for genitalia and sex acts. Also, they have just enough emphasis on a plot line (usually the same one, over and over again in obstensibly different books) to escape the charge that it’s mere whack-off material. Even though whacking off is still the primary purpose.
Both, I might add, tend to use rape and allusions of rape as a standard courtship ritual, which is gross no matter how gussied up the language is. :(
Well, no, of course there isn’t, but that’s not what I said, either. Really, there’s nothing inherently realistic or respectful in any sort of media of any type.
What I was saying is that lately I have seen certain types of BDSM porn become more respectful and realistic than other types, and that that’s a good thing.
—Myca
Yes. Exactly.
I have had sooo much trouble surfing through both written and visual erotica, trying to find things that live up to the standards Myca outlined, both in BDSM and in the genre of “two-characters-who-aren’t-together-end-up-fucking (and-staying-together-afterwards),” (the reading of which makes me happy). I spent several years reading romance novels for the sex, but got so thouroughly disgusted every damn time with the “real-life” power imbalances between the characters, the fighting, and the “she-says-no-but-he-knows-better-and-shows-her-so-and-is-right,” followed by her forgetting he’s hurt her and them living happily ever after without so much as discussing it, that I finally threw them all out and went looking online for better things. Problem is, whenever I read something the first time I skim through it on tenterhooks because I’m worried that the same thing will happen, or it will have a sad ending. And unfortunately, for every really good story I find I have to go through four or five mediocre ones and one or two rape and/or sad-ending ones. Some people can’t post decent warnings about their work for anything!
BDSM, and sex in general, is supposed to be something in which the people involved engage because they want to, enjoy thouroughly, and come out happier than before, preferably with a new (or strengthened) emotional connection with the other person(s). Sometimes I wish I could get every author out there to put in their summary whether or not the piece fits these criteria.
But that’s as much a fantasy as the ones I make in my own head, in order to have erotica in which I’m sure everything goes to my standards.
one thing i think it could do is to be able to better see how porn fits into mainstream culture. i mean, if we criticize it more like any other media, we have to be willing to hold other media to the negative standards of porn, too.
for example, sexist or racist porn takes existing gender or race stereotypes, exaggerates them, and performs them for the excitement of the viewer with the intent of making money, with little real concern for the well-being of the actors (other than testing for STD’s). is that really different from, say, WWF wrestling, or even real professional boxing?
if we keep porn media separate from other media, then we are conceding (to the right) that sex really is substantively different from other biological and psychological processes. if i don’t concede that point, then paying someone to entertain me with sex isn’t all that much different from paying someone to entertain me with violence.
i think Amp’s point is that we should hold porn to the same standards as other media because a discussion of sex ought not be a fundamentally different proposition (no pun intended) than a discussion of any other aspect of society. that difference is, i think, an invention of the right, who seem to be saying (about porn, and maybe prostitution, too), “we think that the market will provide for all, and therefore, you are allowed to use your skills, mind, and body for any money-making purposes that don’t directly harm others except for sex, which we’re going to regulate, because sex really is different.
so…what if sex really isn’t different?
I am serious – but I was serious about the whole paragraph – not just the first sentance.
I’m not saying that the analysis doesn’t exist, just that it’s very easy to have a discussion without anyone actually doing any analysis whatsoever. Even in the article Amp linked to the analysis of porn isn’t as in depth as the sort of analysis that you ususally see of mainstream media. I think analysing pornography as media would be a great idea – but in the paragraph they defend doing that they simply do a much better job of analysing other media than analysing pornography.
I have often encountered the idea that what is needed is more “good porn” and I find that way of looking at the problems of pornography production and consumption problematic because it makes the focus all about perceived porn consumer satisfaction and this satisfaction of consumers leading to change. Such a point of view is rarely taken in leftist critiques of either media or corporations. When speaking of how Wal-Mart mistreats its female employees customer satisfaction isn’t made an issue by leftists. The consumer choice between cheap items and stopping women’s exploitation was made a long time ago and is very ingrained in our culture; women lost. Few leftists would argue the free market is a mechanism designed to enhance human rights, so why do many leftists suggest relying on the free market is the best way to deal with extreme amounts of exploitation in the making and group defamation in the viewing/using of pornography?
The overwhelmingly male consumer choice for pornography is not only not against the pain, suffering and exploitation of women, these are the most desireable features of the most profitable, wisepread pornography The pain and humiliation of women is the main point, not an accidental byproduct as it is with sweatshop labor or Wal-Mart or the production of non-pornography goods. Amp shared one mild example of an anti-woman porn title and I hope most of us know enough about pornography to know it is a mild example of what commonly found in pornography titles.
Candida Royalle has been making so-called “female porn” since 1984. In the past 20 years not only has female-produced porn not grown appreciably, the misogyny and outright delight in the destruction of female dignity and humanity of mainstream porn has gotten much more violent and revelatory in the violence. The theory that “better porn” or “more female-oriented porn” will lead to changes has been failing for two decades, and a strong case for the growing female acceptance of pornography in part leading men to demand harsher, more violent pornography can be made.
The way I see it, the increased cruelty of porn in recent years is a perfect illustration of what porn is really intended for. It was never about sexual liberation and always about humiliating and hating women. Women increasingly buying into the “sexual freedom” bullshit surrounding porn made everything worse because, as we have many examples to prove, once women start moving in there goes the neighborhood and men move out for greener, meaner pastures. When Russian women became doctors in large numbers, the noble healing art became less attractive to Russian men. Men strenuously keep women out of the military because once it’s shown women can be soldiers then being a soldier isn’t as manly anymore.
Under this model, women accepting pornography as it used to be known meant men didn’t want it that way anymore because if women like something, men stop liking it. So they moved to more anal thinking correctly that most women didn’t like it, but then some women adapted to that too and now anal isn’t edgy anymore, edgy in porn really meaning “That which men like and women don’t, hence making it good and worthwhile”. Now the double or triple anal is where it’s at. Then women got more used to gang bangs, even the 100 people fuckfests, and now simply showing sex with a hundred men isn’t edgy anymore unless it’s accompanied by lots of violence and verbal degradation. Women got used to facials and now bukkake proliferates and, again, the verbal abuse has increased because there’s only so many things you can do to bodies but the patriarchy can always creatively concoct new way to speak about hating women. Women are never going to get to the top of the pornography heap beause anytime they come close men move the heap to keep it untainted by the touch of femaleness.
alsis39 mentioned Dr. Chyng Sun. Dr. Sun interviewed Candida Royalle at a Las Vegas convention in 2004 and asked her, “Did you ever imagine this is where porn would end up?” The question made Candida Royalle cry. I believe she sincerely intended for “female porn” to change pornography for the better but, like most people steeped in patriarchy, she woefully underestimated men’s severe rejection of women as sexual equals.
So that’s my opinion on the consumer end of things that seems inordinately focused on in pornography when compared to other leftist analysis of industries and media, but I prefer to focus on the production end of things because there’s a tremendous amount of abuse going on behind the cameras that’s a lot more hidden that consumer (dis)satisfaction with pornography products.
There’s plenty of evidence that shows prostitution is inherently harmful to prostituted people, and since pornography is nothing but filmed prostitution I don’t see how it could be considered something wholly separate from prostitution in the harms caused to the women used to make it. Both pornography actors and non-porn actors act out sexual scenes, but non-porn actors are not placed daily in situations where their physical and mental health are put at severe risk. Porn actors come from populations with backgrounds much more similar to prostitutes than actresses, and a European study a few years back found porn actors had 6 times the suicide rate of non-porn actors. There is no billion-dollar market in enslaved non-pornographic actresses.
As I’ve said before and I’ll say again, there is no such thing as risk-free sex. Humans just haven’t gotten that good at solving the myriad of problems surrounding frequent sex with revolving partners yet. Natalie Angiers wrote in her Pulitzer-winning book Woman: An Intimate Geography that a woman who has sex with ten different men once each has an inexplicably greater chance of developing pelvic inflammatory disease than a woman who has sex ten times with one man. There is no 100% perfect method of birth control outside hysterectomy, and some STDs are not blocked by condoms even when they are used (in most pornography condoms are not used). In 2005, we do not have all the answers to sexuality, but we have tremendous evidence of sexual capitalism’s harms and since that’s what we’ve got to go on that’s where we should begin.
An interesting response, Samantha, and one I’ll respond to in more detail at some point (i.e. when I’m not running out the door), but I’d like to ask first what your proposed solution is.
If you honestly believe that, “the theory that “better porn” or “more female-oriented porn” will lead to changes has been failing for two decades,” (although I disagree), then what ought we to do instead?
—Myca
The day we accept that women must avoid casual sex because of the limitations of biology is the day that we give up and accept that biology is destiny. largely decoupling sexual pleasure from the dangers of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections is, to my mind, one of the most important achievements in history, and I think we have to move further in that direction instead of announcing that it has failed.
The damage that porn does to the women in it is one of the two big issues, the other being of course what the material does to those who see it and the rest of the culture. The discussion has so far been about the latter, because that’s what readily comes to mind when one discussed media criticism. I have not forgotten the former, however. (Actually, I’m a big fan of text. It lets my imagination work, and I don’t have to worry the same way about the people involved in its production.)
However, when we’re talking about people exploited in the making of porn, it really is necessary to define porn. In discussions of porn in the past, I’ve often used as an example a set of photos a friend sent me once. She’s a sadomasochist like me, and when she came out to me I gave her some of her first toys to get her collection started. Some years ago, she sent a few sexually explicit photos as a gift to my wife and I. Sexually explicit material, exchanged for no money between friend who share an interpretation of the material. Maybe someone would argue otherwise, but I don’t think many of us would see any exploitation in that. Likewise, if a woman posts a fantasy or a story somewhere, taking no money and doing it for no reason other than her own excitement, it’s hard to me to see how that’s exploitive in any but the most attenuated sense. So, when we talk about women being prostituted for male consumers, it seems to me we’re talking about the for-profit industry. It seems to me that’s what the authors linked above were analyzing, and Samantha, it seems to me that that’s what you’re talking about.
I do think there is a huge market of men who want to see women brutalized and degraded, and that angers me. I think a big part of dealing with that is to organize the folks in the industry to protect themselves and empower them to refuse to do more and more of what is bad for them. To the extent that the alternative is to pass laws allowing either the government or private parties to take a chunk out of hte porn industry, every attempt I have seen looks like it will never be used against commercial pornographers and will be used first (and probably only) on a few fringy BDSM folks. Remember that the United Kingdom locked up a bunch of gay male sadomashochists for making BDSM porn for their own community in Operation Spanner, and the bills folks have proposed in the U.S. have been strongly oriented towards shutting down BDSM-oriented material.
Myca
Look at my post, nr 7.
Okay, redecca, I’ll bite. What kind of analysis are you looking for ? To me, it was clear enough in the article Amp linked to that the authors were primarily concerned with filmed sex scenes made for profit, particularly those with violent overtones. They mentioned a woman having a dick shoved down her throat until she appeared to be choking. Surely most adults are familiar with that sort of imagery. I know I am, and I haven’t looked at a porn film in years.
As for me, when I start to imagine how I’d like sexuality to be depicted in this culture, I don’t arrive at anything that reminds me much of traditional pornographic film. Not because I think that the ideal film would have no sex or mention of sexuality in it whatsoever, but because I’d rather not see sex scenes detached from all other context. Also, I don’t think that it’s neccessary that everything depicted about sex be sunshine, lollipops and rainbows. However, I don’t like to see the degredation of women –ie, a woman having a dick stuffed down her throat while she appears to be choking, while a man insults her with epithets, etc.– unwaveringly depicted (advertised if you will) in a positive light. Samantha is right. It’s foul, and that POV has an ugly tendency to creep into any and all discussions about sex. As if the words “porn” and “sex” were interchangeable. Is that the best that our culture can do ?
redecca wrote:
I agree that such selective attacks are stupid. However, the article is correct in its assertion that if we don’t talk about the for-profit aspect of porn, we won’t be able to properly critique such hypocrisy or deal with it properly. Hotel chains make megabucks off mainstream porn produced by large companies, for instance. They are in no hurry to see it disappear. The stuff you describe, however, doesn’t make them any money. It (and those involved in making it) are therefore expendable so that the CEO’s can have their cake and eat it, too. That is, they can sell themselves as upstanding citizens even as they make tons of money off the not-so-secret obsessions of other upstanding citizens.
I like smut myself and didn’t like the MacKinnon-Dworkin axis at all. That said, pornography should be treated like any other media and the industry that produces it should be held to some sort of at least minimal code of conduct. I’m sure the industry wouldn’t welcome it, though it should; such would not censorship, merely the same occupational health/safety standards that apply at even the lowest hole-in-the-wall.
If it’s true the left suffers from a silence syndrome vis-a-vis porn (I’m not sure it does), it’s clear why such happens; some among us, perhaps many, simply feel any level of transactional sex is wrong and many also feel it has nefarious effects for women and on society at large. That lot don’t want a debate; they’d do better to advocate outright censorship. It would be the intellectually honest thing to do.
DP wrote:
Not really, but I guess it would continue to provide certain sexist liberal/left males with the caricature of feminism that they like to set up and then knock down whenever this subject arises. :/
That’s a neat trick, though, DP. Claim that there’s no silence on the issue but that if there is, it’s all the fault of feminists because we’re so meeeeeean and intimidating.
BTW, since analysis and clarification seems to be all the rage these days, perhaps you’d like to chime in with your definition of “outright censorship.” If you ask me, the “no-condom” policy in hetero porn films is a public health issue. Far as I’m concerned, film companies should be forced to comply with a mandatory condom policy and if they don’t, they should be punished with heavy fines or shut down, just as any other business that lets its employees sicken unnecessarily should be. If these companies don’t want to spoil some idiot’s fantasy image of unfettered sex by showing the condom in the film, let them edit or computer alter it in the editing room. These companies make a fortune;They can certainly afford to do this and keep the fantasy intact without sickening and killing women. If they can’t afford to do this, they don’t deserve to be in business
Is that “outright censorship” ? I don’t think so.
I would define outright censorship as the law that a local town passed recently that shut down our local “adult” shop. Obscenity laws and the like that tell the community at large what they can and cannot hear, view, or read. That is outright censorship.
I’ve seen many hetero pornographic films that did include the use of condoms, and I think that is a good thing. I think regulation of the industry is a good thing. However, I do not want to see the government be so sweeping as to simply outlaw porn as “obscene” either.
I didn’t say that stuff about BDSM Alsis although I agree with it. I also agree with you that as an industry porn can and should be criticised the same as other industries. Personally I’d focus regulation of the industry around the conditions under which is was produced, and making condoms a requirement would be an important part of that.
To try and explain what I mean I’ll compare the analysis of non-sexually explicit media in that section with the analysis of sexually explicity media:
“Pornography is fantasy, of a sort. Just as television cop shows that assert the inherent nobility of police and prosecutors as protectors of the people are fantasy. Just as the Horatio Alger stories about hard work’s rewards in capitalism are fantasy. Just as films that cast Arabs only as terrorists are fantasy.
All those media products are critiqued by leftists precisely because the fantasy world they create is a distortion of the actual world in which we live. Police and prosecutors do sometimes seek justice, but they also enforce the rule of the powerful. Individuals in capitalism do sometimes prosper as a result of their hard work, but the system does not provide everyone who works hard with a decent living. Some tiny number of Arabs are terrorists, but that obscures both the terrorism of the powerful in white America and the humanity of the vast majority of Arabs.”
This analysis explains what the problem, and explains why it’s a problem. It talks about how it feeds into analysis. For sexually explicit material an example is given, but that is all: “Apparently the commonplace left insight that mediated images can be tools for legitimizing inequality holds true for an analysis of CBS or CNN, but evaporates when the image is of a woman having a penis thrust into her throat with such force that she gags. ” We don’t get the context or the analysis. A lot of analysis of pornography stops at “this is violent and sexually explicit therefore it is bad.” and to me that’s not enough.
Sorry, but that’s not my experience. The most widespread pornography, available on any highstreet, depicts women, usually on their own, naked and showing tits, ass, and pussy. And that’s basically it. I don’t see any pain there at all, nor do I see it as necessarily humiliating.
When it comes to the internet which, beyond meeting bare minimal standards of legality, is basically unregulated, there is still a lot of porn like that, and probably an equal amount depicting men and women fucking and sucking, again with no discernible pain or humiliation of the women.
There is a large body of porn which does depict women being humiliated, and a smaller body which depicts them being hurt, but neither of these are “the most widespread”, nor is pain and humiliation “the main point” of porn taken as a whole.
Far as I’m concerned, film companies should be forced to comply with a mandatory condom policy…
So are you suggesting that the government should take control of one person’s sexuality, so as to protect another’s life and health?
Myca, that can be answered on all the levels of what any movement for social change requires and what people can do, and it doesn’t look much different from other actions of feminists. The first level might be all someone reaches, and that could be someone stopping their own use of pornography. The way some react to that suggestion as if I’m asking them to chop off their genitals or never have sex again is amazing to witness. Stopping one’s own use of porn is a good first step.
Public education is always good, whether that’s speakers or documentaries or fiction or direct action. I’ve written on this blog before about my support for the Swedish model of decriminalized prostitution and for the right of women (men and children) used in pornography to sue pimps and pornographers who harm them to make very profitable products. There are endless numbers of ways to forge the acceptance of identities for women as something other than men’s discardable, interchangeable penis accessories. Check out the website linked at the bottom of the Dines & Jensen article for more resources about what can be done. http://feministantipornographymovement.org/leftissue.htm
Thomas, you said, “largely decoupling sexual pleasure from the dangers of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections is, to my mind, one of the most important achievements in history” and I absolutely agree. But pornography production is not analogous to having a lot of casual sex. The sheer numbers of partners involved gets astronomical when you consider the other ‘pornstitutes’ have also had a tremendous number of prostituted sex partners in the same highly unnatural conditions of pornography production. Lack of condoms or dental dams, shaving & waxing that leaves tiny but bloody cuts, doing and redoing uncomfortable scenes until rubbed raw, the general brutality against women’s genitals modern pornography male consumers demand of pornography and more contribute to an undeniably toxic environment I would never compare to the most casual of casual sex-havers.
“every attempt I have seen looks like it will never be used against commercial pornographers and will be used first (and probably only) on a few fringy BDSM folks.”
You’d have to convince me how Linda Lovelace having the right to sue the pimps who threatened and raped her into making Deep Throat and speaking before a jury why that film’s viewing should be stopped would automatically put your pornography of choice at risk. I don’t think anyone’s “right” to entertain themselves with photographs of sexualized bondage, dominance, sadism and masochism outweighs the human right of rape victims and other pornography suvivors to seek justice against the pimps that hurt her and prevent them from hurting others in their pursuit of wealth at any human cost.
For years it has been suggested that pornographers should be held accountable for violating basic public health laws, and have you seen any changes to this effect because I haven’t. Prostitution is illegal in California and yet the pornography industry is never held accountable for paying prostitutes to have sex on film. Certainly no one looks at porn made in California as recorded evidence of the criminal act of paying for sex in California even though it is.
The question raised in the article is that while it’s nice to say there should be criticism, there isn’t and that in itself is the largest obstacle to even seeing the problem with pornography is not the sex but the woman-hating, racism and hierarchies validated. It’s easy and clean and nice to suggest the pornstitution industry should be held to basic OSHA standards for safety, and a lot more difficult to ask why that’s not happening in any way and leftists don’t particularly care. It makes leftists feel good to suggest unionization. Stripping is legal and there’s nothing stopping stripper unionization except the near uselessness of unions in America (less than 10% of workers are unionized), the psychological and physical toll working in the sex industry commands, the drug addictions, lack of stable housing, and general climate of accepted sexual harassment sex workers learn to suck up and take like good girls if they want to pay this month’s rent.
Prostitution is slavery, not a job. Where prostitutes are given the option of joining a union, they don’t, and I don’t believe it’s because they’re too dumb to know what’s good for them. I think more than 99% of sex workers in Amsterdam haven’t joined the prostitutes union Red Thread because they’re in no more a position to choose a union than they are to choose being a prostitute- not a choice at all but compulsory. Only an astonishingly low .00025% of German sex workers (100 out of 400,000) joined the service union entitling them to health care, legal aid, 30 paid holiday days a year, a five-day workweek, and Christmas and holiday bonuses.
The liberals wishfully thinking OSHA and unionization and ” pro-female pornography” will eventually make the pornstitution industry less overtly hateful towards women need to start asking some hard questions regarding the lack of progress towards these goals.
A few weeks ago I gave a talk on pornography and prostitution. I spoke to the audience about how pimp & ho parties reinforce sexism and normalize violence against women, and about how we as a culture have regressed to 1970s-style blackspoitation that saw all black men as pimps and all black women as hoes.
My partner was waiting outside for me and overheard a man from the audience say he was not happy when I brought up the racism of pimp & ho parties because he had been to several and of course he’s not racist. The obvious sexism didn’t register a blip on his liberal radar but the mere hint of being complicit with racism made him indignant. So much of the commerical sex industry and human trafficking is predicated on the combined oppressions of racism and sexism that it greatly concerns me when liberals who are generally more on the ball about racism drop the ball completely on something as obviously racist as pimp & ho parties. It’s like the invisibility and acceptance of sexism pervades through to sexualized racism making it similarly invisible and to liberals, and most liberals can’t look this self-censorship in its face and see it for what it really is.
Sure, Robert. Just like a construction worker wearing a mandatory hardhat is having his/her mind controlled by the government. [rolleyes]
And BTW, my own hat is off to you. Unlike the average liberal or Lefty, at least your laissez-faire attitude doesn’t rest solely inside your VCR. :p You’re consistent. I’ll give you that.
Samantha wrote:
Ehh… I don’t consider myself a liberal, and you’re quite right that it’s all just wishful thinking. If anyone gave a damn about the women’s health, condom use would already be common practice in the industry. I mostly brought it up because, as I said, I get tired of the whole discussion being couched solely in terms of speech issues. There IS definitely a connection between societal contempt for women and the ability of disease to spread amongst the performers. I think that it’s important to harp on that whenever someone wants to bring up Nabokov or Joyce or whatever– as if that’s what we’re talking about here. >:
Samantha, are you speaking specifically about commercially produced pornographic films and photographs, or are you saying something broader? Surely, you’re not saying that I should stop looking at those photos of my friend?
As for the private right of action as a tool to take material off the market, I hear what you’re saying. Linda Borman had a cause of action for assault against all those people. And I understand that it would have meant a great deal for her to be able to stop the distribution of the film. Actually, I think that giving performers a say in how their images are used over time is, while difficult, ultimately a good thing. However, that leaves open the Norma McCorvey problem: fundamentalists have sometimes been really effective at recruiting allies that will embarass feminism. I don’t want to see some “ex-gay” converts to the far right using a statute to attack material that they were perfectly happy with when it was made. I’m not saying it can’t be done (off the top of my head, the kernel of how to do it is by using the “Son of Sam” law as a starting point), but I am saying that creating that right of action is a delicate balance between empowering aggrieved women and handing anti-sex religious activists a stick to beat us with.
About the multiple partners thing, thanks for clarifying. I wasn’t sure you meant what that statement might have implied, and you didn’t.
Amp:
Just out of curiosity, how many men do you know who habitually use non-pornographic content in “women’s magazines,” “men’s magazine’s” and popular sit-coms to masturbate to orgasm, or to provide scenes for masturbatory fantasies?
Robert I don’t believe sexuality can be bought and sold, so in regulating any form of pornography I don’t believe that the government is regulating sexuality, but regulating capitalism. I don’t trust the government to regulate capitalism, because it’s always going to choose the capitalists.
Samantha I would be more than happy about any legislation that enabled restrictions on pornography based on the conditions under which it was made.
The issue Thomas was raising was that laws regulating the content of pornography never went after mainstream pornography, but always went after the margins. There has been far more successful action taken against sexually explicit material written by and for people exploring their sexuality, than taken against Deep Throat. Any strategy we propose must acknowledge that fact.
I hate to state the obvious but the capitalist state is more a friend of the patriarchy than of women.
To mock the mainstreaming of porn, I created a satirical advertisement from the porn community. Go visit Out of Work? Look No Further For Careers in the Adult Pornography Industry
But also, there is the mainstreaming of prostitution. For example, this fall a friend of mine in an EMBA program recalls that his group decided to create a business plan for a car wash chain in China called, “Pimp My Car Wash” or something silly. When he objected to this, he was ignored by his four campadres. The group presented their idea to the class, at which point, a professor had to point out the tastelessness of this name.
Also, as a parent, how do I explain “Pimp My Ride” to my children? I mean, of course, my objection to this? It’s painful to introduce them to “Pimp” altogether, but I must do so, otherwise, they may come to associate it with “dressing up.” What’s next: “Pimp My Prom”?
Rad Geek:
None. I can’t understand the reelvance of this question, however, unless you misunderstood my post.
I wasn’t saying that porn shared EVERY trait with women’s magazines, etc; just that it shared certain, particular traits I object to. “Mastrubation material” isn’t a trait I object to, and isn’t one of the shared traits I was referring to.
Thomas wrote:
If we let that silence us, then fundies win as surely as they do if they invade the movement and take it over. Why commit to any activism at all then, if your primary fear is that someone embarassing will show up to stand next to you when the six o’clock news camera is rolling ?
If liberal and Lefty men object to feminists supposed eagerness to recruit fundies as allies, let liberal and Lefty men become better allies themselves. Let them become the allies of women that they should have been all along.
If liberal and Lefty men object to fundie involvement in issues surrounding pornography, let them point out that they themselves have not exactly kept the industry going all on their own. The same fundie men who thump the Bible on Sunday were probably whacking it to some porn video the night before. The ranks of corporate bigwigs that sell this stuff and profit from it are scarcely all connoisseurs of Noam Chomsky and his ilk.
Speaking of spinning issues, Right-wingers these days don’t hesitate to make hay of racial issues in the public arena. We’ve certainly seen it on this blog. I’m surprised that Lefty journalists like Amy Goodman don’t consider that before they allow their work to be published in the viciously racist –as well as sexist– Hustler. If personal embarassment at being championed by scum like Flynt doesn’t give them pause, you’d think that fear of how the association could be pitched in conservative circles would do so.
Amp:
Amp, the reason I asked is because for most antipornography feminists, the role that pornography plays in the formation of men’s sexual fantasies, desires, attitudes, pleasures, and activities is not just incidental to the critique of its consumption. It’s an important fact about pornography that men masturbate to it; not because masturbation is bad, but because fantasizing about and orgasming to scenes that are supposed to derive their “sexiness” from pornographic display, infantilization, sexualized humiliation and control, misogyny, racism, et cetera is.
Of course antipornography feminists need to, and do, strenuously object to misogynist content in all forms of media. (Dines’ and Jensen’s main point in the article you link is actually that if you accept those forms of media criticism — as you should — then it doesn’t make sense to suddenly turn off the scrutiny when it comes to the usually much more overtly reactionary content of pornographic media.) But the problem with saying, “This isn’t a problem with pornography specifically, it’s a problem with all media” is that there is a specific difference between “media” that you relate to by laughing at it, getting kicks from it, relaxing to it, etc., and “media” that you relate to by orgasming to it, habitually.
And that difference might explain why antipornography feminists think that pornography’s role in men’s sexual desires, fantasies, pleasure, and behavior deserves particular attention and criticism.
Hustler is racist? How?
I’m not asking to challenge. I don’t read the magazine and have no idea what’s between it’s covers, other than the two or 3 times that I’ve opened one up and found it pretty much filled with porn that I don’t find appealing at all.
Re-reading, I’d just like to note that by “pornographic display” I was slipping into jargon. I don’t mean the (circular) claim that pornography is bad (including “mainstream” pornography) because it involves the kind of display that you see in pornography. I meant to pick out display based on the presupposition that you were discussing, Amp, when you said “For instance, a lot of porn (such as Playboy-style naked posing) endorses not only very traditional ideas of what is or isn’t attractive, but also implicitly endorses the idea that sexuality is something possessed by women, which men must pry out of women.”
Also, here’s an attempt to say it more concisely. The special role that pornography plays in sexual fantasy and masturbation for most men, from our teen years onward, means that the sort of experiences we associate with the reactionary stuff in pornography is different in at least two important respects from the reactionary stuff that we see in other media. (1) The pleasures we associate with it are more intimate and intense, and (2) the use of it has a much more direct relationship to the sort of sexual person that each of us chooses to become. I have trouble buying the line that “it doesn’t make sense to single out porn in general for this critique, since these flaws are evident in virtually all of pop culture” because it papers over an essential difference between the role that pornography and other forms of pop culture plays in men’s sexual lives, and thus an essential difference in the effects that its content has.
RonF, a frequent motif of Hustler, particularly its cartoons, is the pairing of the vacuous, blonde White floozy with the animalistic, hulking, hung-like-a-nine-iron Black male. Don’t even get me started on their imagery vis-a-vis Black women. And don’t click on the “King Kong” link there unless you’re prepared to see just how horrid said imagery is. >:
http://www.hustlingtheleft.com/
Alsis39, you said:
I didn’t mean to speak too broadly here. I certainly agree that the fear of turncoats shouldn’t be paralyzing. I was pointing out a problem specific to the creation of private rights of action. I was not even saying that this problem is dispositive; only that it requires consideration.
Yes. In fact Hustler is one of the most crudely and overtly racist of the old guard of pornographic publications.
You can find plenty of examples and discussion in King Kong and the White Woman: Hustler Magazine and the Demonization of Black Masculinity and at the Hustling the Left website in general. (Warning: emphatically not “work-safe,” as they say.)
hung-like-a-nine-iron
Three a half feet long, half an inch in diameter, with an angled wedge glued to the end?
Thomas:
Thomas, let’s set aside for a moment the legal question of whether or not (say) born-again people who were once in pornography should have the right to force pornographers to stop distributing images of them, in favor of an ethical question. Let’s imagine that someone used to be in pornography and didn’t have any particular trouble with it at the time, but later in life regretted it, for reasons that you don’t agree with (for example, becoming a born-again Christian). Let’s also imagine that this person wishes that he or she had never been in the movies, and doesn’t want people masturbating to her or his pornographized image.
Do you think that it’s right for you to keep doing so, even against the explicit wishes of the person whose image you’re using for masturbation material?
Thomas, I see your point, but I’m not even sure that the word “turncoat” is correct. Fundy leaders are generally quite blunt about their adherence to patriarchal values and their –public, at least– objection to pornography as something that undermines the authority of a patriarch over his family. If there really are hordes of feminist leaders anxious to march into to battle with these people, I’m thinking that they already know. Of course, it’s also true that fundie women, like other kinds of women, may well find men’s use of pornography personally devastating to their own marriages and family life. In that case, again, one would not really be talking about “turncoats” so much as bridge-building, radical feminist style.
Though I’m not nearly as well-versed in radical feminism as many folks here, I *do* believe that both mainstream porn and fundie religion have innumerable commonalities that are rotten for women. Both cast women as either angel or slut. Both define women solely in male terms, and in what use to or threat to man she is.
Hah !! Leave it to Robert to bravely air the Hustler-Golf Digest axis for all the world to see. Actually, I think Flynt does own a golfer’s mag, but I don’t remember which one.
BTW, an earlier piece/lecture Robert Jensen gave on pornography from a Lefty perspective appeared over at Left Hook earlier this year. (Just scroll past the fundraising pitch at the top.)
http://www.lefthook.org/Culture/Jensen030905.html
Jensen does indeed describe in great detail there what he considers pornography to be.
Radgeek, in a word, no. (I don’t think that’s an inescapable conclusion: in non-erotic performances and creations, generally the performers and even the creator do not maintain control over time unless they own it. I think you’d respond that porn is a special case, and I think I’d agree.)
I don’t own a copy of Deep Throat (or any other mainstream porn movie; I have not purchased mainstream porn movies in a decade), and I have not watched it since I found out what happened. If a friend asked me to delete sexually explicit photos of her, I would.
But how do we progress from the ethical principle to practice? In the modern world, the nature of information (and images) is that they are in the wind, and we can’t get them back. You’re not suggesting, for example, that it is possible to go into everyone’s homes and get back their copies of Deep Throat, right? The Government has not even been able to do that with Traci Lords’ films, and those are actually illegal to possess.
If all you’re talking about is limiting the ability of folks to sell for profit an image of a person, that narrows the problem significantly. One can imagine a real procedure for putting some kind of stop on materials when a performer revokes a release, since most of this stuff is governed by release and age verification requirements anyway. As long as there has to be a place where folks can check the ages of the performers, there also has to be a place where a woman can write to say, “please stop selling that DVD.”
But I think you ought to acknowledge that this kind of downstream control puts the creators in a tough position. I’m not talking about Vivid Video — I don’t care if they declare bankruptcy tomorrow. I’m talking about gay men and lesbians and leatherfolk making material for their own communities. How do you make that if you know that, in the future, any performer could ask to be pulled from it? If you shoot a scene with six people, and any of those six people changes their mind later, the whole scene goes out no matter how much the other five like it.
Sure, money is an issue because even people who produce this material only for a small community ought to be able to try to make enough off it to make it a break-even proposition, but let that aside. Just folks shooting digital video for a small community — should they have to change what they create because pieces might get pulled out? Suppose someone’s a chronicler of the BDSM community in Brooklyn in 2005. If it’s going to be a part of the leather community’s history, do they have to carefully create it so that the removal of any one person’s images leaves a cohesive whole?
That’s why I’m saying the right to revoke consent to the material has to be limited to commerce — the burdens businesses should bear are different from what people should be expected to deal in non-commercial expression.
Also, I do not think text is subject to this analysis. Text, even if very personal, does not embody or impose on the creator the way an image embodies and imposes upon the person depicted. So I think when an author writes text, I have no problem with it kicking around forever even if the author repudiates it. That is to say, I’m not giving up my copy of any of Califia’s books, even if Califia joins Team Dobson.
Alsis39, when I said “Norma McCorvey problem” and “turncoat”, I was maybe shorthanding too much. You may recall that Norma McCorvey, the original plaintiff in Roe v. Wade has joined the other side. They actively courted her for years, and when her sad life left her hurt and lonely, they were there to suck her in and use her as a club against us. They also got to Bill Baird’s wife and daughter (I’m speaking of the contraception activist who was a party to Baird v. Eisenstat).
What I’m saying is that if someone is a sex radical of some kind, and the religious right gets their claws into that person and uses that person as a plaintiff to try to remove sex radical material from circulation, that person is a turncoat. One of the problems with a private right of action against pornographers is that the right-wing churches would start an immediate plaintiff-hunt, asking anyone who has been in any sexually oriented material to speak confidentially to the pastor. They they’d cherry-pick for the cases of the material that would most shock the red-state juries: gay and lesbian material and BDSM.
(I know this sounds intolerant, but I’m not tolerant of the political agenda of right-wing religious folks. I think if Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson were dictator, they would put me and my wife in an internment camp for queers and perverts, or maybe just hang us. I’m not speaking metaphorically.)
Alsis, Jensen does in fact describe (not in great detail, but more usefully, in a succinct and compact statement) what he’s calling pornography:
That’s the Jensen definition. It has four elements: (1) graphic sexually explicit material; (2) that one finds in a pornographic video store; (3) that depicts primarily heterosexual sex; and (4) is consumed primarily by heterosexual men.
I’m posting it because it’s useful to have definitions at our disposal. (I’m going to guess that nobody adopts this wholesale. It is both overinclusive and underinclusive. “Lesbian” industry porn with straight women having sex for the male gaze is not included in his definition; and though I have not verified it, I’m told that some of Ona Zee’s honest-to-goodness-lifestyle BDSM videos are sold through mainstream porn distribution. It’s also not clear if he’s including text and illustration, both of which can be found in porn shops. Finally, this definition is easy to game: it depends on how is it distributed.)
Radgeek – can you expand on what you think the implications are for pornography involving masturbation. How does that mean we should react to it differently, why does that mean that different tactics would be effective?
I expanded my reaction to the article on my blog, and I realised what really bothered me about it was that it appeared to be made up of many different straw-men (and they were all men). The authors kept on referring to what ‘leftists’ say and do – without giving any concrete example of anyone saying it. It would have been a much more powerful argument if they could have either linked to some people who were saying these things (and I’m sure there are) or recounted the sorts of conversatiosn they were having in more detail rather than setting up a generic person who reacts this way to everything they say.
The odd thing about the feminist pornography debate is that both sides do appear to feel like the attacked and betlittled minority, which isn’t particularly good for discussion.
I posted the link in my previous post, in part, because it does have a much more detailed description of what Jensen means by pornography, Thomas.
I’m not really clear how to proceed in this discussion with you. Your previous two posts seem to preclude anyone NOT part of the religious Right speaking out about porn in anything less than glowing terms– Unless it’s some big wheel on par with Califia and his spate of books. Because as long as the Right can cherry-pick, it’s simply too dangerous to criticize and so we’d all better keep quiet so that we, the good guys, can be safe. Or we’d better pre-emptively apologize and backpedal to the point where our feelings of revulsion will be buried by a veritble truckload of qualifiers and exceptions.
Uhhhh… No ?
This sounds rather like those who tell anti-war protesters to cut their hair and dress in suits, or gay folks who like to be outrageous at marches to cover themselves, because our enemies will make hay of this nonconformist behavior. No, Thanks. I dress at anti-war marches for comfort and safety, not in a suit and tie. I’d look like shit with a pageboy haircut, so I won’t be cutting my hair anytime soon in an attempt to impress some bubblehead at ABC or FOX. BDSM and drag are not my thing, but I’ve been in and observed GLBT marches in which they were considered appropriate by much of the community, and enjoyed as well.
Our enemies can make hay of anything and everything. I will not, you should excuse the expression, censor myself in a futile attempt to keep them at bay.
Yeah, I know about “Roe, the turncoat,” but people change their minds sometimes. That’s part of human nature. “Jane Roe” was supposed to be abortion activists’ version of Rosa Parks, I suppose. If that’s the case, than perhaps we need to strive for a movement whose public face is not dependent upon a single person/icon, and one which thus will not rise and fall in public estimation based on that person’s own shifting world-view.
It might be difficult, but isn’t that what “alternative-minded” folks are supposed to do ? Provide alternative approaches and perspectives ?
BTW, I agree about Robertson and Falwell. Again, I am entirely convinced that they and a great number of their charges are probably up to their armpits in secret stashes of porn themselves– because the virgin/whore dichotomy in much of porn is actually consistent with the views of womanhood held by fundies. However, I’m not talking about wooing fundie leadership. I’m talking about radical feminists who attempt to reach out to ordinary fundie women who might weary of this worldview and its destructive effects in their own lives, just as women from more secular backgrounds might. In some case, this might even lead to formerly conservative women embracing feminist ideals. Even if that’s a long shot, I invoke the “some-shit-shouldn’t-happen-to-anybody-clause.” I wouldn’t want a fundie woman to be trapped in a hateful marriage where her husband’s porn addiciton made her miserable, just as I wouldn’t want even an extremely misogynist gay man to get kicked around by homophobic gay-bashers.
redecca, perhaps they simply assumed that we know already. I’m certainly well-aquainted with the fact that Katha Pollit was about the only “professional leftist” who pointed out that The People Vs. Larry Flynt film was a romanticized piece of tripe. There’s also the Bogado flap mentioned on the Hustling the Left page (and mentioned on this blog previously, as well.). A great many prominent activists seem not be bothered at the thought of clutching Flynt to their fold.
I’m not quite sure how much we can make of the ‘mysogenistic’ content Amp mentions in much straight male porn. As a user, and the intended audience, of lots of hardcore gay male porn, I know that a lot of it is marketed in exactly the same way, except that it involves guys. This sounds much harder to fit into that narrative. Maybe a lot of guys just find domination fantasies hot.
Maybe you can fit this all into some narrative about the feminization of the bottom, but I’d like to see the evidence that this is a better theory than the other one.
Alsis, I think I may have conveyed the wrong impression.
I certainly don’t mean to say that feminists shouldn’t criticize the porn industry. When I start talking about being careful and watching out for what the religious right will do is when folks say, “well, shouldn’t there be a law …” What I’m saying is that pushing for cultural change is a flexible tool, if its power is more diffuse. I’m not against challenging men to be responsible in what they get off to. I’m not against challenging non-porn corporations about what they are willing to support. I’m not against getting hotel chains to agree to stop promoting pornography — they’re not offering radical queer alternatives.
When someone says, “I have this model ordinance …” I put on my litigator glasses and I start thinking about how that ordinance will affect the folks who make the easy targets, and the folks who most need to be able to use their own voice about their sexuality.
I hope I’ve made myself a little more clear.
Alsis, I’d be happy if porn producers were required to have performers wear condoms, just as I’m glad feminists insist pornography is a product and subject to criticism as such. I regret using the word “censorship” for this reason; I should have said “abolition”. I don’t regret pointing out that for some feminists, the jury is in: porn is and can only be malice towards women, all on film. If that strikes you as a caricature, so be it.
alsis39, I’l take your word for it. Thanks for the explanation.
For myself, I found the rubric that connects “main-stream” pornography and the more explicitly mysoginist is that it all falls within the same rubric of using women to create images that men find sexually appealing. Porn blatantly fails the Kantian mean/ends test. That’s the whole point. Porn is made to appeal to the male consumer and thus is tailored to do so with complete disregard for the actual women actually undertaking those acts on screen. In porn, real life women are being used merely as a means to satisfying a mans ends of masturbating to orgasm. The whole edifice is centered on excluding everything from consideration except that goal of his (and the profit that can be made off of it).
I am continually baffled that everyone picks on Playboy‘s photos as sexist. If you bother to read the damn thing, the photos are the least sexist thing about it.
Lorenzo:
Is this a criticism of porn as it is, (i.e., you acknowledge that it could be different), or are you claiming that this is intrinsic to the process of producing porn?
It is intrinsic to porn produced to cater to male consumers and their desires while using real women to create images and videos to that purpose.
It also must be kept in mind that there is a social context in which this occurs, as socal “male gaze” where any images of women can and will be assumed to have been created for male satisfaction and used that way. This is what makes “porn for women” so hard to achieve; non-sexist non-degrading porn is still going to used in the exact same way, means to ends that have nothing to do with the real people really doing those acts on film.
This is something often lost on people; in porn the participants are not acting in the sense of playing a cop or doctor on TV! They are necessarily actually doing those acts that you see. They aren’t pretending to have sex, they are having sex. SO, the real activities of those on screen are reduced to mere means. And because porn is made for men it is the women above all who are completely objectified in the existentialist sense (i.e. turned purely into means for the ends of another).
The effect of this kind of imagery, in concert with the similar imagery in the mainstream media is poisonous; it creates and re-enforces the message to men that women are merely means to their ends. It enforces the “male gaze”. etc.
means to ends that have nothing to do with the real people really doing those acts on film
As Amp pointed out way back when, we don’t get upset that the cowboys in Brokeback Mountain are straight in real life, or that the hero in the action film isn’t really saving the world. We don’t declare that the actors aren’t “pretending to kiss, they ARE kissing!” and are therefore reduced to mere objects.
The argument that the gaze is always and permanently male is sexist, ignores women’s autonomy and pretends that good girls don’t look.
As Amp pointed out way back when, we don’t get upset that the cowboys in Brokeback Mountain are straight in real life, or that the hero in the action film isn’t really saving the world. We don’t declare that the actors aren’t “pretending to kiss, they ARE kissing!” and are therefore reduced to mere objects.
The argument that the gaze is always and permanently male is sexist, ignores women’s autonomy and pretends that good girls don’t look.
You seem to have entirely missed my point. The part about the acts being engaged in being real was an aside from the central point which was that the objectification is inherent in the women in porn being reduced to mere means to the ends of the male consumer for whom the porn is produced. In existentialist terms, to be reduced from ends to means is the definition of objectification. Because those real live women are treated (by the porn consumer) not as autonomous individuals with their own ends, but rather as solely as means to his ends. The sexism is on the part of the porn consumer and the porn industry, not on the part of those of us who point out that this is in fact the case!
Also, the term “male gaze” is nothing of the sort. It doesn’t refer or imply that women don’t look, instead it refers to the socially constructed pervasiveness of the male sexual gaze, i.e. that women are judged primarily by their utility in satisfying male sexual ends. To point out that this feature of patriarchy exists irrespective of the will of individual women in society is not in the slightest sexist.
The part about the acts being engaged in being real was an aside from the central point
Central or peripheral, it was nonetheless a point you made, and a bad one.
the objectification is inherent in the women in porn being reduced to mere means to the ends of the male consumer for whom the porn is produced
The actor in the action movie is reduced to a mere means of providing me with vicarious thrills. The bank teller is reduced to a mere means of my getting money out of my bank account. Is this objectification? Am I using and misusing the checker who rings up my groceries, since I am only interested in him as a means to the end of getting my food home?
To call the patriarchal use of women for nothing other than their sexual services the ‘male gaze’ is both reductionistic and meaningless; it pretends that what’s important is men looking at women, as though the sexual gaze were the be-all and end-all of patriarchal oppression.
Can we have one discussion about porn where someone doesn’t bring out the “Doesn’t every ‘job’ obfectify someone” argument? Being paid to bag groceries or to be a bank teller is not comperable to being paid to get fucked in the ass by someone you might hate while pretending to enjoy it so that men everywhere can jerk off to the image. Especially when we already live in a sexist society where men feel perfectly entitled to judge any and every woman they see as to whether or not she is fuckable.
There are certainly valid points to be made by the pro-porn camp. “If porn stars are objectified then so is everyone with a job” just ain’t one of them.
Then they should have quoted them or given examples – it would have made their article much stronger. I think if you’re ever arguing against anyone you should argue against what they actually say, not your characterisation of what they say.
Can we have one discussion about porn where someone doesn’t bring out the “Doesn’t every ‘job’ obfectify someone” argument?
Sure, as soon as we have one discussion about porn where someone doesn’t bring out the “But it’s only objectification because SOMEBODY is having SEX!!! FOR MONEY!!!” argument.
Being able to have sex on film with somebody you think is hot, and getting paid for it, is a hell of a lot better than having to be on your feet ten hours a day for sub-minimum wage and putting up with everything from putdowns to ass-grabbing because if you don’t, you won’t have any money to feed your family.
The anti-porn camp has a lot of good arguments, but “Only porn stars are objectified” ain’t it.
Thomas wrote:
Yeah, I know. But as folks like Samantha point out, we shouldn’t pretend that the performers in film themselves are not as worthy of human consideration as the shopkeepers who either specialize in selling porn, or sell it as part of their offerings.
One possible benefit of discussing these issues is that if people decide, over time, that consuming some of this stuff is morally wrong, they’ll stop clamoring to purchase it. If that happens, the folks who sell it will stop selling it, because they won’t profit from it anymore. I doubt that anyone expects this to happen right away. All manner of media voices, from 60 Minutes to various Union activists, etc. have been criticizing Wal-Mart for nearly two decades. It’s only in the last few years that I’ve read anything to suggest that all the negative publicity they’ve received is starting to affect their bottom line, their ability to open new stores, and so on. Laws, if they happen, have to percolate from the ground up and come from genuine feelings on behalf of the public, or they’ll be unenforced in any case.
Yeah. Sorry. :o I didn’t mean to make it sound as if I favor a return to the good old days where “nice” people couldn’t talk about sex, or the days where “sex” just meant the missionary position as enacted by Church-sanctioned married heterosexuals of the same race, etc. You are right that secrecy won’t help us. In fact, I’ve always thought that vacuum in most young people’s sexual education is what lets porn rush in to have so much of a disproportionate role in shaping and defining our sexuality in the first place. We are often so whipsawed between the nightmarish images of sex-as- Satanic-pitfall vs. sex-as-fantastic-escape that it’s a wonder any of us mature into a healthy view of it at all. :/
DP wrote:
You don’t mention what kind of “smut” you like, DP. So if I’m allowed to assume that by “smut” you mean porn on film, I’m curious: Would you boycott a film company that did not have a mandatory condom policy ? Would you email them and bluntly state the reason that you unwilling to give them any money ? Would you urge other men to do the same ? Seems to me that simply sitting back and allowing AIDs to spread amongst performers in the name of profit is not merely the “appearance” of malice. It IS malice;One of the more unambiguous examples out there. Particularly when you consider that all-male sex films have been made for years with all the actors wearing condoms.
And, frankly, it’s hard for me to think of any anti-porn feminist who is anything close to the “caricature” that she is cast as by men who bitterly resent anyone interfering with their enjoyment of media that treats women as disposable toys. As it turns out, even the “MacKinnon-Dworkin Axis” didn’t literally say that “all sex is rape.” The Snopes board, not exactly a bastion of feminism, has a section that states as much.
One possible benefit of discussing these issues is that if people decide, over time, that consuming some of this stuff is morally wrong, they’ll stop clamoring to purchase it.
If porn is painted as inherently, invariably wrong, then there’s no real possibility of a boycott or pressure on the industry to change. If film producers who require condoms suddenly get the lion’s share of the market, well, everybody will follow. But if the party line is simply “Porn is inherently evil,” why should anyone care about picking and choosing between ethical and unethical film companies? It’s all horrible, right?
mythago wrote:
Worse than your pulling out the hackneyed good girl/bad girl dichotomy ?
What is this, High School ? What if I don’t want to be “good” or “bad” ? What if I want to be a woman who sometimes feels sexual and sometimes does not– with these states sometimes being good and sometimes being bad, but more often simply being aspects of my personality that can be adjusted and used at will ? Do I need pornography as the primary means of enjoying a look at an attractive man, indeed to help me decide what is and isn’t attractive ?
I have never felt the “male gaze” to be the start and end of feminist consciousness. I have known feminists to claim, with some acuracy, that the “male gaze” has real-life detrimental effects on women, and that simply attempting to reverse the equation so that women can treat men as objects is a piss-poor solution to the problem.
Oh, and what Xenu said. If you want to treat porn as a job, you ought to at least be consistent and accept as much scrutiny of it as, say, fast-food burgers or athletic shoes.
Worse than your pulling out the hackneyed good girl/bad girl dichotomy
Sorry, was this from the Random Insult Generator? Either you didn’t read my post or you didn’t particularly care to get beyond “mythago doesn’t loathe porn, therefore she is wrong”.
There is a difference between pressuring the porn industry to adopt certain standards–universal condom use, fair treatment of workers–and not really caring much about reforming the porn industry because it’s inherently evil. (In other words, if the entire adult film industry required condom use, would it be OK then? Or would we just shift to some other reason it is Satan’s own media?)
Bluntly, if it’s the latter, then it’s the same bullshit the anti-choice folks pull, where they’ll push for ‘medical standards for clinics’ or ‘informed consent’–and they don’t give a shit about safe clinics or informed patients, they just want to shut the place down.
If you want to treat porn as a job, you ought to at least be consistent and accept as much scrutiny of it as, say, fast-food burgers or athletic shoes.
Where did you get the notion that I think porn should be free from scrutiny? Oh, right–I don’t hate porn, therefore I am a hateful, anti-feminist meanie. My bad!
Mythago,
Obviously people who think porn is just plain wrong (and people who think mainstream filmed porn is just unattractive) are not going to have any influence on the policies of porn companies. Only people who actually purchase porn can have an influence on the practices of porn companies (by boycotting material made under hazardous conditions such as no condoms, or by boycotting material whose messages are particularly odious, and by demanding material that they find acceptable). That burden falls on porn users, not on those who simply oppose porn. The failure of porn users to do so can’t be legitimately blamed on those who simply hate all porn. If you like porn, but accept that it isn’t a perfect industry, then the burden is on you to work to change it into something better.
Those who are already boycotting all porn can’t be remonstrated against for failing to boycott condomless porn.
Although, of course, if you write to a porn company saying, “I will no longer buy your product until all of your male performers wear condoms in your films,” the porn company has no way of knowing whether you actually would ever buy their porn at all, so even if you don’t watch or buy porn, you should still be writing to porn companies. So hating all porn does not get anyone off the hook for not trying to change the murderous practices of mainstream het porn film companies.
Sure, if one insists on using “porn” and “sex” as synonyms, as you aparently do. My own feeling is that if people really think they can modify porn to make it more realistic, more woman-friendly, safer, and so forth– well, bully for them. It’s nice to set your sights higher than the likes of Flynt and Hefner, certainly.
However, since my own definition of “porn” is not “depiction of sex acts, any sex act, in any manner, in any context, in any medium,” I don’t really have that perception or that goal. My definition of porn is “A film, book, photograph, etc. that exists to help you get from Point A (interest) to Point Z (orgasm) by the shortest, least interesting and human/humane route possible.” So to my mind, a pornographic work that places sex in a larger human context, that eschews stereotypes and has more going on it than just Tab A going into Slot B isn’t a pornographic work anymore. It’s something else. A film that’s just two guys having sex is porn. A film that follows a guy around his daily life and includes an interlude where he meets someone attractive at a bar and then goes home to have sex with him is– a film that includes footage of a characters’ sex life in context of his entire life.
Others will probably disagree, but that’s what makes debate.
You know, mythago, just once I’d like to have a real discussion with you where you didn’t resort to putting ad hominem attacks on you into my mouth, and then pretending that I was making an ad hominem attack upon you so that you didn’t have to address my questions or points.
I don’t call women who consume porn “hateful, anti-feminist meanies.” Show me where I have. I don’t think fruitful conversation happens in that case, any more than it happens when some radical vegan shows up on a recipe board and tells me that I’m a horrid person because I ate a free-range porkchop last week and am posting a recipe for it.
If you don’t want to address my points, feel free to ignore them, but don’t pretend that I’m trying to damn you to the Jew-atheist version of Hell just because I disagree with you.
That burden falls on porn users, not on those who simply oppose porn.
I couldn’t agree more.
What I am disagreeing with is the pretense of people who hate all porn that, really, what they object to is [insert bad industry practice here].
Being able to have sex on film with somebody you think is hot, and getting paid for it,
Of course, because this is, in fact, the life of most women in porn movies. It’s a 24/7 sex party where nymphos get to ride the men of their dreams all day long!
Ohhhh Ron Jeremy! Gimme some!
It seems that part of the problem here is that the discussion tends to get bogged down in what pornography *is* or *is not*, that is to say its definition.
For my mother the Karma Sutra is pornography, for me it is erotic but also part of art history. My Grandmother would most likely consider the Victoria Secret catalogue to be pornography, but I don’t.
There are those that object to any explicit sexual encounter being captured on film regardless of the context or story that is wrapped around it. There are those like me that don’t mind the explicitness so much, but do object to certain themes and practices.
I’m not sure if this subject is one of those that is always going to be a source of contention due to the variations in people’s ideas of what actually constitutes pornographic work.
I dunno, Mythago. I suggest that people who want an education on porn include reading the writings of people in the industry, and alsis39 decides that they’re probably all making it up, and that they’re all highly paid cash cows who will defend the industry because it pays thier salary.
I think that, if one wants an education in the effects of the sex-for-money trade, one talk to sex workers. I happen to know a reasonably large number of sex workers. I read the blogs of even more people who trade sex for money. Some on camera, some off camera. I know people who’ve had bad experinces in the industry as well as good ones.
At least I can claim that I *asked* them about it. The smug know-it-alls of the anti-porn-feminism movement never seem to make the effort to engage the people who they’re claiming are exploited. Anyone who claims they’re not being treated like shit is branded an industry shill, and thus is not worth listening to.
That’s not a debate, it’s a set of dogmatic assertions and an unwillingness to really listen to any dissent form the party line.
This is why I ask, who’s the target, what’s the message, and what’s the goal. alsis39’s message gets lost in the snide tone she takes with anyone who might differ from the way she sees things have to be done.
Folks, please cool it down a few notches, if possible. Thanks.
This is me being “snide” ?
Hell with it. I’m done here.
Gotta say, Josh, I tend to agree with Alsis. The conversation was a bit heated (which is to be expected, given the topic), but your last comment seemed to me to be escalating the insult-level needlessly.
Alsis39:
The question wasn’t directed at me, but I’ll take in on anyway. In principle, yes, yes, and yes. In practice I don’t buy porn anyway, so the first two questions are moot.
Sure, just as it’s malice to sit back and allow children to make shoes in sweatshops. But that doesn’t translate into the proposition that making shoes is inherently bad.
You’ve argued that it is, but you’ll have to excuse me. I simply don’t understand your argument.
And, even leaving the ridiculously offensive destroy an interesting argument by pushing it into flat out flame war tone, Josh…
You are also simply wrong. Perhaps you’ve noticed that Samantha is an activist in working with prostituted women? You’re a regular reader here, with an interest in the porn discussions, so I find it hard to believe you’ve missed that.
Are you really going to claim that she has never talked with any women who work in sex work?
So the anti-porn side in this discussion has just as much experience as you.
Mythago,
I don’t really get it. I think the anti-porn side here is pretty clear (and very mixed in their views anyway): whether or not you like porn, you have to agree the labor conditions suck, and particularly if you like/use porn, you have a responability to work to improve those conditions. There is no pretense there.
Personally, while I think there are serious problems with the overwhelming majority of porn from a cultural/political angle, it is mostly from a labor condition point of view that I think that most photo and video porn goes beyond the pale. Written porn obviously lacks the labor issues.
And on your labor conditions position of best possible conditions under which to make porn versus typical crappy position to bag groceries, I think that it does make a moderately reasonable point, but (even leaving aside the horrible labor conditions of actual porn production, and just sticking to a moderately ideal world) that if acting in porn were a fairly normal job, there is still going to be a day when you need the money even though you have a cold, and you’re worried about your grandmother who is sick in the hospital, and you’d just generally rather not be at work. On that day, would you rather have a job bagging groceries with people you don’t like, or would you rather have a job having sex with people you may or may not like? I’d go for the bagging groceries.
The best bagging groceries job is probably not as agreeable as the best having sex job (there are few people indeed who bag groceries in their free time), but the average grocery bagging job is less invasive than the average having sex job, and the worst having sex job is going to be way worse than the worst bagging groceries job. The only possible balancing element for the average job in the two cases is that sex work generally pays better than bagging groceries. On the other hand, having bagging groceries eventually become this hellish tedium that you never want to even think about again probably screws up the rest of your life less than having sex become this hellish tedium that you never want to even think about again.
Charles, if I *have* to agree that labor conditions suck, I’d have to have checked on them and talked to people in the industry, which is what I was suggesting people do. I was told that anyone who has a positive view of the industry who’s working in it is basicaly a sell out and a liar.
All of a sudden, I’m the one dragging us in to a flame war? alsis39 got me tetchy, and some of that should have been held back, but if you don’t see the tone she’s got as being problematic, and only see mine and Mythago’s as being at issue, I think you’re being a bit partisan.
And you’re following the dogma too : I don’t really get it. I think the anti-porn side here is pretty clear (and very mixed in their views anyway): whether or not you like porn, you have to agree the labor conditions suck,
I do? All of the labor conditions? Some of them? For who? How would I know this? I have to do this by telling myself that there are no good stories or neutral stories, and the only ones worth listening to are the bad ones, because the people who tell good stories or neutral stories are fooling me to promote the industry?
Now, if I coud go and make up my own mind without being told what I have to think, I might actualy agree with you, at least in part. But I don’t like being told what to think. It gets my hackles up. I think it’s always a bad idea to make one’s mind up about social issues without investigating on one’s own.
Now, has Samantha (And no, I didn’t know that. I’m sure there are things about me she dosen’t know.) talked to people in the porn industry? I don’t know. All I know is what she said. And I wasn’t responding to her anyway.
All I said was that it’d be a good idea to talk to people about the actualities of the industry before tackling the goal of educating people about porn, and bringing in a liberal viewpoint on porn. I say this sort of thing about prostitution too. Every time I say it, people assume I’m 100% pro anything-goes prostitution.
I did nothing more than suggest that going to primary sources was a good idea. Any sociologist will give you the exact same advice. Talk to people. Listen to them. Read what they have to say. When you find examples of how labor conditions suck,you’ll have some direct quotes about it.
I think you’re mistaking me saying you should do this with a defense of any sucky labor conditions.
Amp: I apologize for my tone. It needlesly provocative. I’ll try and be more moderate in the future. If this post fails to meet standards, let me know and I’ll try whatever you suggest.
Okay, Josh, apology accepted (by me).
I genuinely appreciate that you’re trying, but you could still tone it down a couple of notches. For example, avoid referring to other posters’ views as “dogma.”
(What you may not appreciate – but what was very obvious to me – is that Alsis was working very hard at toning her posts down, too. Which I want you to know I really appreciated, if you happen to be reading this, Alsis).
I think that’s enough discussion of how people have behaved. Please, if possible, let’s just continue with the substantive discussion from here on.
reddecca:
Sure. The fact that pornography, unlike the rest of pop culture, is made and marketed and consumed and talked about with the expectation that men will masturbate to it, and the fact that many or most men do in fact habitually masturbate to it, changes the nature of the debate because it changes the effects that pornography has on how men view themselves as sexual creatures in ways that, and to degrees that, other forms of pop culture do not. It’s well known that habitual practice can change our beliefs, attitudes, dispositions, desires, pleasures, and behavior; I think that it should be no surprise that sexual habits can change our sexual beliefs, attitudes, dispositions, desires, pleasures, and behavior. If men habitually masturbate to pornography, i.e. use pornography as a part of arousal and orgasm under our solitary control, then it is going to have an effect on our sexual lives. One of the facts about masturbation is that most men do it very often, and the fact about masturbating-to-pornography is that men both do it very often, and also very often imagine pornographic scenes or close variations on them, when they are masturbating without porn directly in front of them. It’s habitual, and it’s one of the more frequently practiced habits that many men have. It’s also one that they usually take up in their sexually formative — i.e. adolescent or pubescent — years. (And in fact the average age has been getting younger as a result of the mainstreaming of pornography and its prevalence on the Internet.) So you can expect whatever effects pornography has to be correspondingly strong. I think this much is not reasonably disputable; a theory that suggests that pornography has no effects, or neglible effects, on men’s sexual lives is just not a theory responsive to the facts. The question is what effects pornography does have, and how fine-grained those effects are. If it has good or neutral effects on balance, then that doesn’t support the anti-pornography critique of pornography consumption; if it has bad effects but those effects apply in a pretty fine-grained way to the parts of men’s sex lives that don’t directly affect other people, then that would tend to undermine it also. (That doesn’t mean that the antipornography position would be wrong; it would just mean a shift of priorities is needed towards other parts of the critique, such as the critique of its production, rather than the traditional double-barrelled analysis.)
Here are some specific ways in which antipornography feminists claim that masturbation to pornography affects men’s sexual lives in ways that are pernicious, and that contribute to both social systems and individual behavior that hurt women: (1) pornography is repetitive. (It’s repetitive both across different pieces and in the use of a given “favorite” piece by individual men; men who use pornography very frequently and unapologetically often crow about their “collection” or “hoard” of porn and pick out “favorites” within it to use over and over again. I know because I used to be one of those men, and to talk to other men with similar attitudes.). (2) It associates a pretty strictly scripted progression of situations and sex acts with sexual arousal, pleasure, and orgasm for men who habitually arouse themselves by watching pornographic scenes, please themselves while watching pornographic scenes, use the scenes to heighten the pleasure, and orgasm to pornographic scenes (which was, typically, the purpose of viewing the pornography in the first place). (3) The content is generally concerned specifically with sexualized masculinity and sexualized femininity (this, of course, is also true within gay pornography and pseudolesbian pornography intended for male audiences; I wouldn’t know about pornography intended for lesbian audiences, because I haven’t seen any). (4) This content is specifically hostile to women in any number of ways (contains rape myths, focuses on acts that are often not nearly as satisfying to women as they are to men, focuses on acts that aren’t really satisfying to anyone but are easily filmed with extreme close-ups of engorged body parts, fixates on visual display in general, makes frequent use of deception or coercion from positions of authority to gain sexual access, etc.). (A full explanation of the details and defense of the claim here, if you don’t buy it, is really beyond the space I have available here, and is better found in book-length treatments or essays on specific sub-topics by antipornography feminists. Anyway, the hostility of pornographic content towards women is part of what Amp was stipulating to in the comments I was remarking on.) (5) Pornography provides a staple of sexual fantasies (that is, scenes that are found enticing and desirable). The fact that many of the themes alluded to in (3) and (4) are widely recognized as ridiculous and unrealistic may affect men’s plans but not their fantasies about what would be enticing and desirable. (6) This affects, among other things, how men look at women (think ogling), how men talk about women (think locker-room talk), how men treat women whom they have never met (think street harassment), how men approach women that they’re sexually attracted to, the sort of acts and positions that men typically want and typically don’t care about, the sort of emotional reactions men do or don’t have toward women that they’re having a sexual relationship with, including during sex itself, the sort of situations in which men think that sex is appropriate, the sort of reactions that a man may have when a woman isn’t interested in having sex with him — at all, or in the situation he wants to have sex in, or at the time he wants to have sex at, or of the kind that he wants to have. (Think about the idea, more or less universal in pornography involving women, intended for male audiences, that women are wildly and indiscriminately hypersexual once aroused, and that it’s acceptable to use coercion or deception to ratchet up the level of sexual contact until she becomes aroused. Think about the fact that many men are habitually masturbating to this kind of material, using it to arouse themselves and having orgasms to scenes that revolve around it. What does that mean for the sorts of things that men may find exciting and desirable in their own interactions with women?)
There’s a lot more to say, but this is already very long and contentious as it stands. I hope this gives some kind of idea about what I’m saying, though, when I say that some specific details about social use mean that there may be some specific differences between pornography and “the rest of pop culture” that merit special attention towards pornography. That pornography has a specifically sexualized role that other forms of pop culture don’t have should (I think) be obvious; that its specifically sexualized role might make reactionary themes in pornography of special interest and concern to people who are concerned with men’s sexual aggression towards women shouldn’t be much harder to see. But I hope this helps explain in some more detail. Feel free to prod me if I’m not being as clear as I could.
(Of course an explanation is not yet a defense. If you think that this position is wrong, fine, but you’ll find a better defense of all these positions in printed book-length treatments of pornography, and essays on specific sub-topics, by antipornography feminists.)
reddecca:
That’s a very good point. It doesn’t help at all that each of them tends to treat the other as a mere appendage of, or at least a spiritual cousin of, some larger and much more clearly menacing and mean force in cultural politics (i.e., the Religious Right, on the one hand, and mainstream pimps and pornographers, on the other).
[Deep breath.] Okay, Amp. Thanks. I wasn’t trying to insult anyone on this thread. Honest. :(
Josh, to be blunt, I don’t think it’s fair of you to say that I “got you tetchy.” Your attittude in your first post on this thread made you sound pretty damn “tetchy” from the get-go. At any rate, I think that it greatly oversimplifies what I said to claim that I called you and your friends “liars.” What I was trying to point out is that it’s human nature for most folks to spin their work in a positive light if they are trying to maintain themselves in that field of work and maintain a positive relationship with their clients.
Some really, really shitty stuff happened to me at my last job, before I walked away from it for good. Scarcely once in the nearly six years that I was there did I let it slip to a customer when I was miserable. My friends knew a little, and my very close friends knew a lot, but nobody knew everything. There were constraints on me working there that are simply not there now that I’ve gone with no intention of ever going back. If I had decided that I had no option but to stay, I would resign myself to never telling the whole story about how shitty some of my experiences were. So if I was calling you and your friends “liars,” I’d be calling myself one, too. In that way that everyone has to play with the truth from time to time to put food on the table and maintain their personal space without unwanted intervention.
Furthermore, I concur that it’s not beyond the pale that if you were close friends with fifty sex workers, they could all be mostly happy, most of the time, at their work. But your fifty friends in the biz are not a scientific sample, and it doesn’t make sense to treat them as such unless we’re talking about sex work only as it affects the very specific cultural conditions of Josh and his close friends.
And even if these folks were a scientific sample, no product out there should be analyzed solely in terms of whether people are happy to produce it. Its environmental effects should be examined, too, or the analysis is incomplete. For example, a sex worker who picks up AIDS or an STD due to laissez-faire working conditions will not just have the potential to transmit the disease amongst his or her peers;The working conditions affect spouses, lovers, and others outside the field.
Daran wrote:
You seem to be laboring under the same impression as mythago. That is, you think that I consider “sex” and “porn” to be synonymous. I don’t. You are right. Making shoes is not inherently bad. Having sex is not inherently bad. But when you introduce unregulated (or poorly regulated) mass production and the profit motive as the main arbitor of how things get done, you will –to my mind– almost invariably end up hurting and perhaps killing the people doing the day to day production.
You’re welcome to try rereading my arguement with that in mind to see if it makes more sense to you in that context. I realize that we’re all on the honor system here, but it would help if you’d take my word for it that I don’t reject sex wholesale, or all depictions of it wholesale, just because of my queasiness about the mainstream pornographic film industry.
But when you introduce unregulated (or poorly regulated) mass production and the profit motive as the main arbitor of how things get done, you will ““to my mind”“ almost invariably end up hurting and perhaps killing the people doing the day to day production
In other words, making shoes is OK as long as you don’t sell the shoes, or at the very least, the shoes are never mass-produced and are always freely given away? Because if all you’re arguing for is workplace regulation of a meaningful sort and fair treatment of workers, we don’t in fact disagree (I hate to disapoint you there).
whether or not you like porn, you have to agree the labor conditions suck, and particularly if you like/use porn, you have a responability to work to improve those conditions
No, Charles, you don’t get it. Because while those arguments are eminently sensible, they are a smokescreen when the real argument is that porn is inherently bad. If it were, then those folks would give their blessing to any porn studio that insisted on condoms, paid its workers fair wages, and otherwise insisted on being socially responsible. But they won’t, because the complaints about working conditions are mere add-ons to the real argument.
It’s like anti-choicers who insist that clinics ought to have regular inspections, and that it’s shameful when a surgical procedure isn’t required to be performed by a licensed doctor. They don’t really give a shit about whether a clinic is dirty or the doc performing abortions is incompetent as much as they just want the place shut down.
It’s well known that habitual practice can change our beliefs, attitudes, dispositions, desires, pleasures, and behavior
Then why are we complaining about porn? It’s ridiculous to pretend that boys grow up in a media culture that treats women as empowered, intelligent, fully equal beings, and suddenly when a boy picks up a copy of Penthouse, for the FIRST TIME he is exposed to the idea that women are inferior, fit only for sex, and the magazine will create a Pavlovian conditioning whereby masturbation will cement sexism in his impressionable male mind.
I suggest that people who want an education on porn include reading the writings of people in the industry
Yes, well, having been in ‘the industry’, my experience is that the discussion starts out with “You poor thing!” and immediately shifts to “If you don’t unflinchingly condemn everything about it, you’re a traitor and a liar.” Kind of the way the anti-choice people treat women who have had abortions.
Since no such film company exists on record, you have no idea of knowing who would give it “their blessing” (a rather nebulous term, in any case;not necessarily the same as saying “they would swallow their collective distaste and leave said company in peace”). You’re simply engaging in speculation and stereotyping about a situation that doesn’t exist.
You’ve dragged out this red herring at least twice now. I let it go the first time, but now I’m calling you on it, mythago. How many pro life vs. pro choice go-r0unds have there been now –on this very blog– which have included women who have said, “I would never want an abortion, but I want abortion to be safe and legal for the sake of those who do” ? You know that emotions around morally-charged issues are not all polarized at two extremes of behavior, so have enough respect for the rest of us to stop pretending that this issue is an exception. Also, does Planned Parenthood routinely fail to guard the safety of its employees and clients ? Seems to me that they have a better record in this regard than Vivid and its ilk.
It’s not a very good parallel in any case, because you seem to persist in the notion that those who would want the pornographic film industry to disappear must also be against all forms of sexual expression. Clearly, you don’t assume that everyone who wishes for fewer abortions (not illegal abortions, but fewer abortions) is against all forms of sexual expression. Furthermore, you make it sound as if all the big-time porn-film mills vanished, our collective sexuality would wither away on the vine. Do you really believe that ? –because it’s a misperception on your part this makes this dialogue a hell of a lot harder than it has to be.
Please note that I said “main arbiter,” not “only arbiter.” There’s a world of difference between you shooting a sex video in your living room and selling it to your friends at a party and the sort of companies Dines and Jensen were writing about in the links above.
Rad Geek is a man. So is Amp, so is Lorenzo, so is Robert Jensen. What you are stating here is nothing but a reducto ad absurdum of what they have attempted to explain. The anti-porn feminists I know would argue that porn and sexism are essentially a figure eight. Boys and men consume porn because of sexism, and the porn they consume reinforces the sexist views which drove them to pick it up in the first place. If you read a graphic novel like Chester Brown’s The Playboy, you’ll find essentially the same view. The men who have grasped that porn and sexism do not exist in separate spheres –but rather feed on each other– may be unusual, but they’re not impossible to find.
Having been on several feminist boards in which sex workers crashed an anti-porn thread to lecture us about how we were stupid not to understand that our boyfriends still loved and adored us even if they spent half their monthly incomes on videos, strip bars and massage parlors, etc., I can tell y0u with absolute certainty that your camp isn’t immune to this syndrome, either.
And again, you have to drag in this anti-choice red herring, as if anti-choice men were any less inclined to consume porn than pro-choice men are. Please.
Me:
mythago:
Because the fact that men habitually use pornography for sexual arousal, sexual pleasure, and orgasm during masturbation makes reactionary content in pornography importantly different from reactionary content in other media. Both are objectionable and both ought to be analyzed and criticized. But it does not make sense to go around, quote Treating Porn Like Every Other Media unquote, when the consumption of pornography in our society has specific characteristics that give special reasons for interest and concern by people who are worried about (among other things) the fusion between sex and aggression in many men’s minds and actions. I already spent quite a bit of time explaining this above in explanatory comments to Amp, an attempt at saying it more concisely, and an attempt at explaining at greater length for reddecca.
mythago:
I agree. That is ridiculous.
Alsis39:
You may have read it that way, but I certainly wasn’t irritated with anyone when I first started posting.
As for the people I know, I never claimed they’d be a scientific study, but I do think that the ones who’re my friends wouldn’t feel a need to spin anything with me. One person I know is getting out of the business. She’s still got no major complaints.
If you want to document bad working conditions beyond lack of condom use, I’m not sure how you’ll be able to do that outside of actually talking with people in the industry, or people who used to be in the industry.
If you want to talk about porn’s effect on men, and that effects relationship to sexism, you’re probably a lot closer to being effective without having to talk to people in the industry.
One thing I’ve noticed in this thread is that very few people seem to be talking about what, if any, pornography they consume, or what effect pornography has had on us personaly, outside of what we’ve produced. I find myself wondering why that is. I mean, how can we talk about pornography if we’re not talking about first hand accounts of the lives of porn consumers?
In threads on rape, there’s invariably someone who’s brave enough to talk about a personal experience. Amp is about the only one I can recall who mentions a specific work of pornography, and not a well known production company or a magazine that everyone has heard of.
But no one here has talked about a personal experience with the effects of pornography, or even someone else’s experience with the effectd of pornography.
I think it’d bring this discussion away from intangibles if we were actualy able to connect it to something real.
I’d be happy to start by talking about my experiences, but they’re with written pornography for the most part, as I’m (a) too cheap to pay for magazines or online stuff and (b) not particularly turned on by it anyhow. With written porn, I don’t have to have this congnitive dissonance in the back of my head where I wonder if the model wouldn’t rather be somewhere else, or is faking the pleasure they’re having. The site beautifulagony.com is about the only one I’ve considered buying membership to, and honestly, I’m just too cheap to pay for it even though it looks interesting.
Perhaps it’s that talking about personal experiences having to do with masturbation is too private for most people here. I can certainly understand if that’s the case. But I do think that without some level of connection to reality, this discussion is far too theoretical to produce a real set of conclusions.