As the war crimes at Abu Ghraib continue to come to light (for those of you who don’t know, the short version is this: photos have been published of six American soliders, male and female, torturing Iraqi prisoners) I’ve seen more than a few comments along these lines, from Bitch Has Word:
Or this one from the comments at Billmon:
I have to admit that I’ve been surprised every time I’ve encountered this sentiment, and yet I’ve also been not surprised at all.
I think comments like these come about because of one of two ideas: the idea that women don’t do this sort of thing, and the idea that women should be less inclinded to do this kind of thing because it is so often done to them. Both of these views are pervasive in our society, particularly the first; torture and war are supposed to be the domain of men, while women are supposed to be too weak-willed for, too empathic for, or just better than that sort of thing.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. Women can be every bit as nasty and brutish as men; evil is hardly the sole domain of a single gender. Women turned Jews over to the Nazis; women owned and beat, or had beaten, slaves; women have been spies, traitors, murders, and thieves. It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that, when put in a situation where there was, apparently, an implicit or explicit order to extract information from people through whatever means possible that women should become torturers just as men do. There’s no real reason to believe that they wouldn’t. As BHW pointed out in her post, “I guess the mob mentality kicked in for her, too.”
One thing that seems particularly surprising to some is the sexual nature of the torture and humilitation, particularly that a woman would engage in torture and humiliation of a sexual nature. Women may be more often threatened by and victims of sexual assault and violence, but this hardly means that they are immune to commiting such acts themselves when placed in a position where they have absolute authority. In much the same way that children who have been abused can grow up to be parents who abuse their children, the sons and daughters of alcoholics can become alcoholics themselves, and even the friends who stab their friends in the back despite having had this done to them — in much the same way as these things can happen, so too can women become the perpetrators of sexual assault when placed in the just right (really, just wrong) position of being able to commit them.
There isn’t a doubt in my mind that it is a good thing that women are (slowly) being allowed to join the armed forces in (slowly) whatever way they see fit, but at the same time I think that we are all going to have to (unfortunately) become used to seeing situations like this one. We appropriately bristle at the suggestion that one should be surprised when a woman performs an act or heroism, bravery, or strength; why should we be so surprised then when a woman performs or participates in an atrocity?
(BHW link via Feministe.)
Update: Just to be clear on something: I’m not saying or meaning to suggest that torture, or even war, is an okay thing and that we should just get used to women participating in it. On the contrary, we should be shocked and appalled that any person of either sex thinks that this is ever an appropriate way to treat any other human being.
[Edited to include something I meant to include when I first wrote it.].
Right on. The belief that women are too empathic/nurturing/maternal/wimpy/morally superior or what have you to do nasty or brutal things does absolutely nothing beneficial for women anywhere. It’s just “angel of the household” clad in more contemporary garb.
In _The Gulag Archipelago,_ Solzenitsyn writes about woman torturers sometimes being brought in specifically when the torture planned for male prisoners involved sexual humiliation–presumably because it was understood that the prisoners found their treatment even more psychologically devestating when it was perpetrated by, or even witnessed by, a woman. I cannot help but imagine that this effect would be even more pronounced for prisoners whose culture is so very strongly oriented against heterosocial contact.
I was not surprised to see a female soldier in those photographs. It did surprise me that others should have been so surprised, though.
Did you catch the Morning Edition story on the Abu Ghraib atrocities? (May 3) They referred to allegations that the guards had “had sex with female prisoners” and “threatened to rape” male prisoners. Do your suppose they meant to infer the sex was consensual with the women? Why not call it rape if it wasn’t?
There’s a big difference between a child who was abused becoming an abuser as an adult and a woman who has not experienced sexual abuse perpetrating it on someone else.
And I don’t think women are “the angel of the household,” either.
By FAR, more men commit sexual assault than women. Why is it surprising when a woman finds it surprising that another woman has joined a humiliation ritual that is *most often* perpetrated by men?
Yes, you can find other instances of women committing atrocities throughout history. But the fact remains that women lag behind men in this type of action.
I’m not surprised–but I tend to regard a woman’s participation in this sort of thing as a real betrayal. And I, too, get tired of the idea that women are better than men (or that we have to be twice as moral to get treated half as well. Bullshit.).
Ultimately, I think it is about power. When you have it over someone, chances are, you’ll abuse it (and them). She had some power, she had some encouragement, and she abused.
Another thing I noticed among the reports–it was somehow seen as worse to treat men “like women,” i.e., by sexually abusing and humiliating them.
Do people think it’s okay to treat women like that? That it’s no big deal to us?
“Another thing I noticed among the reports–it was somehow seen as worse to treat men “like women,” i.e., by sexually abusing and humiliating them.”
Exactly.
I wonder how many people participate in atrocities against their wills, both men and women? After all, if a group is willing to perpetrate torture of some people, why not all people (i.e. anyone who doesn’t go along)? It seems to me that there is an implicit threat in any group act of violence, to the other members of the perpetrating group.
This is not to imply that women would only participate under threat, implied or overt. I doubt it’s that simple.
Just because the majority of victims of sexual violence are women doesn’t mean that most women have been victims. There is no reason a woman is more or less likely to have empathy for victims of sexual violence, especially if she has never been a victim herself.
My guess is the torturers were subject to gang rape mentality where participating in the crime becomes a symbol of belonging. Women are just as suspect to that pressure as men. I’m surprised people are surprised, too.
There is no reason a woman is more or less likely to have empathy for victims of sexual violence, especially if she has never been a victim herself.
There is if she is both self-aware and aware of the greater chance that she will be a victim of sexual violance than, say, the average adult male.
My husband walks down the street at night completely unconcerned about a potential sexual assault against him. The potential for sexual violence against me enters my mind even during the day; I’ve thought about it once or twice when alone with a man I didn’t know on an elevator, for example.
I am just simply more tuned into sexual violence as an issue than most of the men I know. Maybe I’m just different from all other men and women. Who knows?
But if you read the last sentence of the blurb Amp quoted from my blog, you’ll see that I make the same point as Amp and some commenters: that the female soldier gave in to the mob mentality. In fact, my entire post is about *human nature*, not man or woman nature.
bhw,
I meant to include a comment about your “mob mentality” comment, but forgot to. I wasn’t being critical of your post or saying that you didn’t get it; I just found your comment to be in line with many others I have seen.
Your saying that she was joining into the mob mentality cuts to the heart of the whole matter. I’m sorry if you felt that I was misquoting or misrepresenting what you’d said.
Didn’t anyone see this coming? I mean, the philosophy of “break them down, then build them back up” is what our entire military is trained with. Torture of Iraqis is (gross understatement here) a big bummer, but boot camp, ROTC, and all those other military training grounds spend alot of time shaming and humiliating people because their boots aren’t shiny enough or because they’re (gasp!) tired after crawling through the mud for 3 days with no sleep.
Yes, we should be shocked and appalled that people treat each other so badly, and that should start here in the US. Hazing is hazing, and when we treat our soldiers like crap, it’s not that surprising that they treat others the same way.
I had a slightly different take on this. I think we have to look at the sexual practices in America which make such behavior overseas seem acceptable.
bhw,
And I don’t think women are “the angel of the household,” either.
No, and you said as much in your original post, which was indeed, as you say, posing a question about human nature and not expressing any form of essentialist belief in the superiority of
women. I’m very sorry if I implied otherwise; such was not at all my intent.
I was really speaking more generally — I’ve seen a lot of expressions of “omg there was a WOMAN there!” sentiment floating around since that news broke — but looking it over, I realize that it did seem as if I was addressing your article in particular, since it was the one Pink Dream Poppies linked to and did include the word “surprise.” Again, sorry about that. That was rather careless of me.
By FAR, more men commit sexual assault than women. Why is it surprising when a woman finds it surprising that another woman has joined a humiliation ritual that is *most often* perpetrated by men?
I can see your point. I guess I found it a bit surprising mainly because it is actually quite common practice, in places where torture is regularly used, to bring in a woman as witness to a man’s sexual humiliation. It’s established technique, and it’s also one that our dear “School Formerly Known As The School of the Americas” is known to have trained its people in before sending them down south to Latin America. (A computer crash last month blitzed my bookmarks, but I can try to hunt down a link for that one, if you like. It’s not stuff to be read while depressed, though, or if in a squeamish frame of mind. Horrible.)
Yes, you can find other instances of women committing atrocities throughout history. But the fact remains that women lag behind men in this type of action.
They do, but I tend to think that that’s more a matter of opportunity and, well, and of discrimination, as weird as that may sound. Perhaps I merely have a bleak view of human nature, but I expect that the more women we have serving in our armed forces, the more women we’ll have committing the kind of atrocities that soldiers commit.
In order to change that, I think that we’ll have to change what it means to be a “soldier,” and that might take a while.
Sheelzebub:
Ultimately, I think it is about power. When you have it over someone, chances are, you’ll abuse it (and them). She had some power, she had some encouragement, and she abused.
Yeah, exactly.
I don’t think that I agree that a woman is less likely to be an abuser “if she is both self-aware and aware of the greater chance that she will be a victim of sexual violance than, say, the average adult male.” I think that often such an awareness can actually work the other way, in much the same way that children who are bullied often turn around and themselves bully younger or even more vulnerable children.
In a group situation such as a military, it would not surprise me to learn that female soldiers were even less likely to balk at such mistreatment of prisoners than their male counterparts, not only because their minority status makes it even more difficult for them to be accepted as part of the group (your “mob mentality” factor, with which I agree), but also because awareness of their own vulnerability might make it harder for them to take the risk of being the lone dissenter. “Better you than me, pal,” is not a very nice sentiment. But it is a very human one.
Oh, and I too am somewhat bothered by the screams of outrage that male rape always seems to elicit, while the rape of women goes unremarked. “Oh my God! They raped a MAN!”
Not that anyone should ever be raped, of course. But the idea that it’s particularly bad to rape men, because to do so is ::gasp:: to treat them like WOMEN (the horror!) is a cultural construct that as a woman I do find particularly insulting and irksome.
Elkins
Well, I agree that many, if not most, women are more attuned to the fear of sexual crime. In fact, that’s why I think rape is pretty much the definition of a hate crime–committed against an individual and contributing to the atmosphere of fear for a particular group.
But some women don’t get it. There will always be those who don’t get it and all it apparently took were a couple of them in this situation.
The whole subject brings up an interesting question. Is humiliation a much greater factor in Iraqi culture than it is in American culture? My guess is that it is, but feel free to correct me on this.
What would the reaction be in the US if the hoods were on the other heads? I’m sure that it would be outrage at the mistreatement of our countrymen, but would the outrage be fueled by humiliation to the same extent? I don’t think so. In mid-eastern & far-eastern cultures humiliation seems to be a much stronger motivator than it does in western culture. In western culture humiliation seems to be part of the method of acceptance into groups (military, fraternity/sorority, athletic group, etc.) rather than a means to keep people on culturally accepted paths. (Not to mention a large part of certain consensual sexual behaviours).
I’ll have to think more about this and see if I can be any more coherent on the matter.
PinkDreamPoppies and Elkins,
Sorry if I misunderstood your post/comments. [And sorry for not realizing you wrote the post and not Amp, PDP!] I’m either overly defensive or an egomaniac. I’ll let you pick. 8-)
Thanks for the clarification.
This is an excellent discusssion over here at Alas, as always.
No worries. I probably would have reacted in much the same way had I been in your shoes. Let this be a lesson to me about the importance of writing clear posts (and of not forgetting things I mean to include).
Jake, that’s an interesting question, but I think that American men would generally feel as humiliated by this particular torture as any others, East or West. In fact, the tortures probably reflect more on what the captors see as humiliating more than what the prisoners fear.
Yes, they’d feel as humiliated. But would we, as a culture or country, feel as humiliated as the people of Iraq feel? I’m not really talking about humiliation of the individual, but the role humiliation plays in our respective cultures. Is humiliation as much of an influence, a motivator in our culture?
Someone (Mithras?) wrote about the Iraqi culture in which shame is the ultimate way of hurting a man, specifically sexual shame.
Check me on this.
Jake, if you are reading this still (I am always late on these things living here in Cairo) Arab society is more “shame” based than “guilt” based — there are lots of books written about this — and the “shame” of the public way these guys were tortured and the fact it was in front of women (never mind whether the woman was actually carrying out the torture or not — that she was present is the shame factor to them), to most people in Middle Eastern society it is really, literally worse than the fear of death. Juan Cole pointed something like this out yesterday when he was trying to tell the people who were minimizing the torture thing as “fraternity hazing” that they are wrong, to the ARab societies this is not hazing, this is an assault on one’s honor and he thinks the US in essence lost the war in this one action.
Anna,
That is precisely what I’m talking about. It seems to me that in other cultures shame (humiliation) is an effective societal tool for keeping people within accepted norms. Politics is an example of this. In some cultures it is likely that a politician will resign in the wake of some action that causes him humiliation/shame. Not so in the USA. As such, it seems to me that the effect that the revelation of these abuses will have is much greater in Iraqi culture than it would have been in US culture.
There’s an interesting post over at Kevin Drum’s new place (washingtonmonthly.com) by Debra Dickerson, a Black, Female, 12-year Air Force veteran.
I would love to hear what you think of it, PDP.
Check it out here: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_05/003840.php
—JRC
bhw:
No problemo. I was at fault, really, for not being clear that I wasn’t responding to you.
Jake:
I have the same impression of Iraqi culture, but I’m a bit suspicious of my own understanding, because I’m not sure to what extent it really reflects reality or to what extent it might just come from propaganda. I’m not by any means a scholar of the Middle East, or of Iraqi culture, and most of what I think I know comes from media sources I’m not sure I trust. If you get my drift.
But yes. I did have that impression as well, and at any rate, I do think that, the importance of shame as a cultural construct aside, members of a culture which tries to minimize day-to-day casual contact between men and women would certainly be likely to find being humiliated in such a fashion while a female soldier looked on even more shameful and traumatic.
Dear Elkins, the ideas Westerners have about Iraqi culture are, of course, colored by stereotypes promoted by media simplifications of a much more complex reality, but that does not mean that cultural differences do not exist. As discussed above, the shame factor is indeed much more deeply felt by Middle Easterners than by Westerners. I have lived in the Middle East for many years. I know Arabic very well, and I am a professional trainer in Cairo and have discussed a lot of these “cultural” issues in courses on communication skills, time management, etc. I think the reactions I have seen to the torture story here in the Middle East are much deeper than people in the US realize. For people in the US this is like a minor scandal of the day that will be supplanted by some other stupid story like Michael Jackson’s trial. For people in the ME they will not forget it. It will be dredged up in decades to come whenever anyone wants to criticize America or the Americans for anything.
After reading this post and Debra Dickerson’s post linked by JRC, I can’t help but think that the “initiation” part of these torture acts and photos was for the military personnel, and especially the women, *not* for the prisoners. In other words, in the same way that white Americans used to affirm their common “white superiority” by lynching African Americans, these military personnel are affirming their own common bond by humiliating “others” and then posing over them.
I think this is also what Dickerson means when she writes about it being so difficult for women to be accepted into military culture without just adopting the most distorted of the masculine excesses. And it makes a certain degree of sense, also (where “sense” is entirely about self-preservation and has nothing to do with ethics) for women if they are at all feeling, as Dickerson points out, at personal risk from the increased likelihood that women in the military will experience rape.
I hasten to point out that these acts are brutal and not excusable in any way, and that they should be condemned, investigated, and punished to the full extent that they run up the chain of command (and I for one have a suggestion for how far up the buck should stop on this one). Not to mention that all possible pressure should be brought to bear, to discover how deeply PMAs are involved and how systemic the abuse is, and then to stop it, truly, at all US facilities.
But a low-ish status group (in this case, female soldiers) claiming commonality with a powerful group (male soldiers) by joining with that group to torture/humiliate yet another group is a depressingly common phenomenon.
“In other words, in the same way that white Americans used to affirm their common “white superiority” by lynching African Americans, these military personnel are affirming their own common bond by humiliating “others” and then posing over them.”
This is why I am anti-pornography, because men use it to affirm their superiority to women by sexually humiliating women.
Being stripped naked and having photos made of you in this undignified manner is what poverty-stricken women suffer daily with the full backing of our culture. A raped woman said in court that after being raped the man threw her $50 of the money he stole from her wallet, and the case was dismissed. There is no humiliation of women so great that money can’t wash it away, make it okay to onlookers who might think otherwise.
I doubt the argument would fly that heaping piles of naked Iraqi men together for porn photos could possibly be an empowering choice for these formely sexually repressed men, and yet everyday we are told to believe that women freely choose and even enjoy getting tied up, ball-gagged, spit on, double-penetrated in their anuses and gang-banged on film. If taking photos of an Iraqi man masterbating in front of a woman is offensive to the dignity of all Iraqi’s, then why isn’t the seemingly endless stream of photos of women masterbating in front of men not equally offensive to all women’s dignity? Like a difference between R and NC-17 ratings is the viewing of a penis, do all men inherently possess more sexual dignity than all women like some here have suggested the Iraqi people are more inherently offended by such sexual humiliations than American people?
and knowing that women’s sexual humiliation turns most American men on is scary.
Dear Samantha,
I agree with your points on the fact that there is something really profoundly wrong with how neat a lot of men think it is to watch women in humiliating positions on film. But you did make one statement in which you say that some on this thread have suggested that Iraqis are inherently more offended at sexual humiliation than Americans. And if you were referring to me because I have been trying to explain some aspects of Iraqi and Arab culture I need to clarify. I do not think any human is ‘inherently’ anything. Culture is a SOCIAL construct. Shame societies do operate differently than guilt societies. This is not the same thing at all as saying that somehow Iraqis are genetically different than Americans.
Thank you, Anna, for providing a more informed perspective on the cultural differences. Naturally cultural differences do exist; I was not feeling very confident on my own ability to speculate too deeply on them, knowing myself to be fairly ignorant in this arena. I really appreciated your input.
Samantha, I do not believe that any group of people are possessed of more inherent sexual dignity than any other. Surely the sexual integrity and dignity of all human beings should be respected! I do think, though, that both individually and culturally there are differences in how traumatic one might find certain types of treatment to be.
I, for example, was not raised to ascribe much importance to the notion of “modesty,” the idea that to be seen naked is somehow inherently shameful. I do not keep blinds or curtains on my bedroom windows because I don’t like them, my window does not look out on a public space (so I don’t think of myself as impinging on others’ comfort levels), and I honestly don’t care if somebody wants so very badly to see a stranger nekkid that they go out of their way to peer through my window. I understand, though, that to someone raised with a different standard of modesty, such a thought might be almost sickeningly upsetting to contemplate.
Similarly, I think that cultural differences can make a difference in precisely how heinous an act of abuse is perceived by the victim.
Don’t get me wrong: it’s NEVER okay to assault another’s sexual dignity. *Never.*
But I do think that it is worthwhile for us to appreciate that there are cultural factors in play in this situation that might make the treatement of the detainees an even more grievous offense than some in this country might at first realize.
Elkins
“Similarly, I think that cultural differences can make a difference in precisely how heinous an act of abuse is perceived by the victim.
Don’t get me wrong: it’s NEVER okay to assault another’s sexual dignity. *Never.*
But I do think that it is worthwhile for us to appreciate that there are cultural factors in play in this situation that might make the treatement of the detainees an even more grievous offense”
I suppose I’m failing to see how you can say sexual humiliation is equally bad wherever it happens…but Iraqi men being sexually humiliated is really worse for a number of cultural reasons.
Are you suggesting prostitutes and porn actresses don’t feel equally as degraded by their photographed sexual humiliations as Iraqi men are by their sexual humiliations because women are “raised under a different standard of modesty” that makes their sexual indignity more tolerable, hell, *praiseworthy* as examples of freedom of speech and democratic justice? Actually, that was my whole point, that we as a culture are infinitely more tolerable of women’s sexual degradation than men’s sexual degradation for a number of cultural reasons and in that difference lies a Pandora’s Box of gender oppression.
Someone wrote to me that they think the infamous image of Iraqi men masterbating with a US servicewoman pointing would be viewed as not degrading and acceptable to them if the men enjoyed it and were financially compensated for their sex working labor. http://www.unknownnews.net/040508d-07sam.html Do you think if the men involved were paid several hundred dollars for their sex worker services that everything would be squared away with them and the international community would understand that the pictures are no longer sexually humiliating because payment has been rendered? Is this a humanity issue or a slave labor issue?
You don’t have to answer those quasi-rhetoical questions, I just want you to put some deep thought into what I’m saying about the not-so-big difference between the sexual humiliation and dehuminization of the Iraqi people and of Women as a people.
I suppose I’m failing to see how you can say sexual humiliation is equally bad wherever it happens…but Iraqi men being sexually humiliated is really worse for a number of cultural reasons.
It is equally wrong to perpetuate it against anyone, but it is not necessarily equally psychologically harmful to the individual. The degree of harm to the individual is partially dependent on how that individual perceives the issue, which could be determined by many things, cultural attitudes towards shame and sexuality chief among them.
The reason that it is equally wrong is that it is reasonable to assume that nobody enjoys being subjected to such treatment against their will; we therefore hold as a default assumption that such behavior will always cause some degree of harm to the other person involved.
The precise degree of harm that any given individual does experience, however, I think quite observably varies from person to person. Even within the same culture, there is a wide variation in how people react to being the victims of sexual abuse.
I don’t see why recognition of that fact should be considered an assault on the moral strictures against sexual abuse. To punch someone in the face will cause that person a hell of a lot more damage if he is a hemophiliac than if he is not, but recognizing that fact is in no way the same thing as saying that it’s okay to go around punching people in the face, so long as you’re sure they’re not hemophiliacs!
Are you suggesting prostitutes and porn actresses don’t feel equally as degraded by their photographed sexual humiliations as Iraqi men are by their sexual humiliations because women are “raised under a different standard of modesty” that makes their sexual indignity more tolerable, hell, *praiseworthy* as examples of freedom of speech and democratic justice?
Uh, no, I said not a word about prostitutes or porn actresses, nor do I recall “freedom of speech and democratic justice” coming up in this discussion at all–until this very moment, that is.
::looks around::
Is there an invisible person in the room?
The snippet you quote above was in reference to the difference between how I feel about being seen naked and how another woman raised in the very same overall culture as I was might feel about it, by way of explaining how reactions to things that fall under the general rubric of “sexual indignity” may vary widely due to even very slight cultural factors.
The differences between Iraqi and American culture go beyond the “slight,” in my opinion, and I think that that does make a difference in our understanding of precisely what was going on in those photographs.
Someone wrote to me that they think the infamous image of Iraqi men masterbating with a US servicewoman pointing would be viewed as not degrading and acceptable to them if the men enjoyed it and were financially compensated for their sex working labor.
Oh! There’s that invisible person! Okay, I think I see who you’re arguing with now.
Do you think if the men involved were paid several hundred dollars for their sex worker services that everything would be squared away with them and the international community would understand that the pictures are no longer sexually humiliating because payment has been rendered?
Um. I’m not even sure how to answer that question, honestly, because it seems to go so far into the land of “what-if” that I find it almost offensive.
The men in question are captives, and they are being tortured. The fact that their torture includes sexual humiliation is to my mind really a minor detail, and one that I find it somewhat disappointing that the American public has so fixated upon.
Oh. But now I’m the one arguing with nvisible people, aren’t I? Sorry about that.
But like I said, I’m just not sure how to answer that question. Is the question whether or not the situation would be different if the POWs were actually not POWs, but instead porn actors? Porn actors who were acting voluntarily, under no duress, and being paid for their appearance in a smut film?
Well, uh, yeah. I do think that would be pretty different.
Or is the question whether it would all be okay if our servicemen had captured a bunch of enemy soldiers, made them put on a porno, and then thrown money at them and let them go?
Well, that would be different, too, although significantly less so. And no. It would not be okay.
I’m not sure I really see the point of these hypotheticals, though.
Actually, that was my whole point, that we as a culture are infinitely more tolerable of women’s sexual degradation than men’s sexual degradation for a number of cultural reasons and in that difference lies a Pandora’s Box of gender oppression.
::nods::
Yes, I agree with you there. I commented on that as well, above, although only tangentially.
Of course, that Pandora’s Box of gender oppression is precisely the reason that the Iraqi POWs were made to simulate sex acts and then photographed doing so in the first place. If their captors hadn’t thought that it would hurt them, and hurt them quite badly, then they wouldn’t have bothered to make them do it.
Harm was precisely the intent in this situation. These men were prisoners of war, they were being tortured. The sexual humiliation evidenced by those photographs was only one of the acts of abuse being perpetuated upon them, and probably one of the less severe ones at that. There were also, y’know, electrodes and live wires involved, not to mention all of the things which were not captured on film, but about which I think we can speculate without too much difficulty.
You don’t have to answer those quasi-rhetorical questions, I just want you to put some deep thought into what I’m saying about the not-so-big difference between the sexual humiliation and dehuminization of the Iraqi people and of Women as a people.
Okay, I think I see what you’re getting at here. It wasn’t the issue I was trying to address, but I do see where you’re coming from.
Aren’t the two situations a bit, um, reversed, though? As I understand it, the institutionalized oppression of women is partially perpetuated by the statement: “women don’t really mind that sort of thing, you know, not the way we men do.”
Which is precisely what set up your red flags in this discussion, wasn’t it?
In this case, though, I don’t think that anyone has been arguing that the Iraqis “don’t really mind that sort of thing.” Far to the contrary.
The fact that the servicemen knew that it would hurt them–and hurt them quite badly–was precisely why it was done to them in the first place.
Abusers of women know damned well that their actions hurt women too, of course. But the rhetorical defense they use to defend their actions and perpetuate the system which permits their behavior is a very different one than the defenses I’ve been seeing used to permit and excuse and perpetuate the abuse of our prisoners of war in the Gulf.
Elkins
As I understand it, the institutionalized oppression of women is partially perpetuated by the statement: “women don’t really mind that sort of thing, you know, not the way we men do.”
I tend to think it’s more fueled by the idea that it doesn’t matter if we “mind” or not; we aren’t human, we are objects and not people, and our wishes and desires simply don’t count. Women simply don’t matter.
It’s come to light that Iraqi female POWs (one a 70-year-old woman made to wear a harness and crawl on all fours) were humiliated and sexually assaulted. There doesn’t seem to be the concern for their humiliation and their psychological torment at the hands of the soldiers.
I don’t mind being seen naked by other women when I’m in, say, a Japanese hot spring or public bath, or maybe my gym locker room. That would completely change if I were a prisoner and was forced to strip and pose for the guards.
I tend to think it’s more fueled by the idea that it doesn’t matter if we “mind” or not; we aren’t human, we are objects and not people, and our wishes and desires simply don’t count. Women simply don’t matter.
No, we don’t. We’re either objects or we’re “ideals.”
The front page of the New York Times yesterday was splattered with more photos of Lynndie England, with the headline “From Picture of Pride to Synbol of Abuse.”
This pisses me off. None of the men in those photographs are being touted as the “symbol of abuse,” are they? Nooooo. No, of course not. Only the woman is.
Women. We’re just symbols, really, you know.
::gnashes teeth and exits snarling::
Do you think most American women enjoy being prostitutes? Because that’s what it seems like you’re saying when you say prostituted women are, “acting voluntarily, under no duress, and being paid for their appearance in a smut film?”
If you really think most porn is made with women acting freely without duress, coercion, violence and a host of other horrific nasties imposed by pimps/managers then you’ve got some major self-educating to do.
“The reason that it is equally wrong is that it is reasonable to assume that nobody enjoys being subjected to such treatment against their will”
But many Western women like being sexually humiliated on film? Porn actresses are sexually humiliated at their own bidding and not against their will? Your word “voluntary” suggests you think most porn is made by women who freely choose pornstitution. Please seek out more information about the production of pornography to learn how very misguided you are.
Is there no sexual humiliation suffered by women that “consent” and the payment of money can’t wash clean, or as long as women sign contracts agreeing to be humiliated on film then there actually is no sexual indignity in pornographic photos of women masterbating, getting fucked by 60 men in 60 minutes, sucking dog penises, rubbing feces on their faces? I disagree with you that ‘consent’ on the part of the participants removes the producer’s intent of sexual humiliation from porn images.
“Do you think if the men involved were paid several hundred dollars for their sex worker services that everything would be squared away with them and the international community would understand that the pictures are no longer sexually humiliating because payment has been rendered?
“‘I’m not even sure how to answer that question'”
If the question is offensive to you when discussing compensating Iraqi men for their unpaid sex work labor, why suggest that pictures of *any* woman being sexually humiliated isn’t equally humiliating because she took the money? Why can’t payment of money wash Iraqi men’s sexual humiliation away like it does women’s sexual humiliation?
“The men in question are captives, and they are being tortured.”
So are prostitutes.
Do you really see nothing amiss with suggesting most Western prostituted women enjoy being fucked by hundreds of men and aren’t physically and emotionally tortured for years before and during the making of pornography? I can’t see how you’re not saying most American pornstitutes don’t mind being sexually tortured and humiliated on film. Are photos with piles of naked female bodies hooded and heaped on a floor not degrading because you think the prostitutes used to make the image wanted it, willed it to happen?
“As I understand it, the institutionalized oppression of women is partially perpetuated by the statement: “women don’t really mind that sort of thing, you know, not the way we men do.”
That is what I see in your comments (only add the adjective ‘Western’ to the women). Please reconsider your phrase “acting voluntarily, under no duress, and being paid for their appearance” in light of the immediately above statement.
I think there’s a big difference between someone who has examined all the options she has to keep her kids from starving and decided that prostitution is the least objectionable and a prisoner being tortured.
Yes, there are social conditions that tend to degrade women. But describing it as torture is hyperbole that borders on being offensive.
Do you think most American women enjoy being prostitutes?
No.
Because that’s what it seems like you’re saying when you say prostituted women are, “acting voluntarily, under no duress, and being paid for their appearance in a smut film?”
I didn’t say that about prostituted women. I said that about the imaginary men in your imaginary scenario here:
“Someone wrote to me that they think the infamous image of Iraqi men masterbating with a US servicewoman pointing would be viewed as not degrading and acceptable to them if the men enjoyed it and were financially compensated for their sex working labor.”
Well, uh, yes, I did assume that in that bizarre hypothetical, the men were acting “voluntarily and under no duress.” I did so because the hypothetical specified that they “enjoyed it.”
I don’t think that anyone enjoys being raped, or forced into sexual slavery. Therefore, since you specified the men in the above hypothetical to have been enjoying it, I assumed that they must have been acting voluntarily, and under no duress.
I really am at a loss to understand why, if you thought the above such a very poor analogy, you should have invited my response to it in the first place!
Is there no sexual humiliation suffered by women that “consent” and the payment of money can’t wash clean…
Well, there’s a difference between “consent” (in air quotes) and consent (sans air quotes), isn’t there?
Humiliation is largely conditional on consent. I do things with my husband in the bedroom that I would be horribly humiliated if I were forced to do without consenting to it.
If you think that consent plays no part at all in the moral equation, then I don’t really think that we have anything further to discuss.
If the question is offensive to you when discussing compensating Iraqi men for their unpaid sex work labor, why suggest that pictures of *any* woman being sexually humiliated isn’t equally humiliating because she took the money?
Because, as Nick says below, I see a rather large distinction between somebody reluctantly deciding that sex work is the most tolerable of a host of bad options and therefore deciding to take it on to pay the bills, and somebody held hostage for months, beaten to within an inch of their life, burned with acid, raped with light bulbs, subjected to mock execution, and then forced at gunpoint to masturbate on film.
In neither case is there completely free consent. However, to say that there is no difference between the two scenarios is to my mind exaggerated to the point of moral bankruptcy.
Naturally, in the case of a porn actor who was abducted off the street, beaten to within an inch of her life, tortured, and then raped on film, that distinction vanishes. However, not all sex workers fall into that category — and the imaginary sex workers in your above hypothetical, whom you specified to have “enjoyed it,” most certainly did not.
If you’re going to propose a hypothetical scenario in which the porn actors are having a very good time, as you did above, then you can’t very well object when I assume their actions to have been undertaken voluntarily, can you?
Perhaps next time, you should pick a rhetorical question that actually leads to the answer you were hoping to receive.
“Yes, there are social conditions that tend to degrade women. But describing it as torture is hyperbole that borders on being offensive.”
At what point does the daily sexual degradation of prostitutes stop being torture and begin to be…torture lite? Painful and humiliating but not ‘torture’? Uncomfortable and raw but not unbearable? Degrading to women but not offensive?
“Is there no sexual humiliation suffered by women that “consent” and the payment of money can’t wash clean”
“‘Well, there’s a difference between “consent” (in air quotes) and consent (sans air quotes), isn’t there?…Humiliation is largely conditional on consent.'”
Then your answer is No, there is no image of a woman being sexually degraded so severely, so inhumanely, that the payment of money and the “consent” taking the money implies doesn’t make somewhat okay.
Doing *anything* against your will is inherently humiliating, but there’s a difference between forced actions and forced sexual actions, which is exactly why these Iraqi men were specifically sexually abused. People who are forced to give up their wallets to muggers do not suffer mentally and commit suicide in the numbers people forced to submit sexually are for many good reasons I’m sure you could think of if you put your mind to it.
What happens when we stop looking to prostitute’s seeming “consent” to have sex with 6,12, 18 men everyday and start looking at the men who pay to sexually exploit poor, homeless, drug addicted women to ask them “Why?” The Netherlands is considering a law making it illegal for men to seek out drug-addicted prostitutes as they’re finding johns specifically want the most destitute and broken-willed prostitutes “willing” to let them do more painful, violent sex acts to them for a few dollars. It’s no coincidence there are many such drug-addicted prostitutes, and I believe Nick’s use of the word ‘objectionable’ is a huge whitewash of the physical and mental trauma they suffer, with many getting a higher score on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder charts than veterans who have survived combat.
“I see a rather large distinction between somebody reluctantly deciding that sex work is the most tolerable of a host of bad options and therefore deciding to take it on to pay the bills, and somebody held hostage for months, beaten to within an inch of their life, burned with acid, raped with light bulbs, subjected to mock execution, and then forced at gunpoint to masturbate on film.”
Prostitution is rife with such brutality. There is a reason 90% of USA prostitutes are pimped out by other people, why they start at the average age of 13-14, why women in prostitution don’t live nearly as long as other women. One Canadian study found 40 times the mortality rate among sex workers than other workers, and I consider that nothing less than thousands of lives snuffed out early from the torturous toll prostitution takes on people’s will to live.
All of these terrible things that happened to Iraqi men in prison happen to women and children in global prostitution for the profit of men and with a routineness that would make you numb to know its full extent. Movies of women being sexually tortured are not rare, and there have been many criminal records detailing porn made of rape victims where the “directors” said was consensual sex (Deep Throat being the most famous). Just a few weeks ago the tortured body of a young woman making a porn film in Pennsylvania was found still wearing S&M gear. I assure you I am not exaggerating the severity of the abuse prostitutes face.
“However, to say that there is no difference between the two scenarios is to my mind exaggerated to the point of moral bankruptcy.”
You are seeing the subjective differences surrounding what consent can mean in situations where the free will to make other choices is lacking (I believe if you can’t freely leave a situation you can’t truly be said to “consent” to be in it), where I am noting the numerous similarities. Your argument rests on a matter of subjective degree, but my point of view that the humiliation and subhumanization of Iraqi men is similar in many ways to the humiliation and subhumanization of women is not as subjective. When these soldiers wanted to break down a prisoner mentally, they degraded him specifically in a sexually undignified manner, and I think there’s something to that and the sexual indignities regularly heaped on women for men’s entertainment. I think this connection is not so weak as you are suggesting.
Which came first, the association of exposed sexuality with diminished dignity and increased vulnerability or the hyperassociation of human sexuality with women? To hear the Iraqi men speak it, you’d have to answer the latter. Were the men stripped naked and made to touch themselves because it made them like women or because of the intrinsically humiliating nature of exposed sexuality? To what degree is it both, and what does that mean for the increasingly violent, pervasive pornographic exposures of women’s sexuality our culture is currently witnessing?
I consider these worthwhile topics of consideration and don’t know why anyone would take offense at the very asking of such questions for debate.
Samantha: I would be very interested to see a cite for these claims about the levels of brutality prostitutes and porn stars typically endure.
In a situation where a woman is being forced to do something against her will, there’s a clear analogue to the torture of these prisoners. But if a woman has decided to do something she finds rather unpleasant because it’s the only way to pay the bills, it’s not the same case. There’s a large grey area between enjoying something and being tortured that you seem to want to ignore.
You’re also glossing over the difference between giving consent before the event in exchange for payment and being paid after something was inflicted without consent. The former is consent, the latter is not.
It’s this blurring of distinctions that I find offensive. When you equate torture with something that, however unpleasant, is consensual, you belittle the suffering of those who have been truly tortured.
“I would be very interested to see a cite for these claims about the levels of brutality prostitutes and porn stars typically endure.”
What planet have you been living on that you need to be convinced prostitution is a massively exploitive, abusive form of exploitation? Even pro-legalization advocates don’t refute the brutality of the sex industry, they just propose a different (and thus far wholly ineffective) solution. Portland has two nonprofit orgs (used to have three before Danzine shut down) whose mission statements are to assist survivors of the sex industry as they deal with the physical and emotional traumas of sex work, and I can’t think of any other industry where ‘former employees’ are so routinely, systemically abused and degraded that several grassroots organizations in one not-too-big city spring up to meet their extensive counseling, education, and job-seeking needs (prostitution experience doesn’t contribute much to growing non-sex job skills and it doesn’t boost a resume).
But if you really need help understanding the toruture of sexual slavery, start here http://www.prostitutionresearch.com
The book you see presented there is by Melissa Farley, PhD. and it titled “Prostitution, Trafficking, and Traumatic Stress” and it has oodles of statistics regarding the inherent violence of prostitution as experienced around the world.
“Prostitution, Trafficking, and Traumatic Stress offers the reader an analysis of prostitution and trafficking as organized interpersonal violence. Even in academia, law, and public health, prostitution is often misunderstood as “sex work.” The book’s 32 contributors offer clinical examples, analysis, and original research that counteract common myths about the harmlessness of prostitution.
Prostitution, Trafficking, and Traumatic Stress extensively documents the violence that runs like a constant thread throughout all types of prostitution, including escort, brothel, trafficking, strip club, and street prostitution. Prostitutes are always subjected to verbal sexual harassment and often have a lengthy history of trauma, including childhood sexual abuse and emotional neglect, economic discrimination, rape, and racism.
International in scope, the book contains cutting-edge contributions from clinical experts in traumatic stress, from attorneys and advocates who work with trafficked women and children and prostituted women. A number of chapters address the complexity of treating the psychological symptoms resulting from prostitution. Others address the survivor’s need for social supports, substance abuse treatment, peer support and culturally relevant services.”
Nick says: There’s a large grey area between enjoying something and being tortured that you seem to want to ignore.
But I didn’t ignore it, in fact in response to that I asked you: At what point does the daily sexual degradation of prostitutes stop being torture and begin to be…torture lite? Painful and humiliating but not ‘torture’? Uncomfortable and raw but not unbearable? Degrading to women but not offensive?
“When you equate torture with something that, however unpleasant, is consensual”
Prostitution is ‘unpleasant but consensual’ is hands down the understatement of the year.
When the average prostitute begins her average career at the average age of 13-14 in the USA, don’t try to tell me AVERAGE acts of prostitution are consensual. How does the average 13-14 year old newbie prostitute consent? Almost all people who sell their bodies for the sexual use of others do not make the decision in order to ‘pay their bills’, another gross understatement meant to imply normal domestic lifestyles financially aided with an otherwise unusual, but only “unpleasant” vocation. Sex work becomes a way of life for those in it, and often they use the term “leaving the life” to talk about getting out. If you seriously understood the ungodly amount of severe childhood sexual abuse, drug addiction, poverty and homelessness most prostituted people experience you would choose an adjective more fitting than “unpleasant” to describe what happens to women’s bodies and mental health through prostitution, and you would understand that a sincere definition of the word consent fails to address people caught in “the life”.
Prostitution is a system of torture that starts with the sexual violation of children (estimated to be present in the childhoods of 80-90% of prostitutes) and ends when their bodies are too diseased and broken to be of profit to the pimps anymore.
http://www.prostitutionresearch.com
So on the evidence of researchers who started from the perspective that prostitution is a form of torture, you refuse to see a difference between the prostitute who can at least physically walk away and the captive who can’t.
That’s all I need to know. Thanks for the discussion.
“So on the evidence of researchers who started from the perspective that prostitution is a form of torture”
How can you assume what motivations drove the researchers? Where is that information located, the social scientist biographies you’re making that conclusion from?
Do you believe the Swedish parliment and the majority of Swedes who support the 1999 law have been duped by hundreds of fundamentally flawed scientists when they concluded, based on research drawn from three decades of a failed legalization attempt, that prostitution is inherently destructive to humans and should be eradicated as a sexist traditional practice?
As you could read in the book I posted, just one of the thousands of researchers you’d like to wave away with the specious reasoning “they’re all wrong because I think they’re all personally too biased”, Dr. Melissa Farley, did not herself consider the scope of the extreme trauma prostitution creates until attending a symposium of fellow social workers. She inquired about prostitution to a co-worker after treating several herself and beginning to notice a pattern, and the co-worker suggested she ask the attendees who specialized in treating patients with emotional trauma how many of them have treated or were currently treated prostitutes. When about 75% of them raised their hands, something clicked inside Dr. Farley and she began to investigate more. What she found was 90% of the literature available focused on HIV and HIV risk factors, meaning prior researchers focused on the perspective of johns and their concerns about ‘clean meat’ and fear of getting HIV from prostitutes. There was a distinct lack of literature focused on the needs of prostituted people themselves made glaring by the strikingly high number seeking professional psychological help for depression, addictions, and post-traumatic stress.
Legalization attempts around the globe still focus amost wholly on the needs of johns (the customer is always right) while expressly ignoring the needs of prostitutes. Just one medical example; requiring that prostituted women get weekly health checks but not demanding complete health checks from all johns before they purchase a woman’s body to masterbate into exhibits a overt lack of concern for prostituted women’s health.
http://www.prostitutionresearch.com for those of you who don’t think Nick’s dismissive rationale is good enough to void all the internationally collected evidence presented there.
Also Nick, do you believe the two (formerly three) nonprofit organizations in Portland invented their own client base, that they came into existence by going into strip clubs and brothels and convincing people they were being sexually abused and suffering just so they could open two safe houses for people traumatized by the constant violation of bodily integrity survivors of sex industry endure?
If being able to ‘physically walk away’ is where you draw the line on whether or not a person is being tortured, is it your belief that battered women are not really tortured because they could potentially ‘physically walk away’? Why don’t they just leave if they “physically” can?
I think torture is based on what one person inflicts on another person and the damaging done, not on the degree to which you hold them responsible for their own abuse because they don’t/can’t physically leave.
“So on the evidence of researchers who started from the perspective that prostitution is a form of torture”
How can you assume what motivations drove the researchers? Where is that information located, the social scientist biographies you’re making that conclusion from?
Right here, in the first paragraph. “From the authors’ perspective, prostitution is an act of violence against women; it is an act which is intrinsically traumatizing to the person being prostituted.”
Also, I never suggested that the life of a prostitute is a bed of roses. In fact, I rather suspect women whose only option is prostitution have suffered a great deal prior to reaching that point, which makes evaluating the effect of prostitution on women difficult. I’m sure there are women who are tortured in the ways you’ve described, although I have too much faith in law enforcement to believe that’s the norm.
I have one question for you: do you believe there is a difference between a situation where you can escape and call the police on your torturer and a situation where the police are your torturer?
Right here, in the first paragraph. “From the authors’ perspective, prostitution is an act of violence against women; it is an act which is intrinsically traumatizing to the person being prostituted.”
Faulty logic. That statement describes how the researcher feels now, but gives no indication that she necessarily felt that way going into the research. She may have, she may not have. Her opinion may have become stronger, changed completely, or stayed exactly the same after the results of the research were analyzed.
All researchers are biased — anyone who claims otherwise is a liar. Research isn’t about pretending not to be biased, but recognizing biases and including that perspective in the results. But, based on that statement, and the entire webpage there, for that matter, you cannot tell what this particular researcher’s bias was going into the research, the extent of such bias, or how it influenced the research (if at all).
That statement describes how the researcher feels now, but gives no indication that she necessarily felt that way going into the research.
OK, how about this then: “We began this work from the perspective that prostitution itself is violence against women.” When you start out from a particular perspective, you will tend to discover things that agree with it, which is why social science is so tricky.
Nick, I already showed you how Dr. Farley began her work researching prostitution, and it clearly wasn’t because she was hellbent on proving that prostitution is torture. That she obviously came to adopt this conclusion and continues to do research in this area takes nothing away from her credibility as a social scientist.
“I have one question for you: do you believe there is a difference between a situation where you can escape and call the police on your torturer and a situation where the police are your torturer?”
Despite your refusal to address any of the questions I’ve raised in my last post, I will answer this with an article from The Guardian from May 7th, 2004. You would not ask such a question if you knew how regularly complicit in prostitution police are, how it is not all-too-uncommon for cops to rape prostitutes and/or demand bribe money & sexual favors to not arrest them.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Kosovo/Story/0,2763,1211248,00.html
“Western troops, policemen, and civilians are largely to blame for the rapid growth of the sex slavery industry in Kosovo over the past five years, a mushrooming trade in which hundreds of women, many of them under-age girls, are tortured, raped, abused and then criminalised, Amnesty International said yesterday.
In a report on the rapid growth of sex-trafficking and forced prostitution rackets since Nato troops and UN administrators took over the Balkan province in 1999, Amnesty said Nato soldiers, UN police, and western aid workers operated with near impunity in exploiting the victims of the sex traffickers.”
“Amnesty International has been unable to find any evidence of any criminal proceedings related to trafficking against any military personnel in their home countries,” the 80-page report said. ”
Nick said: “I’m sure there are women who are tortured in the ways you’ve described, although I have too much faith in law enforcement to believe that’s the norm.”
It’s the norm. Believe it.
What planet have you been living on that you need to be convinced prostitution is a massively exploitive, abusive form of exploitation?
I don’t want to gang up here, Samantha, but I would respectfully suggest that if you wish to educate someone about something that is important to you, insulting them for not having read the same material that you have is really probably not in your best interests.
Providing your links in response to Nick’s request would have been sufficient. As it is, it did not surprise me that he approached the material you recommended with deep skepticism and resistance, skepticism and resistance which the research itself may not have warranted. I know that you’re frustrated, and I understand that, but when it comes to this sort of thing, tone really does matter.
You are seeing the subjective differences surrounding what consent can mean in situations where the free will to make other choices is lacking (I believe if you can’t freely leave a situation you can’t truly be said to “consent” to be in it), where I am noting the numerous similarities.
Yes. And really, you may be surprised to learn this, but if you had just started out this discussion by saying something along the lines of:
“I find it frustrating and mystifying that so many people feel such a profound sense of outrage over the sexual degradation of our captives in Iraq, yet regularly ignore the plight of the many women held in effective sexual bondage right here in our own country.”
then I would have agreed with you, and this entire exchange would likely not have happened.
What I think has caused the disagreement here (at least with me–obviously I cannot speak for Nick) is not any fundamental disagreement over the idea that most prostitutes in this country are in a state of sexual bondage, or that this is a terrible problem. Rather, it’s the blurring of distinctions, and the conflation of an entire range of activities, not all of which fall under the same category of consent.
For example, the fact that you regularly place the word “consent” in quotation marks, that you seemed to consider the question of whether or not someone in a picture of sexual activity was enjoying what they were doing irrelevant, and that you use language like “wash clean” to refer to pornography (which leaves me uncertain as to what precisely you think makes it “dirty” in the first place), leaves me feeling very unclear as to precisely what you think the problem is.
Is the problem that the women are abused captives? Or is it that the pictures they produce foster a hostile climate for all women?
Please note that to my mind, the answer “both” is a perfectly legitimate one (it would be my own). I would hope, though, that we can agree that these two problems, while related, are not precisely the same thing.
If, for example, a woman were held as a captive, tortured, abused, and then forced to produce a nice egalitarian movie, one that promulgated values you consider good, would that be better or worse, to your mind, than a woman voluntarily and with enjoyment producing a BDSM smut film?
Do you see my point? There are two separate problems here. One is the problem of the coercion and abuse of a person, and one is the production of fiction that tells wicked lies about men, women, gender, consent and sex.
They are related problems, yes, but I don’t think that they are the same problem. I should hope that you would understand the reasons why.
There are many forms of fiction other than pornography that tell what I consider to be wicked and culturally damaging lies (The Matrix is a good example of a recent and popular one of these; most romance fiction would also qualify).
By conflating these two problems, you have made this discussion very difficult for me to follow. Also, by consistently placing the word “consent” in quotation marks, and by glossing over the (to my mind) most important qualifier–that phrase “enjoyed it”–in your original hypothetical example, you have made me wonder whether you even see a distinction between the two.
I find this particularly frustrating because the issue of consent is so very central to what (to my mind) makes some pornography so very damaging in the first place!
I am also frustrated in this discussion by your conflation of everything even remotely having to do with sex work. Prostitutes, erotic “massage therapists,” actors who appear in sex scenes on film, sex slaves, Playboy bunnies, prisoners of war being sexually humiliated as a part of an interrogation regimen, strippers in topless bars…they’re all just lumped together in your posts.
I find this immensely frustrating because neither the personal situations nor the legal status of all those persons are really equivalent. This makes me feel as if you are constantly pulling a “bait and switch.” One minute we’re talking about hypothetical people who took some snaps of a sexual activity that they were enjoying, and then the next minute, you’ve replaced those hypothetical people with people who are being abused and tortured.
I mean, WTF? Isn’t that exactly the same lie that far too much pornography tells? The lie that consent is not a relevant issue for women when it comes to sex?
Your argument rests on a matter of subjective degree, but my point of view that the humiliation and subhumanization of Iraqi men is similar in many ways to the humiliation and subhumanization of women is not as subjective.
Well, whether it’s subjective or not is to my mind highly debatable, but regardless, it’s a point of view that even if it is subjective, I happen to agree with, so that’s okay. :-)
However, I do not think that pretending that differences of degree of consent do not matter to the moral equation here is the way to go about pointing out the similarities.
Which came first, the association of exposed sexuality with diminished dignity and increased vulnerability or the hyperassociation of human sexuality with women?… I consider these worthwhile topics of consideration and don’t know why anyone would take offense at the very asking of such questions for debate.
I consider them interesting questions as well, and I now dearly wish that you had started out with them, rather than muddying the waters by conflating voluntary and consensual activities with involuntary and non-consensual ones, a muddying made even more murky by the air-quotes around the word “consent” and by that awful analogy, which was so hideously marred by the inclusion of the clause about “enjoying it.” Because that is what I took offense at, not at the question you posit above.
As to that question, though…I don’t know which I think came first. Nor am I sure if it really matters: at this point in time, they’re both very deeply-rooted cultural constructs, and they reinforce each other in a feedback loop: exposed sexuality makes one vulnerable, vulnerability is “feminizing,” women are de facto vulnerable because they are de facto sexualized, exposed sexuality is de facto “about women,” etc., etc., ad nauseum, ad infinitum.
What is the radical solution to this radical problem? I would say that it would be to try to eradicate that cultural linkage between the ideas of sexuality, shame, and women.
I don’t think that tossing even consensual expressions of sexuality into the “shame and women” pot works at *all* towards that goal. I think that it is highly counter-productive to it.
And in the meantime, people who are being held captive need immediate intercession, not long-term cultural sea-change. Pretending that their consent (or lack thereof) is a non-issue does absolutely nothing to help *them,* either.
I am also frustrated in this discussion by your conflation of everything even remotely having to do with sex work.
As am I. The logical slip in particular that I’ve been having trouble following is that you began your commentary here talking about why pornography is bad, and equated pornography with the torture of Iraqi captives. When people objected with the concept of consent, your response was, more or less, “prostitutes aren’t consenting, they’re held in sexual bondage” (A rough paraphrase, and not important to the point I’m making. Please forgive me if i’m misstating.).
Okay, well, even if the point is granted as far as prostitution goes, I’m not at all sure that the same can be said to be true of most pornography . . . nor did the website you cited discuss pornography (not that I found, anyway), but that’s something you just jumped over.
Look, there’s nothing wrong with being anti-porn and anti-prostitution, but I think it’s silly to argue about them as if they’re the same thing.
In order for your initial argument to make any sense, I think there needs to be some sort of evidence offered that pornography is mostly non-consentual, and frankly, I have trouble believing that any such evidence exists.
—JRC
OK, how about this then: “We began this work from the perspective that prostitution itself is violence against women.” When you start out from a particular perspective, you will tend to discover things that agree with it, which is why social science is so tricky.
OK, you’re right. She did start the research from that perspective. Her writing that just shows that she is an ethical researcher. After all, there’s no such thing as a social science study that doesn’t start with a theory. It must start with a theory, or the research cannot be done. The fact that she openly states her opinion going into the research does not, in any way, however, negate the findings. A good researcher will start with a particular view point (and any one who says they don’t is a liar) and find evidence to back it up, or negate it. Having read this particular research, in particular, I have no doubt that her findings are incredibly accurate and fair. She found things that she expected to find, as well as things she did not expect to find.
This quote, from the study folks have been discussing, struck me as relevant (and I suspect that everyone here would agree with it):
“In Amsterdam, a woman described prostitution as ‘volunteer slavery’, clearly articulating both the appearance of choice and the overwhelming coercion behind that choice.”
I don’t understand how you (Elkins and JRC) can believe there is a large, qualitative chasm between “getting fucked in exchange for money” (prostitution) and “getting fucked in exchange for money on film” (porn) as it affects the humans involved. It’s a common belief which takes it for granted huge numbers of young, pretty women *really do* enjoy being treated like everyman’s sex toy and don’t mind being sexually humilated in similar ways Iraqi men were sexually humiliated at gunpoint in prison.
I do not make a distinction between prostitutes, porn actresses, adult massages (ain’t that just another term for prostitution?), strippers, and other sex workers because from the research I’ve seen the borders between these forms of explitation are almost nonexistent. More tellingly, the gender, economic class and race demographics which make up sex work populations across the board show almost no distinction among the various forms of prostitution (stripping has a slightly higher number of middle class whites in it is the biggest difference I’ve seen). Porn actresses and prostitutes suffer similar rates of depression and post-traumatic stress syndrome while being comprised mainly of poorer, sexually abused, drug addicted and homeless people.
There was a European study done in 2003 that only included people who had willingly made porn films, and it found there was 6 times the suicide among porn actors as in other acting jobs.
“rather than muddying the waters by conflating voluntary and consensual activities with involuntary and non-consensual ones, a muddying made even more murky by the air-quotes around the word “consent””
As Amp’s plucked quote shows, the muddying of what consent means to prostitutes is a large chunk of the heart of this matter. I think men’s sense of entitlement to women’s bodies for ego and pleasure masterbation is the largest chunk, but on the supply side it is what ‘consent’ can truly mean to former child rape victims without homes and struggling with addictions presented with no other options, for those are the populations from most sex workers come.
“What is the radical solution to this radical problem? I would say that it would be to try to eradicate that cultural linkage between the ideas of sexuality, shame, and women.”
That would be nice and is a good goal in itself, but I have great doubts that being naked will ever not be associated in the human psyche with feeling vulnerable and exposed. All of us take shits, and I think it fair to say none of us have unhealthy, shameful or sexual immorality issues associated with that activity, yet none of us want films of us taking loud, drippy shits on streaming internet video. Heck, I often pee in front of my beloved partner but I’m not fully comfortable sharing those private loose-shit moments with him.
I think I’ve said pretty much all I want to here, especially now so much of this conversation has become focused on pointing out my failings. Also, though I haven’t yet read the contents, I have seen there’s a discussion about sexual slavery in the USA started so I feel my time here is finished. Thanks to all who participated.
I don’t understand how you (Elkins and JRC) can believe there is a large, qualitative chasm between “getting fucked in exchange for money” (prostitution) and “getting fucked in exchange for money on film” (porn)
I can’t speak for Elkins, but the reason I believe that is because pornography covers much more ground than that. Porn covers everything from “tasteful nude photos of one person, sitting alone” to “private photographs or movies a married couple might make” to “totally amateur films made and distributed by the actors themselves” to “BDSM/Fetish porn, which might very well involve nothing most people would recognize as sex at all.” Many of those don’t involve “getting fucked in exchange for money” at all. Others involve “fucking” a long term partner.
I don’t understand how you (Samantha) can believe there is not a large, qualitative chasm between “nude photos a husband and wife take of one another” and “multiple Iraqis being held prisoner, tortured, burned with chemicals, beaten and forced to simulate intercourse with one another at gunpoint.”
I do not make a distinction between prostitutes, porn actresses, adult massages (ain’t that just another term for prostitution?), strippers, and other sex workers because from the research I’ve seen the borders between these forms of explitation are almost nonexistent.
Then offer some evidence of that. Show us that research.
Thus far the only evidence you’ve offered at all is a website which, as Nick argues convincingly, is hardly objective . . . and even that website doesn’t address pornography. It’s not “pointing out your failings” to ask you to back up your words with fact. It’s entirely possible that actors and actresses in pornography ought to be considered quasi- or pseudo- consentual in the same way that prostitutes are, but as I said in my initial post, I’d like to see some evidence of that, rather than just taking it as granted.
See, the thing is, I know people who’ve made pornography . . . not ‘industry people,’ but women who’ve made and distributed their own films and pictures. Sometimes, they did this for money, sometimes they did it for the thrill, but in all cases across the board, it was consentual, and in all cases across the board, they enjoyed it. Now, I’m not naive enough to think that that’s the case in 100% of pornography, but your arguments don’t seem to make any distinction at all.
There’s a world of difference between Playboy, Hustler, The Suicide Girls, amateur porn, ‘nice’ porn, ‘sleazy’ porn, hardcore porn, softcore porn, art porn, fetish porn, etc . . . What you seem to be talking about mostly is hardcore humiliation porn, which is fine, but then you need to specify. As it is, you’re arguing that “the amateur webcam girl who sets up her own camera with her DSL connection from home, sells subscriptions, prances about naked for her subscribers, and pockets 100% of the profit is being tortured, nonconsentually.” The more logical-minded among us might wonder who she’s being tortured by. Herself? Her subscribers, whom she never sees or interacts with?
Last, it really bothers me that, when asked to back up your words and arguments, you announce that “you’ve said all you want to say here” and that you’re leaving. I feel that truth ought to be able to stand up to questioning and confrontation, and I hope you don’t leave just yet, but stay and discuss with us.
Besides, I just got here.
—JRC
Bean,
You really don’t see ANY difference between a fetish video and a book (or showing) of black and white photos of nudes? Or between “Debbie Does Dallas” and a video a couple makes of themselves for their own use only?
I’m trying to get a better understanding of where you’re coming from. How do you define porn? Is it an image of a nude person? Or does it have to involve a sexual act? Or is it anything that one or more people masturbate to? Does it need to be distributed to an audience? Is a picture of a man and a woman kissing porn? How about 2 men or 2 women kissing? Is Michaelangelo’s David (gosh I hope I got the artist right) porn? Why or why not?
Maybe you don’t consider certain things to be porn that I infer from your statement that you do. I just have a hard time understanding (based on JRC’s posted descriptions) how you see no differences.
No, there really isn’t any difference at all.
What?
Okay. So, I can almost see what you are saying. What I think you are saying is that women can be doing any of these things for reasons that are degrading and sexually humiliating. I agree with that, except for two points.
1) I know some women who have made porn. Heck, I have been in a few racy pictures myself. Most of the women I know have enjoyed the making of it. Even if they were sexually humiliated, some women even enjoy that, because that is one way their sexuality is wired. However, even if the making of the things is not enjoyable or strictly consensual, it is better described as being the result of:
2) A system of economic disparity, in which they must do something distasteful and against their preferral to maintain themselves and their family. This, however, is a problem with everything from panhandling to prostitution, from selling cars to cleaning people’s toilets for pay. There are problems in the economic system that hold people in bondage to doing something they REALLY don’t want to be doing.
For example, my job is something I REALLY don’t want to be doing. I guess I am held here against my will, by the economic system that says “if you go home now, you will not have a place to live or a doctor to see you if you are sick. Food will go away, and so will many things you enjoy”. Fortunately, I have skills that will allow me to do something that is less distasteful for me than selling my body, although I have been poor enough to be tempted by the fact that someone offered me money for “love”.
However, just the fact that you are so squicked by the thought of pornography that you think of completely consensual and enjoyed amateur porn to be the same as a person trapped in the cycle of prostitution for whatever reason, doesn’t mean that it is necessarily so.