This is a little eerie: Tatsuya Ishida is lampooning a certain attitude — the same attitude that’s been creating Deep Rifts all over the place.
So it’s cutting edge Third Wave misogyny — that makes it all better.
Portrait of a young hoggler
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Unless I’m badly misreading this comic, this isn’t talking about anything that’s caused deep rifts around here, except maybe with Taslima. It’s saying third wavers aren’t real feminists. This is the attitude that made Cristina distance herself from feminism for several years.
Or, it’s mocking the People’s Judaian Front aspect of excessive over labeling.
Not every passing thought needs it’s own Wave.
@Ace of Sevens: Yeah, that’s pretty much how I read it too.
It’s the “The only way to escape the patriarchy’s control over your body is to let US tell you what to do with it.” argument.
@Illuminata: No, it’s a bash at third wavers.
http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=4343 is the first cartoon about it, apparently. Note the specific objections to “sex-positive” and “slut walking”.
I have a feeling that’s exactly what the Person in the Booth thinks about the Third Waver, as well.
Except that its patriarchy the third waver would be obeying.
Which would exactly fit what’s been happening in the Deep Rifts – hipster misogyny being held up as something to reach for, lest one be accused of not understanding comedy/the internet/socially awkward men – or whatever the latest excuse is.
It’s about people who think they’re third wave feminists but really aren’t, because everything they espouse holds up the traditional system of oppression.
See, for example, jenny in the other thread saying how being asked to show your tits is awesome.
@6: Jenny never said she was a feminist. As far as I can tell, this idea of pro-exploitation third wavers is a straw man used to discredit women who aren’t on board with slut-shaming.
Taslima would never call herself a misogynist.
It’s a weird phenomenon that you might not notice if you aren’t constantly bombarded with hate mail from outraged dudes. They hate feminism, but they’ll always deny hating women (well, except for some of the extremists that you can find documented on manboobz), and what they’ll sometimes do is slide the definitions around and say they hate “radfems”, by which they actually mean every woman who doesn’t think servicing dudes is a sufficiently honorable role for their entire life. They hate feminism but they’re a bit embarrassed by their hate.
I don’t see what that has to do with the comic. You said yourself these angry guys aren’t claimign to be feminists. I was saying Taslima was the one running the booth if you want to analogize to anything around here.
It sounds like the “third-wave feminism” idea that the artist is attempting to caricature and mock is:
Women should have the same sexual freedoms as men; neither being labeled “sluts” or “tramps” for opting in (this would be the “stud” or “player” label men receive), nor labeled “prudes” or “teases” for opting out (this would be the “nice guys who don’t think with their dick” labeling men receive).
When the artist is done trying to be funny and smart, I’d like him come down to earth for a second and explain exactly why he feels this sentiment is “[insert-feminism-disparaging-wave-phrase] mysogony”.
@kevinkirkpatrick: Well, the obvious answer is because the artist thinks it’s perfectly ok to exercise slut shaming to make women behave how he wants them to, because telling him he’s not allowed to is misogyny.
Which sounds oddly familiar, now that I come to think about it.
I hope the artist is mocking those men who have embraced a perverted, misogynist version of feminist sex-positivity. I’m not sure if sex-positive feminists are collateral damage or also a target.
I look at this comic and the one linked in comment #3 and what I get out of it is that it’s lampshading the doodz who are “feminists” because that’s where the porny, fun-loving, sex-positive chicks are. (Kind of like some doodz who become atheist because atheist women are easier.)
Said doodz then use the “third-wave feminism” cover while not actually being feminists at all.
Or, what Carlie said in #5.
Addendum to my #12:
those people, they are not all necessarily men
Who are these doodz? I’ve never seen them outside MRA speculation about mangina motivations.
Sinfest has had a whole series of comics on feminism and the patriarchy, with each of the characters confronting the issue and reacting in different ways. (Slick, for example, is trying really hard to be feminist, but is having some issues).
The pig (whose name I can never remember) is an “inadvertant misogynist” — he is misogynist because the patriarchy is misogynist, but he doesn’t oppose feminism per se. In fact, as I recall, he was horrified when someone told him that he was misogynist.
Here he is trying to have his cake and eat it too: call himself a feminist while still engaging in the misogynistic behaviors he always enjoyed.
This is, of course, a common accusation against Third Wave Feminism. Whether this comic is supporting that viewpoint, or lampooning it (by having a male chauvinist pig say it), depends on the reader.
Ace of Sevens, jthompson, kevinkirkpatrick, don’t read (or don’t get) much Sinfest.
Note there are no specific objections. There is only what Squigley (the pig) sees.
lol
Taking a look at a couple of his other recent comics may help people understand his perspective in this one: “I’m Sorry 2” and “Contract” . Tatsuya is basically trying to show how he has recently become enlightened on gender issues.
Ace of Sevens is right. There have been a number of other recent comics mocking pro-sex feminism. The most obvious one are “Mental Gymnastics” and “Fun Masculism”
I believe he’s lampooning the attitude that Squigley is demonstrating in the comic–the men and women who embrace third-wave feminism with their words, but in fact are just twisting it into a justification for not changing anything …
I’ll also point out that Sinfest has also Slick be exactly the sort of “Dood” that Gen mentions. Look at “Search Feminism” followed by “Chance to Look Good”
quinnmartindale,
Let it never be said that you did nuance.
Compare this:
“sex-positive? pro-fun? kinky porny slut-walking feminists?”
(from http://www.sinfest.net/archive_page.php?comicID=4343)
to:
“slut-positive prude-negatory pro-degradation feminist”
I noted the discrepancy between self-claimed characteristics of “third-wave feminism” (e.g. sex-positive, pro-fun, kinky; also see the comments from some FtB posters in response to Taslima Nasreen’s anti-porn post) and the way those phrases get twisted by a misogynistic mindset to support misogyny in the guise of feminism (e.g. “pro-degradation”).
YMMV, of course. And it is somewhat tricky to reconcile that interpretation with the artist’s apparently adamant anti-pornography-in-any-form stance in light of the, well, ‘not-necessarily-anti-pornography’ stance taken by ‘third wave’ feminists.
quinnmartindale,
The pig (Mr. Squigly! Love that name) is NOT a third wave feminist. He is, quite literally, a male chauvinist pig.
What the cartoon is parodying is men who try to use third wave feminism as a cover for their misogyny.
Does the fact that misogynists can twist third wave feminism to their own ends count as a criticism of third wave feminism? Depends on your point of view, I suppose. To me, that smells of victim blaming. (Oh no, misogynists can use sex-positive feminism to paint all feminists in a bad light! Therefore sex-positive feminism is a failure! Uh, no.)
Has the strip said anything else about third-wave feminism or just insinuated that it’s perfect for chauvinist pigs?
ixchel,
Thanks for the clarification. I’m not a regular reader of Sinfest, so character nuances are lost on me.
Do you recognize some of these terms?
It seemed fairly straightforward to me. As a geek, I see a lot of arguments similar to this one in geek culture.
“It’s not objectifying, it’s empowering! Why are you telling women how to live their lives?!” (In reference to the way that female superheroes are typically drawn in comics. Um, it’s art criticism. These characters are fictional. Usually the “empowerment” thing is brought up to hide the fact that they just hate criticism of the things they really, really like.)
It’s the kind of men who take sex-positivity and turn it around to make it a justification for why they believe women should sleep with them. They willfully misunderstand what is really at the heart of sex-positivity, the choice of each individual woman, and claim that any woman who is opposed to this misunderstanding is a “prude”. I’m pretty sure that’s what the cartoonist means by “slut-positive, prude-negatory” and the “pro-degradation” is his way of sneaking in his old misogyny and disguising it as empowerment.
Essentially, he doesn’t have to change anything about his past behavior or beliefs – he just has to frame them in a different way to make it all better.
I don’t read sinfest mainly from a personal ignorance of its existence. I mean the characters and drawing style looks familiar and I recall PZ posting a few comics before but I just didn’t look into it. Been going through a few of them because of this post and
Is it just me or does the pig remind anyone else of a more confused dumber Cerebus.
This seems spot-on to me in depicting the self-described feminist guys who are quite vocal in their belief that a woman has a right to have sex without being called a slut and should be allowed to dress as suggestively as she wants, but is really upset about being “friendzoned” by any woman who is such a prude that she doesn’t want to have sex with him.
Academically third-wave feminism doesn’t mean the right to say yes to sex, but no right to say no. But the world is full of guys who understand it exactly that way (and even more who say, “I’m not a feminist, but I love women.”)
Um, was that a typo?
What’s wrong with sex-positive feminism? And what’s wrong with not being anti-porn? After all, porn appears to reduces incidence of rape. (I wonder if MRAs think that men who enjoy femdom are female supremacists… wouldn’t put it past them)
well then you don’t understand the argument, and should try harder. I can reccommend several books or blog posts, if you care.
I don’t care if people want to be sex workers, I just don’t want them to tell me that its empowering to women for them to be sex workers, because it just fucking isn’t. Housewifery isn’t empowering to women either, for the same fucking reasons. Saying so doesn’t mean I want to ban housewifery or tell women that they can’t do that, it just isn’t feminist activism. Don’t piss on my leg and tell me its feminism, you know?
Advertising sex work as something other than patriarchy compliance also ignores the VAST MAJORITY of women inside it who WANT OUT RIGHT NOW but can’t get out. Pro-porn, pro-sex work feminism means ignoring the reality of most women in favor of trying to elevate women who are extremely privileged by comparison anyway (usually white women who have other viable economic options outside of sex work). The reality of sex work is usually one of economic desperation combined with an exploitation of vulnerable women and girls by violent men. When else would it be acceptable to people to ignore 90% who are hurting and exploited over 10% who actually get to choose? That was the most distasteful thing about greta christinas responses- she ignored people who rarely have a voice in favor of what she wanted to hear, the same messages that an industry of pimps like the repeat under the guise of being “sex workers” themselves. its as foolish as trusting any other industry to be up front about how harmful their products are (to workers or consumers). It just isn’t going to fucking happen. It blows my mind that people who know how predatory capitalism can be seem to lose all power to reason or examine the sex industry as they would any other powerful industry.
All of this is totally outside the philosophical problems involved with this (consent-for-money, human sexuality as a commodity, reinforcing abusive ideas about sex, etc).
Doug Hudson,
I see your point. I do think it’s clear that Sinfest has staked out a very clear anti-porn stance. “Empathy” literally has porn killing Slick’s empathy, and “Dudebro Factory” depicts porn as a tool used to train men to dominate women.
Although you’re absolutely right that Sinfest has not directly mocked sex-positive women, Monique’s transition away from sex object is exemplified by her rejection of sexy clothing and behavior.
Rev.
+++++
Ace: “Academically third-wave feminism doesn’t mean {the right to say yes to sex, but no right to say no}.”
Academic third wave feminism says women have no right to say no to sex? This is still making no sense to me.
ambiguous grammar, actually (and bad punctuation)
read as:
“Academically, third-wave feminism doesn’t mean the right to say yes to sex yet no right to say no, but the world is full of guys who understand it exactly that way”
Thanks, Jadehawk.
ixchel #34
So not just me then.
I wonder if it is on purpose considering Sim’s obvious, um, issues.
I know there was a ton of debate on this following that article in the Atlantic last month. Would you mind pointing me to some books or blog posts on the subject? I would like to read some more because I’ve tended to dismiss such criticisms out of hand.
Hey Scooby look a clue! Maybe the fact that the sign on the booth makes the blanket statement “porn harms” with no additiomal qualifications tells you exactly how “sex-positive” the author is!
All porn everywhere under any context harms women.
Porn has sex in it.
Sex is bad.
Sex harms women.
Men who watch porn are really rapists in disguise.
Privilege!
@Skeptic Dude
It’s sad that so many men of straw gave their lives so that you could comment.
Logic kindly requests you stop torturing it.
oh, don’t worry. those particular strawmen were made from the litter in the dungeon cells. not the high-quality straw.
pinkboi, studies on the effects of porn on rape are mixed. Presenting only results you like means your bias is showing. You should go look into things like how pornography affects attitudes towards rape and rape myths (hint: most studies found it increased the acceptance of rape myths). I don’t take a strong stance either way because the evidence doesn’t lead me strongly towards one conclusion or another.
Calling it “pro sex” to be for pornography is the biggest load of shit I’ve ever heard. I’m not anti-sex because of my analysis of an industrial sex-replacement/enhancement product. Am I anti-food if I point out how fucked up the meat industry is?
There are many problems with porn. here are some off the top of my head:
1. it uses sexist language routinely(women are called sluts, whores, cunt, fuckholes). Its not okay to call women by sexist slurs.
2. It is racist (racism means people of color get paid less on average and are expected to portray sexualized racial stereotypes in their work, racial slurs are routinely used in the pornography)
3. women in pornography are not adequately protected from diseases, they are given HIV tests as damage control instead of using readily available prevention via condoms (this is IF they work for a company that complies with laws about testing). practices such as ass-to-mouth and facials (which can get ejaculate into eyes, mouths, and nasal passages) also cause health problems for performers, who are not compensated by the industry for the injury caused to them. This is in stark contrast to every other sort of risky work.
4. pornography presents extremely problematic male-centric sexuality (men walk up to women and choose how to fuck her, she always complies, or does after a little force is used, and women always enjoy what men do to her, slapping and choking are routine, and so is anal sex/facial ejaculation. it is a sexuality where women pretend to like what men do to them instead of communicating what they actually want to a respectful partner). It isn’t the fault of pornography that sexual education is lacking, but in its absense kids learn about sexuality through pornography, and that is the model of sex that they get to see.
5. women who are abused in pornography have virtually no recourse. They were made to smile and pretend to like it, for one thing. I’ve been reading accounts of working in the pornography industry for years now, and I haven’t found many women who have NOT been coerced via a bait and switch maneuver (this includes big name performers like belladonna and jenna jameson). Lara Roxx’s experience, which resulted in her contracting HIV, is fairly typical (outside of her getting HIV I mean). It also meets many definitions of trafficking. She was told she was going to do a scene with one guy only with vaginal/oral sex for a certain price but when she got there they told her she was really doing a scene with multiple guys and with anal sex. She couldn’t afford her ticket home without doing the scene, so she did, and she got HIV. Other performers have talked about signing consents they didn’t understand only to be threatened with legal action when they didn’t want to do scenes with more performers/with anal/with other more difficult sexual acts than previously discussed.
6. there is not any screening to weed out economically vulnerable, drug addicted, or otherwise mentally unfit women from being abused in pornography. This is bullshit when women are not fairly compensated for work outside of the sex industry and are more at risk for mental illness in general.
7. pornography routinely fetishizes women below the age of consent by paying performers to pretend that they are little girls (usually by using outfits meant to resemble children’s clothes, pubic shaving, using niave or babyish dialogue, and by using performers who look/sound young). This is the “teen” market for pornography, and it is extremely popular with men of varying ages. Sexualizing young girls has a negative effect on them according to the american psychological association’s task force on sexualization of young girls. Men don’t stop sexualizing youth when they are done with their wank session.
8. finally, and least seriously, pornography should come with a warning for the sexual dysfunction that it causes in some users. There are several organizations (and yes, many are secular) for men and women who are having difficulty with their compulsive pornography use. Pornography is a product that generally claims to enhance sexuality but it seems to cause sexual problems in some people. They deserve fair warning that erectile dysfunction and other sexual disorders are possible as a side effect of pornography use. The relationship problems that routinely emerge as a result of one partners pornography use are also cause for concern in casual users who may not be aware of potential problems. Most women my age have been pressured by their boyfriends or husbands into some kind of pornography inspired act at some point in their lives, something they really didn’t want to do. I hate pornography for doing that to people, to their sexual relationships.
Someone is gonna come in and say BUT WHAT ABOUT FEMINIST PORN, as if 99% of people who use porn give two fucks about that. Rape porn outnumbers feminist porn by at least 100 to 1. As if making porn and calling it feminist makes men stop and really think about what its like to be the woman getting fucked by dogs for money, or what it is like to do ass to mouth, or what it is like to have a huge circle of men ejaculate on you which you then have to drink and smile about. it just makes porn using dudes feel less guilty about the sexism (if they felt any guilt at all to begin with).
@Skeptifem
How much porn have you actually ever seen? It’s quite a broad category you’re generalizing.
99% of mainstream porn is a man and a woman consensually making out, and then having sex.
You know, like what people in the real world do. I think it’s the latter that you really hate.
Go Femimism!
Unless you’re someone like Nina Hartley or Greta Christina who loves sex and endorses porn.
Then you’re just a stupid bitch.
Thanks, Jadehawk. I wasn’t clear.
I just find that a lot of males who are “sex positive” are just positive that they want to have sex. They don’t want a double-standard that discourages women from having sex when they want to, but they DO want to shame women for saying no, as in “I can’t believe that bitch friend-zoned me. And I am not being misogynist when I say ‘bitch’ because I use that word to refer to men who are acting like little bitches all the time.”
“Rape porn outnumbers feminist porn by at least 100 to 1.”
LOL. Citation?
@mekathleen #46
That was really well-put, and exactly what I was trying to say in my earlier comment.
Feminist says society gets weird when we treat sexuality as a commodity.
Antifeminist says obviously you can only be pro-sex to the degree that you’re pro-commercial-porn, everybody knows this simple fact.
+++++
“99% of mainstream porn is a man and a woman consensually making out, and then having sex.”
“LOL. Citation?”
@Skeptifem – I wanted to spend more time replying to you but I have to leave for work so sorry for my half-assed reply. All I’ll say for now is A) I’m not equating sex-positivism with being for pornography (I’d also like to clarify what we mean by being pro or anti-pornography. I hope no one hear is actually going to join with Mormons in legislating it!) and B) How you characterize porn is a broad generalization. There’s not much in the way of feminist porn but there’s much femdom and dominatrix porn, for example. There’s also much in the way of voluntary sexual encounters. To broadly be against porn, rather than shaking your finger at certain currents within porn seems to be an odd position to take, especially for a skeptic.
here, not hear
Synthfeminist composes electronic soundtracks for feminist porn.
I’m not an avid porn consumer, so maybe I’ve missed out. All the snippets of porn that I’ve seen are nothing like any of the sex I’ve ever had. There’s a lot more posing and slapping and spitting and abuse of the woman, who is little more than a collection of orifices that jiggles and begs for more.
In the porn, that is. Not in my sexual experiences.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there is porn that is a more accurate reflection of how two people who love each other have sex, but I very much doubt that it represents 99% of the stuff you find on the web or video stores.
And yeah, I’ve heard of Nina Hartley, that she’s an open, sex-positive atheist, but I actually haven’t seen any of her movies.
How to speak libertarian:
“To broadly be against $INDUSTRY, rather than shaking your finger at certain currents within $INDUSTRY seems to be an odd position to take, especially for a $GROUPIDENTITY.”
Bullshit.
enh. mainstream porn doesn’t even reflect sex as it’s had by people who are just horny for each other.
Absolute bullshit. 99% of *mainstream media* doesn’t even portray enthusiastic consent on the woman’s part. No way is porn overwhelmingly enlightened.
Is, or depicts? Definitely not the latter.
Clumsy, sweaty and fast in the bathroom of a local club 15 mins before last call?
pfff. don’t you have any nature around? sex in the forest/by the lakeside ftw
Well, so much for Skeptic Dude being a ‘good person’ now, huh. So much bullshit wrapped around a barely contained “women exist to get me off!” core.
Lived with my folks for way too long. They rarely left the house.
Backseat of a car parked in the entrance to a farmer’s field FTW. Sitting, woman on top. Sore necks all around.
As someone who gets off on having the snot beaten out of them, I find the way women are portrayed and treated in most of the porn I’ve seen appalling.
Oh yeah…
that’s what I meant. Of course…
What kind of person has sex in a club bathroom?
Look a Squirrel!
/sneaks off quickly
I’m also in the “sex in nature” camp. Sex while camping. Naked swims. Lovely.
marinerachel – seconded. As I mentioned on another thread (no idea which), I’m a BDSMer and part of a ‘sex club’ that brings together like minded people.
You know what *doesn’t* happen at these gatherings? C’mon, take a guess!
Parcheesi?
“Parcheesi?”
LOL tragically, that’s true. No Monopoly or Scrabble either!
I’m so vanilla.
Brownian – No one – and I mean NO ONE – with a Sechs queue as long as yours can call himself vanilla.
BTw, why is my number going to be called? I’ve been standing here for AGES!
Bringing in the pizza guy for an impromptu orgy?
*clear throat*
*scratches nose*
No, that’s . . . .. never happened. . . .. *shifty eyes*
There was nothing impromptu about it. We asked, protection was available, fun was had…
The Brownian queue does not need to be “standing”.
But it does move a lot.
All that tells you is that my PR department understands the effective use of hype.
Soon…soon.
Meanwhile, feel free to enjoy some delicious refreshment at any one of our Queue™: Nourish™ restaurants, take care of your shopping needs at Queue™: Provide™, or enjoy a relaxing and rejuvenating stay at one of our fine Queue™: Revive™ hotels, all servicing the exclusive members of The Queue™.
Hah – one of those pod people, eh?
Wait, Brownian has been snatched?
The Brownian process doesn’t seem to be scaling very well. Perhaps we should turn it into a distributed cluster and assign the input sex queue using a round-robin pattern.
I probably shouldn’t be posting from work.
Unfortunately for all the decent BDSMers, there are a lot of total creeps whose kinks are merely façades for their misogyny, who go about nonconsentually degrading the hell out of women at events. Those folk definitely want life to reflect mainstream porn and do their damndest to make it so. To a large extent, it’s those ones who insist it’s super hot for everyone involved when women just play the role of” little more than a collection of orifices that jiggles and begs for more” instead of, y’know, contributing and participating. Gawd, I’m tired of them.
Feminist arguments against porn are not arguments against sex. Calling oneself sex-positive in opposition to these arguments is somewhat like calling oneself pro-life in opposition to pro-choice arguments.
The perception that the religious right and feminism would be allied against pornography is the result of this misapprehension. We all know that the religious right doesn’t oppose the abuse of women, nor does it seek to foster a society where autonomy is inextricably linked to sexuality. The sex itself (even devoid of abuse or oppression) is what the religious right opposes.
@Skeptifem –
You had me at the beginning of point #8, then lost me with this:
Certainly, people get ideas from porn. And porn ruins sex for some people. But partners where one person is into something kinky and the other isn’t happens with or without porn. It’s one of those differences that couples have to work through. The porn industry responds to demand. They wouldn’t produce so much school girl porn if guys didn’t already have a thing for that.
To vilify porn is to essentially say that men are innocent creatures if left to their own devices but like clockwork become monsters when exposed to certain forms of entertainment. You should flip things around and primarily look at why the porn market looks like it looks. If men were different, porn would be different. If our society was more disgusted by rape, there’d be less rape porn (I personally don’t like most porn. Whatever I do like is either soft porn or not even porn).
It’s not degrading to be an entertainer. It is to be told that your job that you chose and enjoy is setting back your sex. And it’s degrading to be told that you don’t have free will or creativity but are like a child, mimicking what you see on the screen.
[Checks Q2 financial reports and smiles.]
Here at The Queue™, we value our esteemed clients’ input. If you’d like to take part in a focus group and influence future Queue™ products and services, please send me an email with your contact information. All participants will recieve four complimentary tickets to Queue™: Delight™ family theme parks and entered into a draw for 1,000 Brownie Bucks (no cash value).
That’s a teleological version of the appeal to nature. Of course we do know that culture is malleable and amenable to change, and we also know that industries are bound by their own historical legacies. To assume that any ubiquitous product simply serves the demands of the markets it purports to is just silly.
In short, those two clauses aren’t as related as you’d like.
If people were different, air travel would be different.
If people were different, fast food would be different.
If people were different, slide rules would be different.
Swap in any number of products and industries, and the non-relationship becomes evident.
Much like the bottled water industry was merely responding to the innate human desire to purchase the water they could get out of the tap at 100 times the price when it’s in a plastic bottle. The concept that exposure and marketing can create demand is not exactly controversial.
In porn, probably the best example of this is pubic shaving. When my mother was my age, porn performers and Playboy models appeared entirely unshaven. In my age bracket (early 20s), women are considered unattractive or even unhygenic if they don’t completely shave, or at least trim down to a decorative tuft. Was this shift the result of innate demand, or a side effect of increasingly gynecological shots, where natural amounts of pubic hair got in the way of the camera?
I think a pretty straightforward analogy would be the market for “beauty products”.
If women didn’t want to spend an hour or two daily putting on a dozen different kinds of makeup, there wouldn’t be so many products and so much advertising to make them feel the need to do so.
No, no. Men evolved, sometime around 1987. I remember it happening. I got, like, another chromosome or something, and all of a sudden I was only attracted to pubic hair in rectangular swaths.
Don’t lie. I know you’ve seen at least one irregularly shaped patch with a tweety bird + lawnmower tattoo that you found attractive.
uh… flashback to an ex girlfriend horrible crotch area tattoo
must bleach brain
That was you?
#83: See, this is why I’m a computer programmer and not someone who’s rich.
Ooh, let’s play “what was Rev BDC’s ex-gf’s horrible crotch area tattoo?”
I’m guessing butterfly.
Backup guess: Malboro
Hey now. Let’s not personalize this. What happens in Canada stays in Canada.
pinkboi,
As a naive libertarian, you’re equally obliged to say that no matter how many women are stay-at-home housewives, it’s degrading for anyone to say that this is not ideally empowering — yes? And if not why not?
Does porn ruin sex for some people or does it not? You said it does; if it does, then by your own premises, how did it ruin sex for those people? Shouldn’t their free will and creativity have prevented that? If it didn’t, why not?
@pinkboi
So in order to attempt to solve the problems that the porn industry has, we have to change their market first? That seems like an awful lot of work for not much of a reward. Why not work on both the market (society) and the porn industry at the same time?
skeptifem laid out some real problems that are present in porn. Adding my own anecdote to this, I have a friend in L.A. who is a make-up artist. There is an overabundance of work in the adult film industry, but she’s decided that she can’t work there anymore. She couldn’t handle having to re-apply make-up to the female performers after they had cried it all off during the shoot. It’s likely that not all companies are like that, but my friend doesn’t care to find out.
That’s debatable. But what definitely CAN be degrading is what skeptifem said about expectations that heterosexual men sometimes have of their partners. Do you really believe that there is no relationship between what people might view in porn and how their perception of their partner might be shaped?
I think it’s degrading to tell people what their fantasies should be. It’s degrading to give them a false sense of a standard that their sex life has to measure up to.
Butterfly is close, but it was multifaceted.
Dragonfly and rose placed in a way…. [MENTAL BLOCK]
I swear she wasn’t a redneck… much.
I’m one of those women in their early-to-mid-twenties who has pubic hair and I gotta say I am filthy and ugly. Porn told me.
Win.
Oh, sure he can. It’s just the finest bourbon vanilla…
Great. Now this is going to bug me until I figure out who you’re talking about.
[Opens up Queue™ database, queries “Tattoo by Subject: Tweety Bird OR Lawnmower”.]
Well, while that’s chugging away, who’s up for Parcheesi?
Don’t deny the existence of peer pressure. A few people are largely immune to it, but really not many.
Finally, how many men really have a thing for schoolgirls (Japanese or otherwise)?
My paraphilia is for the concept of sailing schools. Unfortunately, rule 34 isn’t actually true, so I used to have to photoshop in little moustaches on the schoolgirls and masturbate to the books they carried, until I bought this book.
(Don’t tell ‘Tis that he makes me ‘tingle.)
I used to have problems with the idea of people having a problem with porn. Then I ventured from my little bubble of gay male porn and looked at the vast, lush meadows of straight porn.
Oh my good good ness. That’s some hot mess going on there. It appears to me as if there are at least some straight men who are really really pissed off about having to interact with women in order to get sex. Why, exactly, that is, I don’t know. But that seems like the heart of misogyny to me – not the explicit hatred of women qua women, but the hatred of having to DEPEND on women for something as crucial, as essential, as getting their dicks wet.
Holy shit, porn is 99% consensual sex with love?
I must have been looking at the wrong porn my whole life, then! Where is that 99% hidden?
Forget pressure, even. We’re social creatures, even those not neurotypical. You didn’t reason out how to breathe, nor how to talk. We copy what we see. You may not like thinking that you mimick what you see on the screen, and it’s not like you mimick everything you see…but there is a cumulative effect from exposure, which at a statistical level could potentially be used to link mere exposure to certain ideas with motivating one to causing harm (whether one considers those to be sufficient grounds to prevent allowing certain potentially harmful ideas public exposure is the only real question there; I’m still rather “libertarian” in that way, so don’t think I’m arguing to ban expression).
Also, no need to point out that breathing is a reflex. I hereby recognize that that wasn’t a great example. And I don’t mean to ignore or disappear those who have any sort of muteism. But they have other ways in which they copy those in their environment, of course.
I’ve seen a fair amount of R rated movies, and they don’t portray sex well, either. It’s either gratuitous female nudity (detectives always meet in strip clubs…for the atmosphere, I guess), or it’s coupled (heh) to the male=hero/female=dependent trope. And it’s also typically tied to male violence (see James Bond), with women as expendable bystanders.
Maybe I need to watch more chick flicks.
I hear Sex and the City was the ideal representation of female-friendly porn, right?
Not really. Rather, the degree of sexism that already pervades society is directly detrimental to many of the women who work in the porn industry. Further, that same sexism is propped up by mainstream pornography, to the detriment of women everywhere. If saying as much amounts to vilification in your book, I’m happy to contribute my opprobrium to the stack that has already been presented here.
But so what? If plantation owners had been different, slavery would have been different. The institution in and of itself is harmful, regardless of the pathology that creates it.
No. It is degrading to be degraded, even if for money.
No, it isn’t. Further, whether criticizing ms porn is degrading or not to those (probably few) who chose that line of work from among safer and more lucrative opportunities is not relevant to the question of whether porn is harmful as it currently exists.
I’m not sure what this means.
see, I think that all those statements are true.
Who has free will again? (Sneaks away.)
SO relieved to discover I’m not the only person who fetishises mariners.
Companies spend billions upon billions of dollars all the time to create demand, to give people the desire for something they never needed. It’s called advertising. Ever heard of it?
Why do you think porn doesn’t have a similar effect?
Re: straight mainstream porn only
Agreed. I think its degrading to let porn be the only sexual education American kids get because Jesus. I think its degrading reduce human sexuality to misogynistic violence, as if men can only get off if they physically harm women. Funny how we can only ever talk about how empowerful working in porn is for women, but never what porn is doing to its viewers, actors, etc.
Is it me, or does the majority of porn-defending arguments center around “I like it, so there can’t be anything wrong with it”?
Given my own proclivities and activities, people always look at me like I’m on the wrong side of this debate. But i recognize that this is not for everyone and it bloody well shouldn’t a mainstream ideal for others to get pressured into.
@Brownian-
I don’t see how that’s an appeal to nature. I’m not saying that the selection of porn today is how I’d always expect it to be forever more or how it was in the past. There’s feedback both ways – some people want a thing, so more of it is produced, so people at the margin end up demanding more than they otherwise would have. If you think I was suggesting otherwise, you misunderstood me.
I think Skeptifem is greatly underestimating the contribution of prior wants to the equation. When women are marriage material in their teens in most cultures (and in ours in the past), a simpler explanation for sexualization of minors is that porn responds to a preexisting preference for young, fertile females. Of course, I side with our culture’s taboo against the inequal adult-youth relationships but given that so many men still find 16 year old girls attractive, looking at pictures of 19 year olds in school girl uniforms is a mostly harmless way of sublimating those desires.
vaiyt – an excellent question. One I’ve been asking pro-porn people for years, but never received an answer. Porn is, magically, the one thing that DOESN’T affect human behavior the way every other bit of advertizing does . . .. because I like it, therefore there can’t be anything wrong with it.
For the men sure. For the OTHER PEOPLE involved in this equation, not so much.
THANK you. Given *my* proclivities, I’m the first one to say I’m pretty twisted, but vanilla porn depresses the hell out of me. It can literally remove all my desire to have sex for days, whereas a lot of activities many people would peg as “degrading” just whet my appetite and make me a happy girl.
Well, as I said, it’s more of a marine school thing. The ediface, the lessons, the tacking and jibing, the movie White Squall: it’s all so hot.
Mariners, on the other hand remind me of Seattle (Seattle Mariners) and China Lily (mariners → “La Bamba” lyrics ‘yo no soy marinero’ → soy sauce of which China Lily is an inexpensive Canadian brand) and while Seattle’s not so bad, I will not abide terrible soy sauce.
Well, and Coleridge, and dead birds as necklaces.
Bingo. I think, because this guy has “some” aspects of feminism down, a lot of people are missing that he is **entirely** in the, “I can’t exactly define how men should show attraction to women, but I know damn well that nearly every way they do is bad, and 100% of all women who wear skimpy clothing, strip, do porn, or anything else that might remotely benefit misogynists are ‘being exploited’. They should just stop doing all of it.”
I have seen jack all that suggests, in any way, that this person has anything at all like a nuanced view of the subject. So, yeah, its not about the stuff causing rifts, its about the very narrow perspective that **everything** that women do that involves sexual content, no matter who, how, or when, is purely corrupting. He has had chances, and when one of his earlier comics made me wonder, I even sent him a link to Greta’s discussion of what it means for women to have the right to not be told they can’t do things, just because someone else claims they its bad for them, and how its no less controlling and exploitative, and… its still all one theme – Evil bad guy is trying to mislead both the male and female characters into doing/liking things that are **always** bad for both of them.
It wouldn’t take much. Just acknowledgement that its possible the pig has some vague point, while still being a total idiot. But, what we get is, “Sex positive, termed as ‘third wave’ is somehow just a new name for misogyny.” Though, if taken out of context with the entirely anti-anything traditionally connected with misogyny the comics all are, universally, by itself, it “might” look like purely an argument about the pig “misunderstanding” what the third wave is. I just don’t, personally, see a thing that suggests, to me, from his work, that Tatsuya understands it either.
Speaking of Seattle, I’m from the Pacific Northwest in Canada. You don’t need to tell me about China Lily. I have consumed many a bad rice dish in my day. The saddest part is that sometimes the terribleness that is China Lily makes the bad rice dish a little less awful. How does that work?
I put that badly. What I mean to say isn’t just that the contempt and dehumanization displayed in mainstream porn affect me far more negatively than almost any consensual kink where both participants are acknowledged to be people.
It’s also that despite enjoying my own sexuality and knowing it’s healthy for me personally, it’s highly disturbing for me to how often I see mainstream pressure to force elements of it onto *every* heterosexual relationship. Because I know, like Illuminata says, that I’m out at the end of the bell curve on this stuff.
Again, it’s the naturalistic fallacy (with a bit of half-assed history to boot).
If it were really fertility that we were responding to, then why the changes in body shapes, hair, and etc. over time? Have you never seen a Playboy from the sixties and seventies? If it’s true that porn is simply responding to some natural desire for ‘fertile young women’, then ‘fertile young women’ is an incredibly non-specific and variable human ideal.
And again, let’s apply that reasoning to other things. Television, for example. Is television simply responding to the basal human desire to watch doctors in sweaters chide wisecracking children in a room with the fourth wall removed (OMG, it harkens to our history of cave dwelling!), four immature adults in a coffee shop talking about nothing (OMG, it harkens to our pre-communicative state), or a bunch of jerks participating in challenges for immunity from expulsion from the tribe (that one’s a gimme).
You know there’s a thing called ‘research’ that’s far more effective at determining benefit, harm, and relative risks of certain behaviours vs. others than digging around in your ass for plausible-sounding rationales, right?
Gotta mention that the two are not mutually exclusive.
(Now feminist porn and free porn…)
Anyways, I’ll just be seconding what Greta Christina’s take on the issue of bad practices in porn is. If you know a porn company to be bad about treating their actors well, don’t consume their porn. If you know one to actually be good about treating their actors well, support them.
And dammit, don’t kneejerk assume that any porn that involves violence was automatically something the actor didn’t enjoy, unless you also want to kneejerk assume that women are only interested in soft fluffy romantic ~erotica~.
Also, I submit for consideration: Amateur porn.
Kagehi,
Criminy and Fuschia’s mutual attraction is not portrayed as anything bad.
Monique navigates patriarchy and the cartoonist does not judge her as bad.
I have seen jack all that suggests, in any way, that you have anything at all like a nuanced view of the comic.
No. That would be out of character for Squigley.
The women in the comic are the ones who get to work out what feminism means for them.
Grimalkin,
Dammit, don’t kneejerk assume that the women here in this thread who say they get off on violence are misunderstanding their own criticisms of porn as badly as you are.
I submit for consideration that a shitload of amateur “porn” was never meant for public consumption and that the viewer has little to no way of telling whether it was or not.
Occasionally I wish I’d seen my ex one last time so I could have had some quality time with his hard-drive. But I decided against it, so your* “ethical” jack off tonight may be provided by my abuser! Enjoy!
*The general you
Not a pron consumer, so going out on a limb here…
Maybe this removes industry abuses because profit-motive doesn’t exist. However, are the sexist tropes any different?* Is amateur porn not just porn with poor lighting and good music? If so, maybe this wouldn’t really be all that much better. I honestly don’t know.
*Again, not a consumer. I don’t try to think about sex when I’m not having sex largely because it is distracting (not a judgement against those who do). What porn I had contact with was once when I was a teen and it creeped me the fuck out. All abuse aside, it presented a masculine standard** that I was just not ever going to live up to.
**Just in length and girth. I totally have all the right tribal tats.
I think the biggest issue that Third Wave Feminism is grappling with for white women is how to handle a persistent Catch-22 that is centuries old (Madonna-prude/whore-slut) in a way which recognizes female autonomy and freedom to chose clothing, general appearance, and whether to have sex. The commercialized “feminism lite” which co-opted grrl-power and made it pink-scantily-clad-girl-power (though actual female empowerment sometimes shows up) is actually an enemy of both the pro-saying-no and the pro-saying-yes sides and serves to add fuel to the fire (as does misogynists; there are a lot of benefits to men who like to use/abuse women for having women tied up in a sexual Catch-22).
One thing which came up during Slut-Walk was the racial issue. The Slut-walks were a young, white feminist movement aimed at bringing attention to how a woman dresses still being used as an excuse to rape her – the media photographed mostly the scantily clad women (see note above about commercialized feminism) but many women showed up in what they were raped in, which included two-piece pajamas and jeans. I was raped in a shirt and skirt; the former short sleeved, the latter ankle length. A lot of the critique of the Slut-Walks was actually a critique of the media coverage of it without differentiating between media (which is outside of the control of the Slut-Walkers) and the actual message brought forth in the wake of women being once again told if we don’t dress like sluts we won’t be raped.
And by we I mean white feminists. The Black feminist and womanist critique I heard, which is distinct from the above critique of the media coverage, was that Slut-Walk presented itself as a widespread feminist movement, but that black women were largely excluded because black women tend to fall into the “unrapable” or “slut” category no matter what they do, as do other women of color, and sex workers. This is a secondary struggle of Third Wave feminism – how to alter the movement so that it includes indelibly the contributions and worldview of women who are discriminated against along two or more axes as opposed to just a single axis (thus the rise of the term kyriarchy).
The Madonna-prude/Whore-slut dichotomy is largely an issue for white feminism (only white women of a certain class/behavior-pattern are eligible to be a Madonna/prude), and slutwalk focused on that dichotomy (by women wearing what they were raped in and stating so on signs, and what they were wearing bearing no resemblance to so called “slutty” clothing). There are also some class markers in there, as well as locational markers. If it’s 100 degrees in the shade where you are and you don’t have air conditioning, a bikini top and short-shorts simply makes sense, but it’s still coded as “slutty” (plus there are standing stereotypes that poor women are ‘easy’).
These are the kind of struggles to combine which aren’t easily covered in a cartoon or a sound-bite, but I honestly think there are women on all “sides” of Third Wave Feminism (informed by Womanist writings, though Womanists have divided from Feminism and thus while we can learn from them, they owe us nothing and we owe them much) who are grappling with these same issues of How To Handle Catch-22s, How To Handle The Media Which Reframes Everything Into The Old Narratives, How To Change Feminism To Include Women It Excluded And Harmed In The Past, and How To Give Each Other The Benefit Of The Doubt Without Wasting Time On Trolls.
What porn are you watching where it’s 100% violence at the expense of women? As someone who actually looks for such, I’d love to know the sites you’re going to. Sadomasochism has always seemed like slim pickings to me, and that’s cut even thinner when you factor in femdom.
Yeah, I’ve seriously lost some respect for Ishida lately. He really is lapping up all the worst parts of “feminism” that I kind of thought most sensible people had moved past. I mean, fuck, I thought the anti-porn brigade had been banished from the internet.
Kind of answered my question in part before I asked, Nepenthe. Thanks for sharing. I hadn’t considered that aspect of things.
I’m going to have to second Nepenthe’s thought about amateur porn. Not knowing whether or not all parties consented to it being made available for public viewing is extremely problematic.
Brownian, I find your arguments bizarre.
No it’s not. It’s not a claim that what is natural is good, or what is natural ought to be ethical. It’s a claim that what is common or empirical is natural.
um…what? The claim was not that every detail of any specific example of pornography is related to fertility. The claim was that the “sexualization of minors” in porn is due to “a preexisting preference for young, fertile females.”
there may well still be six or seven of them in a plastic bag under what was then Mikey’s front porch. We hid em pretty well.
The question was about the preponderance of young and in particular apparently too-young women in porn, not about porn generally. The answer to that question is purported to be the (factual) correlation between youth and fertility. Nobody said anything about porn (in general) “simply responding” to anything.
Grimalkin,
Wow. Jesus, dude. Sorry but you are wrong.
There is no such thing as “feminist rape porn”.
Feminism is the empowerment of women.
Rape is not the empowerment of women.
These things really are mutually exclusive.
(You are likely to respond with some predictable miscontruals. May I suggest you ask sincere questions instead.)
Care to point out where I did so? I’m responding to what I’m perceiving as an idea that any porn involving violence is ALWAYS at the expense of the woman actor. I don’t recall anyone in this thread saying “I like this kind of porn, and I still think that violent porn is degrading”, and if someone has and I’ve missed it please point it out.
Okay, I hadn’t considered that aspect and that does indeed take out the ethical aspect of that type of amateur porn.
Mm. Taken as a whole, pinkboi’s comment adds up to such:
Yeah, I’m not a consumer either but I’ve skimmed some amateur porn specifically because of the zomg amateur porn therefore not all porn is problematic!!eleventy! argument. And what I found in my probably highly unscientific sampling was that amateur porn is just amateurs acting out what they’ve seen in for-pay porn — that is to say, all the problematic aspects of for-pay porn without the one supposedly redeeming feature that women can make a “successful career” doing it.
Unless we’re using two different definitions, rape porn is not actual rape. It’s rape fantasy, a thing that many women have (and for the record, is not at all wanting to be raped, or even anything like it).
A woman who has a rape fantasy/kink/etc. is not all of the sudden not feminist.
And a woman who creates or willingly works in porn based around that fantasy is not anti-feminist either.
It also removes the ‘only in it for the money’ aspect of the women involved.
Does it usually leave in problematic aspects? Yeah. But does it possibly keep in the aspect of a woman just wanting to make a porn video? Also yeah.
Ah, true. There’s got to be a name for this argument though, as I see it so often.
Okay, so then if this preference is preexisting, then why are minors being ‘sexualised’ now, rather than always having been sexual?
If the claim is that we’ve always found fourteen-year-olds sexually attractive, have only recently decided it’s wrong to, but porn and American Apparel haven’t gotten the message, then that’s potentially slightly harder to dismantle, but not impossible.
What am I missing?
No? That’s how I read “a simpler explanation for sexualization of minors is that porn responds to a preexisting preference for young, fertile females.”
How about instead of rephrasing what you think somebody somewhere said, you quote and respond to something you think relevant.
Uh. Maybe you wanted to say something else here.
You certainly missed this, and a lot of replies to such. I won’t point out the replies for you. I insist you read the thread.
@44
“women … are more at risk for mental illness in general.”
I was under the impression that mental illness rates were pretty equivalent between men and women. I know the pattern of mental illness is significantly different between men and women, (higher rates of Antisocial Personality Disorder and Alcohol Dependence in men, higher rates of Depression in Women), is that what you were referring to?
And it is not the empowerment of women.
I told you, didn’t I, that you were likely to respond with some predictable miscontruals.
Maybe you should have asked some sincere questions instead.
Skepifem: In what way is it pissing on you leg to call my choice to be a SAHM feminist? Does it matter to you that manner in which my kids are raised? Does it matter that it is indeed my choice and the best possible expression of my skills and desires? When I was working and my husband was doing the lion’s share of the childcare as a SAHD, was I a feminist? Do my years volunteering for domestic violence shelters, marching with Take Back the Night and working with the Vagina Monologues count for anything? I call total bullshit. As a mom (foster mom, and don’t try to pass that off as a career. It isn’t. It is parenting.) I have held crying teens and explained to them their rapes were not their fault and oh so much more. It isn’t a joyride, but it is what I do with my time on this planet. I’m the only local safe placement for a LGBTQ teen or say for instance, a non-gender conforming child. The values I try to impart are Humanist and certainly feminist. My family and I share chores in ways some kids have not seen prior to coming to my home. Here is where they learn that Mom can do the yard work and Dad can cook and clean. Here is where boys can like pink and girls can be spaceship captains or whatever combination they prefer of the two. If that is not an act of feminism, I’d like you to explain what it is. Is it anti-feminist? Are you one of the women who are going to tell me I am holding the movement back because on top of everything else I do, I don’t work outside the home too? That I’m “just a housewife”. Basically, are you going to shit on me and women like me and think it makes you a superior feminist?
If I upheld those same values as a professional educator or caregiver, would it count as feminist then? If the paycheck is the empowerment, does a larger pay check make you more empowered? Are feminists who aren’t making bank lesser feminists?
Well, seems like I certainly did miss something on my read throughs of the thread, and that took out a lot of context from it. I apologize for misconstruing those opinions.
@Grimalkin
But it doesn’t, as Nepenthe pointed out, necessarily mean that the women (or men) involved have consented to anyone else viewing that porn.
Ahem. Assuming bad faith, etc. Not supposed to do this anymore, and whatnot. Maybe this is purposeful on your part. If so, just ignore.
Even with amateur porn, coercion is not out of the picture.
How the fuck is women being allowed to say what they enjoy not empowerment?
How is that a misconstrual? You said that feminist porn and rape porn were mutually exclusive. I pointed out that a woman who enjoys rape fantasies and makes rape porn because she enjoys it is still a feminist and by proxy, such porn is feminist porn while still being rape porn.
Yes, and I’ve admitted that that was an aspect I overlooked. The argument for amateur porn does tend to forget that.
I’d also ask if amateur porn was aping the patterns of commercial porn: does it actually exhibit any creativity or independence? Because there’s fuck-all of that in any of the porn I’ve ever seen.
It might actually be a reasonable argument to salvage porn if people were actually doing something interesting with sex on video other than the standard 1 minute shallow premise as an intro, followed by nothing but gynecology for however long the show goes on.
Well my reason for bringing it up (despite what Nepenthe has already negated regarding consent) is that, at least in my experience, whenever I’ve come across amateur porn I have seen a lot of non-traditional beauty and women doing their own things that they enjoy without just typical porno scenarios and tropes.
Does a lot of amateur porn not include stuff like that, yeah.
Honestly I probably should have said something along the lines of non-traditional or independent or what have you. I wasn’t thinking at all of the amateur porn that’s just “Two people fucking with worse camera skills”.
Or maybe the pig is just a regular clueless mysogynist who uses “sex-positive” as a shield against criticism of porn.
Which would be consistent with his character in the rest of the comic.
Amateur porn also further veils the information that would allow consumers to determine whether it’s an ethical product. Not only do you not know what sort of abuse was happening between takes–as in standard porn–you have no method of even theoretically finding out. To unfortunately paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, the consent of the people depicted in amateur porn to both the activities shown and the distribution of the record, even assuming full agreement with the sex-positive model of consent, is a “known unknown”.
Does sex?
That just seems like a weird thing to write. If we were supposed to masturbate to high concept art, they would not have banned me from the National Gallery of Canada. (I showed them how “Voice of Fire” wiped right clean with a saliva-moistened cotton swab, but the Philistines that they are…)
AE: thanks. It was an extrapolation from this. I’m not sure quite what that counts as, but it’s probably for me to avoid anyway.
+++++
TRIGGER WARNINGS
+++++
Grimalkin,
Under patriarchy, women have always been allowed to enjoy lying back and thinking of England.
Women being allowed to enjoy what they’ve always been allowed to enjoy is not empowerment; empowerment means having more power.
That’s correct. There is no such thing as feminist rape porn.
That you thought I was saying otherwise was a miscontrual.
Her making of rape porn is not feminist activism. It is no more doing feminism than doing the laundry is doing feminism.
Nope. Not everything a feminist does is feminism.
(Not everything an atheist does is atheism, and so on.)
I find it curious that people are assuming that most “amateur porn” is actually “amateur”, and not simply the same corporate cranked stuff hosted on a basic website among another couple dozen that a webmaster cranked out in a day of work.
It’s generally either the “released without permission” stuff cited above, or the same corporate stuff with lesser known participants (who if they’re lucky, eventually make it into the mainstream). Not all fit into those two categories, but chances are any given one you’re watching does.
But consequences matter. I have no data, but I would bet that the existence of rape fantasy pornography does nothing to lessen the incidence of rape, and may well increase it. This is disempowering (or at the very least not at all empowering).
I feel so much the worse for having been kicked out of the Waffle House.
(also, I laughed audibly…so if that was what you were ummm…shooting?…for? Bullseye.)
Women are not just saying “I want to enjoy being raped!” when they talk about rape fantasies.
Rape fantasies involve being able to say to a partner “I want to try this because I get off on it”, to have your partner change what they usually enjoy in order to try to make you enjoy yourself, to have full control over the situation with a safe word and the specific things they enjoy being the priority.
How is that ‘lying back and thinking of England’? How has negotiating what you like and acting upon it been something women are allowed to do?
Also, for the record, my standards for what makes feminist porn comes from here:
http://goodforher.com/feminist_porn_awards
“Overall, Feminist Porn Award winners tend to show movies that consider a female viewer from start to finish. This means that you are more likely to see active desire and consent, real orgasms, and women taking control of their own fantasies (even when that fantasy is to hand over that control).”
Note the last part.
TRIGGER (I think)
++++++++++++++++++++
Again, my knowledge of porn is weak, but in rape porn isn’t there a rapist? Some people watching may fantasize about raping someone. Catering to that fantasy is not empowering to anyone but rapists.
If I have to stretch my imagination, I suppose that there must be people who fantasize about raping people, but would never actually do it.
Rapists = everyone else who fantasizes about raping people.
Le sigh.
And none of this makes women any less oppressed.
It is no more doing feminism than being able to say “I want to watch The X-Files tonight.”
People make choices. Choices are nice. Not every choice makes women less oppressed. And not every choice has to make women less oppressed.
Feminist women still have to navigate patriarchy. Nobody here is judging a woman who has rape fantasies as a bad feminist. But the making of rape porn simply is not feminism. Sorry about your luck.
So because some men can’t tell the difference between fantasy and what is acceptable in reality, women can’t enjoy their fantasies without being ‘disempowering’?
But they can enjoy their fantasies. There is a cost to many of our actions.
But the ability for women to make the choices what they like is not part of oppression. It’s the opposite of oppression. The ability for women to say ‘this is what I like’, and in the case of rape porn in particular, ‘and it does not mean I actually want to be raped or am in love with the patriarchy’, is empowering. Being told that we’re just doing what we’ve always been allowed to is degrading.
And I would love to know what makes porn feminist and empowering to you, if it’s not porn *by women for women*.
This notion that the very ability to make choices is itself feminist — it is silly.
Phyllis Schlafly makes choices a woman would not have been given the option of making in the even more patriarchal past.
She’s even made herself quite wealthy while doing so; she is, as an individual, very successful.
But most of her choices are not feminism; they are not the elimination of the oppression of women.
Actually, the point there would be that giving rapey men more rapey fantasies is disempowering to women as a class.
Grimalkin, it’s like this: I wax, okay? I like having the choice to wax. I like living in a society where the choice to *not* wax would have marginally fewer repercussions for me. I don’t wax if I don’t feel like waxing and I’m against the expectation that all women should wax. I identify as a feminist.
But none of that changes the fact that waxing is not in itself a feminist action. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s an *anti*feminist action (some might disagree) but it certainly doesn’t do anything to change the balance of power in our culture.
Unlike people, actions can be directly judged by their effects. Not every action a feminist takes is a feminist action. Not every choice a feminist makes is a feminist choice. There exists no one on the planet who is perfectly feminist in that way.
No, it is not necessarily about oppression at all. Choices can be tangential to oppression.
Tonight some woman somewhere will decide whether she wants to read a book or watch TV. It’s nice that she has these options. But simply picking one or the other has nothing to do with oppression.
No it is not. It is just making rape porn. It does nothing to end the oppression of women. Not every choice is empowering.
No, it is not. It does not lower your status or power to point out that choice X is not a feminist choice. It just means that doing X is not feminist activism.
The ability to make choices in general, no. But the ability to make choices about sex, yes.
For your example- Women have always been allowed to ‘choose’ to follow patriarchy. They have only recently been allowed to choose to say what they like in sex, or that they like it at all.
Are her choices the elimination of oppression? No. But in the case of rape porn, they are. The idea that women don’t like sex, or that if they do they only like certain types (soft fluffy romance), and that if they don’t like certain types they’re weird/sluts/etc., is oppression. When a woman takes charge and says “this is what I like, this is how I like it, I am going to make sex work for me” when patriarchy is “make sex work for men”, is eliminating oppression. Implying that women have to have the right fetishes for that is adding oppression.
I’m pretty sure it’s about the conflation, not about third wave feminists. Faux feminists who say they’re okay with these things… But in practice don’t actually support body positivity and equality.
And when we can have fetishes and fantasies that grow out of a non sexist environment it will be interesting to see how things play out. For now we are stuck here.
@kristine- The issue with that is that whereas you seem to think that rape porn falls under the “wax because I want to” category, I consider it under the “Not wax” one.
In rape culture/patriarchy, if we’re to split it into a dichotomy, there’s “Women don’t enjoy sex and men are always the initiator/agressor” and “Women get to control what they enjoy and be open about it.”
Just because rape fantasies bare a resemblance to the first doesn’t mean they’re not actually the second
But the implications behind saying that it’s not feminist is degrading. When you take feminist porn to mean “porn that was created with a positive view towards women”, it is degrading to hear “but not the rape fantasy ones, those women are just cowing to the patriarchy”.
Dear God. For the nth time, nobody here is judging a woman who has rape fantasies as a bad feminist.
No. It is just an individual finding a way she can live in the world. And that’s fine for her, but it doesn’t reduce the oppression of women.
I refuse to wait till the revolution till I can get off, but I also refuse to fool myself that voluntarily placing myself in a submissive sexual position to my male partner is fighting the power.
I didn’t imply such. You’re taking something that is feminist- women being in control of sex -and claiming that it doesn’t count for feminism if a woman’s idea of controlling sex is acting on rape fantasies. That is what I’m calling degrading.
But the oppression of women in pornography is particularly the fact that they are not in control of the production. How is subverting that not also subverting the oppression?
And again, what does porn have to be to you for it to be feminist, if not by women for women?
Women who act on rape fantasies are not putting themselves in a submissive position. They are in control of the situation entirely. That is not submission.
And again, rape fantasies are not actual rape or anything like it
One clarification, not submission *in the patriarchal sense. It is in the BDSM sense.
Oh, so this is where the disconnect is. You think this. It is not true.
As far as I understand, as well as the fact that women in pornography are not in control of the production, most mainstream pornography is also sexist and racist in that it perpetuates the social constructions of women and minorities as mere bodies to be used as warm props.
For example, not contributing to the idea that women, as a class, are simply mere bodies to be used as warm props.
If by women for women is the only criterion for something being feminist, then Phyllis Schlafly, as mentioned above, is ostensibly feminist.
Grimalkin, I don’t and won’t go into details about my sexual identity or experiences but believe me, you are lecturing the wrong woman on what submission entails.
Every person I have ever known who has had and/or enacted rape fantasies did it because of the submissive position it involves. that’s the point. Voluntarily placing themselves in a negotiated, safe, consensual submissive position with a partner they trust is the point.
Any guesses whether 99% of the dudes jerking off to rape pornography give a flying fuck whether the submissiveness displayed is only in “the bdsm sense” or not? Answers on a postcard!
I can’t even stand to watch commercial porn made for the bdsm audience because it embraces so fucking much patriarchal bullshit it makes me want to puke.
That’s true. But in subverting the idea that women are not involved in porn, they are at least subverting part of oppression. Not all of the issues with porn, but some of them.
Can’t there be rape(Or, BDSM) porn that does this? Or is feminist porn only ever femdom*?
Also, I’d say Phyllis Schlafly only fulfills the “by women” part of that.
*which is of course not always a subversion of ‘women as warm props’ itself
And don’t say that “feminist porn” isn’t “commercial porn” because a) the two aren’t mutually exclusive and b) if it’s being made for distribution it’s commercial porn. Your unicorn of truly enlightened egalitarian good porn !!1! is not even the merest blip on the merest segment of the cultural screen we’re discussing here. “No True Feminist Porn” is not a valid argument.
Well it’s not a simple dichotomy like that. Schlafly gets to control what she enjoys and be open about it.
No it isn’t. Maybe there’s another word you’re looking for. This argument does not lower your status or power.
Notice I’m not saying what you claim here that I’m saying.
There are some things which would be tremendously reduced if patriarchy did not exist. There would be less rape, for instance. And because there would be less rape, there would be less exposure to rape and thus fewer opportunities to develop a fetish about rape.
The existence of rape porn is a function of patriarchy. It does not mean that a woman who wants to make rape porn is therefore not a feminist. Lots of things that lots of feminists desire are functions of patriarchy; it’s just hard to avoid at this time in history.
You did earlier.
Women being in control of bank accounts in only their own names is feminist, in that it reduces the likelihood of being trapped in an unwanted way of life.
Women using the money in those bank accounts to donate to pro-lifer groups is not feminist.
Simply having power and wielding it to one’s own individual desires is not necessarily feminist — some uses of one’s own power are tangential to oppression.
wut
No way; she is very much about making sure that other women who agree with her are accorded patriarchy’s benefits of being Good Wives.
First, I don’t mean to lecture you on what submission means, so sorry if I came off that way.
But you must admit that the negotiation makes it a different submission than patriarchal submission, right?
And no, I don’t think (or for that matter care) what the guys getting off to rape porn think of the submission in it. But I also don’t want guys who can’t tell fiction from reality or right from wrong to determine what I enjoy or how I enjoy it.
Proactively involved in porn, that is.
You know, it seems to me that this whole discussion is over not being able to agree on the definitions of degrading/oppressive/etc. and what counts as feminist porn.
I’m going to leave this to an agree to disagree.
You don’t get to be the judge of whether something is genuinely “for women” just like Christians don’t get to be the judge of whether something is genuinely Christian. Schlafly* says it’s for women and aims her message at women, and there is an undeniable audience of women who advocate for her message and would definitely say it’s “for” them.
*god I hate typing that name, what a spelling nightmare, I never get it right on the first try.
Ugh Phyllis Schlafly.
I have fond and not so fond memories of hearing my mom detail what a horrible person she is during the 80s and 90s.
Grimalkin: Are you talking about pron that is for one’s own use, or porn that is distributed to an audience of whomever?
Because I think that changes things.
Not that the former is any more empowering to women, but it is not disempowering as is the latter.
From the inside, yes.
From the visible outside? No.
Which is why I don’t do it for audiences. Which is the difference between accepting my sexuality and engaging in the creation of rape porn.
This is where your argument falls down. You should care. You should care because it affects the world the rest of us live in. As someone who identifies as a feminist hetero submissive, I don’t have any thanks for people who advocate the continued spread of tropes and messages which encourage the misogynist scum around me. The existence of rape porn makes it harder for me to practice my sexuality in a way that’s physically and emotionally safe for me, because it pours rape myths back into the culture I live in.
I can’t delude myself that these messages have no effect by saying “Well, they weren’t the messages in my feminist, liberated, empowerful, agencyful mind”. That’s not how it works. Remember how Intent Isn’t Magic?
And what you enjoy is your business. No one is telling you not to enjoy fantasies. No one is even suggesting you shouldn’t act on your fantasies with a consenting partner. You’re sounding like the doodz who argue “you’re trying to claim that finding a woman attractive is objectifying her!” Well, no, but feeling entitled to act on your attraction to her is objectifying. That’s the difference between thoughts and actions.
Consensual activity in your personal sexual life has an effect on the patriarchy that is neutral at worst. That changes when you (general you) make a choice to publicly perpetuate nonconsensual tropes. Actions have effects.
And YES, nonconsensual tropes can be disseminated by consenting actors. I suppose somewhere, someplace on the planet Xedulon or something there might be rape porn that absolutely does not reinforce any of the currently existing human misogynist social tropes, myths or perceptions about rape, and yet is still meaningfully recognizable as referencing rape — but until you find that magical Xedulon tape, we have to discuss rape porn in the real world.
Most porn I’ve seen is sleazy, commercialized crap and just not very good or creative. But some is good. Some is creative, playful even surprising. So don’t lump everything that one might call “porn” together and piss on the whole thing.
The above sentence remains valid if you replace porn with music.
Women are never (to my knowledge) coerced into performing musical acts. You might make an argument that music promotes sexism. However, the extent to which it does so is clearly of lesser degree.
A certain part of this debate reminds me of the debate about Muslim women and the hijab/burka. There is a legitimate argument that says that women are exercising their autonomy and freedom of choice by choosing to wear a cloth bag with eye slits whenever they leave their house. But being immersed in a culture with so much misogyny and severe patriarchal tendencies, their choice isn’t really much of a choice at all. Yes, they believe they are exercising autonomy, but had they grown up in another culture, they would never have made such a choice.
Western women also grow up in a culture that is also fairly misogynistic, and with a history of patriarchy that is still rife in many communities (while it has waned, but is not extinct in many more communities). The choice to be a pornography actor is often (I hesitate to say always…but it may be accurate to say “very frequently”) caused by factors other than a genuine desire to have sex (or engage in sexual fantasy scenes that involve degrading activities) on camera. And while most women in the industry are at least comfortable with their job most of the time (I hold it as given that almost all have likely had at least one major negative experience in their career), would they be comfortable if they had grown up in a world in which women were not objectified as sex objects?
As someone who rejects the concept of free will entirely, I can see the point of the anti-porn feminists: many women in the industry are shaped by society into people who at least accept their role as sex object and who may even enjoy being degraded. But our society treats all people as if they had autonomy over their choices; saying that women in the sex industry have not really made a free choice at all is like saying Ted Bundy could never, with his genes and the environment in which he was raised, have been anything other than a serial rapist and killer, that he is a victim of circumstance who should be hospitalized instead of executed. Both are likely to be true statements, but how many people live in this paradigm? Most people are quite confident that they, and everyone else in the world are autonomous beings with free will, and that therefore, women who “choose” to be stripped, tied up and beaten, penetrated by half a dozen men in all available orifices within a few minutes, and made to work hard to ensure that the guys were having fun during said penetrations, would have chosen other lines of work if they didn’t want to be treated thus, that being degraded is part of them being their “authentic self”.
I guess the answer, for me, lies in accepting the reality of human existence and being against porn only when the participants’ choice is made for a primary reason which is not “I really enjoy it”, or perhaps when other reasons (financial, for example) cause people to choose to do something specific that they don’t enjoy. I know (from my own research on this issue) that many female pornography actors have done amazing scenes which they would have participated in for no money at all, the experience was that fulfilling. I also know that many more have done scenes which they really hated and wouldn’t have done at all, but for the cash incentive offered them. But how to tell the two apart?
it is amazing to me how often this needs to be repeated. Its such a simple and obvious truth, yet anti-feminists or non-feminists always treat it like it’s a surprise we aren’t all the Womynists from P.C.U.
Again, a simple and obvious truth that, for some reason, is apparently confounding to some.
And if women who indulge ravishment fantasies* aren’t ‘real feminists’, than so be it. I’d rather enjoy my sexytime than give a flying fuck what someone not invited to the party labels me.
* because ‘rape fantasy’ is such a ridiculous oxymoron, I can’t type it without rolling my eyes. And, after a while, that gets really tiring.
Yeah, for some time now, it’s seemed to me like these would be more accurately labeled “fantasies of being overpowered” or something similar.
Sidebar:
kristinc, ~ringy dingy~ –
Do/Did you find it somewhat difficult to find someone suited to the role?
I did have a hell of a time finding someone who could be as rough as my whims desire in the bedroom, but a good, respectful partner and friend outside of it.
Waaaaay too many of them seem forget that the act ends when the party does.
or am I just THAT unlucky?
Illuminata: I think I got real lucky. I mean you’ve got the difficult-enough requirement of finding a dude who’s a feminist ally, plus the added difficulty of selecting for minority sexual preference.
@kristinc and Illuminata
Is it better to do some experimenting with someone who you know that you’re “real world” compatible with, who is on board with what you’d like to try? Or is it better to join the scene first and hope that you get as lucky as kristinc?
Sorry, mythbri, I wasn’t clear. I had my partner before I knew about the scene. I got real lucky in that as I explored my sexuality his turned out to be compatible, and in that as I discovered feminism he was completely on board with that too.
If it were me, I’d definitely experiment with someone I already felt compatible with before I tried sorting through a pool of strangers.
Kristinc, before leaving this thread entirely to do important things;
I’m sorry if the existence of rape porn makes it more difficult to safely participate in BDSM for you. But I can’t help but take umbrage that the onus for keeping men from picking up on rape myths is on the women who enjoy rape fantasies. If I sound like the guys who think that feminists say that finding a woman attractive is objectifying her, then you sound like the people who think that the way women dress incites men to rape. It shouldn’t be the job of women to keep men from doing things that they know are awful.
And you know, as someone who enjoys rape fantasies I kind of deal with the same issues regarding safely being able to express them. I deal with all of the myths that enjoying rape fantasies means you want to be raped, and that that makes it okay or whatever.
But in my opinion, the solution to that isn’t just “No more rape porn!” The solution is actual education about porn and what fetishes and fantasies entail. And, you know, I do make a point of trying to dispel those myths because I do understand that they’re harmful.
And for the record, perhaps I am a bit too emotionally invested into this topic. I’m used to the shaming for it and having myths like “So you’re fine with rape” come up, and having it implied that I’m just bending to the patriarchy’s whim, and shit like that. And if I’ve taken anything anyone’s said to one of those extremes, that’s why. Even if any rape porn I ever watch is always responsible for some dudebro thinking “Oh, rape is all good then!” and it’s totally impossible for a responsible company to make a feminist rape film (which due to our differing opinions on what makes it feminist, we will never agree on), it is still a fucking sensitive thing.
Stepping out of lurkerdom back here again. I had meant to try to be more active, but it’s a busy time in my life, with a new job, moving, and all that kind of stuff.
I fall firmly into the ‘pornography is okay’ camp, for the most part, but I’m willing to listen to arguments otherwise. I see that for some people, pornography may reinforce bad behaviors and attitudes towards women, which many people use as an empirical argument against pornography.
However, I don’t think that automatically means that pornography should be discouraged or censored in any way. There’s a lot of media out there that we all take for granted that similarly ‘encourages’ undesirable behaviors. We do not speak out against fiction which portrays vigilantism in a positive light (Pretty much every superhero story falls into this category, and a lot of other things as well), for instance, even though we clearly disapprove of vigilantism, much like we disapprove of the female-diminishing attitudes in much pornography.
I’m not sure that the existence of some people who have an anti-social reaction to certain types of pornography justifies the condemnation of pornography. Yes, there are clearly problems in the way a large amount of pornography is produced. But that is an indictment of the way pornography is currently produced, rather than pornography itself.
I don’t think anyone should be demonized for whatever form their ‘fantasies’ (or thoughts-while-masturbating, if you prefer) take, no matter how revolting or squickish they may be to anyone. As long as their behavior does not cross the line into hurting other people in any way, I see no harm. Accuse me of being a libertarian all you like, but I think condemning people for their desires in this manner amounts to criminalizing thought.
And pornography is related to this idea. As long as the production of the image doesn’t involve the harm of the actors, I don’t see why it should be considered bad. This applies especially to drawn images. Even if we accept the idea that viewing images of X for the purposes of indulging in fantasy might make some people more likely to do X, it doesn’t follow that we should condemn images of X. I guess the long and short of it is that I would have to be convinced that producing and disseminating the TV show ‘Dexter’ is immoral, in order to be convinced that disseminating pornography is immoral.
Comic isn’t difficult. It makes fun of the way mainstream market co-opts things and twist them to make them fit into the overall culture. It happens with everything. A rock star sings with old, tore apart jeans? The next year, stores are selling old-looking, tore apart jeans $80 a piece.
Same with feminism. I’ve heard of feminist high heels, feminist makeup, feminist wonder bras, feminist dick sucking. Problem is “okay” and “feminist” are not the same. Stuff can be okay, doesn’t mean it’s feminist.
What the comic satirizes is the kind of liberal type who wants for women to be sexually attractive all the time by using makeup, wonderbras and high heels and, if possible, always ready and eager to suck dick, and then calls that feminism, because he’s been told all those things are feminist, and he immediately approves without really questioning a lot because he likes that stuff and he wants it to be feminist. Otherwise, he might have to give it up.
The market adds the label ‘feminist’ in order to sell the stuff to people who might feel some reservations otherwise because they want to see themselves as proggressive. Same as the jeans for fans of our proverbial rock star. In the case of pornography, you know the type. The kind of dude who agrees with Rachel Maddow’s arguments on Romney but also likes to see pretty women on their knees being spitted in the face.
Maybe it’s a little late for this question, but is there actually a working definition of “porn” for purposes of this thread, or is everybody just applying the Stewart Test? The reason I ask is that if you apply a narrowly-drawn definition, then some of the more categorical accusations clearly make a lot of sense. For example, some feminists have defined porn as media that objectifies women for the purpose of being sexually titillating to a male audience (reserving “erotica” for those sexually-charged productions that are more egalitarian). The problems with such media should be pretty obvious to all but the most hopelessly blinkered MRA. Other definitions are broader, encompassing all media that directly depicts sexual intercourse or all media that is meant to be sexually titillating in any capacity. In the legal realm, some definitions rest on the legal doctrine of obscenity (which I mention only to scope the problem — as much as I love to debate it, this is not the place). If one of these definitions won out, even among (say) sex-positive feminists, I didn’t get the memo. My point here isn’t to start a debate over which is the “right” definition, just to raise the point that the definition is often taken as an unstated “everyone knows” assumption that not everyone actually agrees on, even in pretty broad terms. In short: do the people who say “99% of porn is X” and the people who say “99% of porn is Not-X” disagree on the definition of “X”, or do they disagree on the definition of “porn”?
For my part, I don’t think I care for the stereotypical everyman-plumber-pizza-guy-repairman-fucking-a-submissive-bimbo-with-a-bleached-asshole-to-bow-chicka-wow-wow-music kind of porn, but on the other hand I can’t be sure that I’ve ever actually seen that kind of porn. It’s really just a pop culture meme I’ve absorbed. If it really exists, I’ve had no reason to seek it out. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I have no fucking clue what’s prevalent in porn, just what’s prevalent in the kind of porn that I look for. Maybe I’m projecting in this respect, but I suspect that I’m not alone in having a narrow, self-selected bias.
As for the comic, well, it’s strip 2 in what will probably be at least a 4-strip sequence, and Ishida has a habit of using his characters as set pieces to explore dichotomous ideas. I suspect PZ is right about this strip per se, but I know better than to presume the final point (if there is one). Then again, I’ve been intermittently reading Sinfest since ca. 2003, so I have my biases. I’m also obviously more hip than all y’all and totally didn’t halfheartedly stumble upon it by accident and think “hey, this is pretty okay, but not enough to actually bookmark”. *cough*
I don’t know if the author intended this or not, but y’all know that Porn Harms is an actual group founded by Patrick Trueman (look up his law office for an eyefull) which has the support of Focus on the Family and other fun people?
It’s an outgrowth of the “lovely” alliance between the strictest anti-porn movement in Feminism (the odd one that pretends “Playgirl” and gay-for-pay men don’t exist) and the Radical Right.
Also, I think the author is slamming how Feminism has (like most institutions) gotten to the point where there are so many subgroups and splinter factions, you’ve gotten ones that are completely opposed in their respective basic foci
@203 Armored Scrum Object
I assumed that we were talking about any media that depicts people alone or in pairs/groups participating in behavior that is intended to be sexually stimulating for a target audience. This ranges from artistic nude photography to BDSM and very specific fetishism in content (vanilla through to hardcore stuff, common fantasies to weird sexual objectification fetishes), acting (real sexual enjoyment and emotional expression vs. fake pleasure, fear, lust, etc.), target audience breadth (both size and diversity), and degree that bad behavior is venerated (e.g. males seeing to their pleasure at the female’s expense). Sometimes the whole point is to shift the control dynamic, so that the woman becomes the one whose pleasure is depicted as being the priority, and sometimes, stereotypical characters act out chauvinistic fantasies, reinforcing sexual myths in the minds of viewers.
Whatever the case, I dare to say that it is not the job of the pornography industry to improve the treatment of women in real life. It would be nice if there WAS pornography that took on this challenge, but in general, art mirrors life and life art: sexism in society creates sexual expectations that some pornography will reinforce, while other porn will deliberately reject traditional behavior, shifting power relationships in sex so that women are the ones in control. And because art imitates life, I wouldn’t be surprised to see, as society becomes less sexist, a decrease in the popularity of pornography that reinforces sexist attitudes. As long as the female (and male) pornography actors are participating because they like it, and are not doing things they wouldn’t otherwise do but for the financial benefit, I say screw on!
The chief problem then becomes how do people tell the difference between people who are lured to the sex industry for money and drugs, enduring rather than enjoying their roles in sex films and photo shoots, from people who are natural exhibitionists and who do the things depicted in the kinds of porn in which they participate for their own pleasure, when not acting in porn. This is becoming a lot easier as porn actors (male and female) are setting up their own websites and blogs in which they talk in earnest about their predilections. Yes, some of them are part of the acting to be sure, but some people I think genuinely feel part of a community and want to share their stories with others.
No. It’s. Not.
I cannot comprehend your obtuseness about this point: having fantasies about something is not the same as making porn about it for public consumption. Enacting fantasies in one’s own sexual life is not the same as making porn of it for public consumption.
Not, not, not. Stop equating them.
Hmm. I may have been over harsh. But, I stand by the point that its pretty one sided. About the only case in the whole thing, which directly involves the main elements of misogyny, is one brief mention of “feminist porn”, as part of a gag. So.. Does that imply some sort of recognition that there is another side to it? Not as far as any of the characters seem to be concerned. Even the latest booth person went from “stop porn culture” to just “stop porn”. Though, I suppose you could just chalk that up to not bothering to draw the whole thing. Its just, there isn’t anyone speaking for solution in the comic, which shows a different side, at all, beyond a few non-specific allusions, like the feminist porn bit, which then never get explained by anyone, followed, soon after, by completely ignoring the phrase, and just lumping everything into the patriarchy.
I can sort of understand why, given the characters he is working with, but I personally think its missing something because of it.
Actually, the two biggest problems come from a) that its often not, which is to say there is no way to keep mass production sites from feeding in their own videos, so its not what it advertises, sometimes, and b) even when it “is” the real thing, a lot of sites do not cater to home made, or real, amateur, but instead function as collection points for, “People we pulled off of the street this week, and provided ‘professional’ camera work, and advice to.” I am not sure its all bad that such things exist, but they shouldn’t be in a position where they can lie about what they are really providing. And, what is being provided, is not, “These people wanted to be filmed.”, but, “We talked these people into doing what ever our ‘theme’ happens to be.”
Hell, its not, often, even interesting themes. There is stuff out of Japan that we would never get by with in the US, which is at least interesting in terms of being “unique”, or “odd”. Everything we produce is some variation on a few themes, and most of those themes are just bloody stupid shit, catering to people with particular quirks, and almost always from a small number of ‘stars’, even on places that otherwise claim its “amateur”. Hint: If you can find them on 3-4 different site’s “preview” movies, they not longer qualify. lol
Hmm. Interesting argument, but it has a problem. See, the laws protecting against sex with minors are relatively “recent”, they have changed a lot over time, and they where, at certain points, so varied that you could find one state with 12, another with 17, different ages, depending on if it was a girl, or boy, and even a few places with laws that covered when it was “allowed” for girls to screw girls, and boys to screw boys (usually the girls where allowed to earlier, but, I think, the one I saw on it required you be 18, if you where male, and liked men…)
So, the claim that teens are being sexualized now, but not before, doesn’t hold water. One of the more famous “early” pornos had a 16 year old in it, even. It wasn’t common, but there where others, until the law was changes, to verify ages. And, if you go back less than two centuries, it was a toss up whether or not it was accepted, and even, not just among the later Mormons, actually not unheard of for arranged marriages to happen, in rural areas, at young ages. It was more in the major cities, where families where better off, more likely to want all their kids to do well, and had no reason to try to get rid of a daughter earlier, that the attitudes changed. They had been changing for centuries, but its, again, pretty recent that the overall attitude became, “They should be allowed to have a childhood.”, and not, “What can I get if I marry her to the rich guy down the block, even if she is 13, and he is 40?”
As much as a hate to say it, the attitude that teens do not, and should not, have sex, even among the religious, for various reasons, may be more of the anomaly, at least in terms of the reality of how things worked. Its considered progress that we don’t allow such things any more. But, then, you run into the problem if, “Ok, but.. at what point does that protection maybe go past, ‘they should follow their own pace, and not be forced to do something too early?”, and outright denial about the fact that no teen is that rational, or thinks the same line you drew makes sense, and, more to the point, being an “adult” doesn’t automatically make someone less bloody stupid. There is going to be variances in attraction, with respect to age, just as there is for gender, and without selective pressures, its not going to shift much one way or the other.
But, and this is the major problem, there is a biological argument not just for fertility. It seems that, while its more the mans age that matters, there may be factors in a) hormonal errors in older women, and b) in methylation error in men, who keep producing new copies of their own reproductive elements, which may be responsible to increased risk of developmental errors. Not just *large* ones either. One article I recently read suggests that schizophrenia and autism may be literally opposite ends of the same problem. Errors in how much certain genes are expressed results in, based on a fairly big study, as in 10s of thousands, if I remember, a lower odds of schizophrenia in people whose fathers where over 30, or 40, etc., and a direct “increase” in, instead, signs of autism. By comparison, the mother’s age had little or no effect, but her own genetics, which resulted in higher/lower levels of expression of certain alleles, did. However, there are other diseases which may be more effected by hormone levels in the womb, so her age might be triggering them, since it becomes an “environmental” factor, in expression.
So, in both cases, there is a “sweat spot” of sorts, where the odds of risk to the mother, from birth complications, is low enough, and the risk of developmental problems is at its lowest, where selection would, presumably, drive attraction. I am willing to be that it **doesn’t** match the 18 year mark, and that, if so driven, its not “fixed” at a specific range of ages, but can cause that perceived “window” to drift lower or higher in the range of ages.
It’s a weird phenomenon that you might not notice if you aren’t constantly bombarded with hate mail from outraged dudes. They hate feminism, but they’ll always deny hating women (well, except for some of the extremists that you can find documented on manboobz), and what they’ll sometimes do is slide the definitions around and say they hate “radfems”, by which they actually mean every woman who doesn’t think servicing dudes is a sufficiently honorable role for their entire life. They hate feminism but they’re a bit embarrassed by their hate.
PZ
How am I ever to disagree with you or the “radfems” as they have been so labeled, on your approach to feminism, no matter how politely I’d like to do so, without it being misconstrued as hate?
Furthermore, no matter how much I say I’m completely against the exploitation of women and completely against treating women as anything but equals, according to you I am in denial and just simply want to use them as my sexual playthings because they have no other redeeming value
It seems I am doomed to be tarred with the same brush as the very people I despise, no matter what I say, unless I agree completely with your point of view.
At least that is what I concluded after reading the above, I’d be more than happy to have my mind changed about this.
If however this is just going to cause a huge argument and major disruption to discussion, I will not pester you on the matter any further as I have no desire to engage in a slanging match.
Philip:
Well, you’ve just done it.
You do realise you’ve just identified yourself with one of the outraged dudes [who] hate feminism [and] always deny hating women to whom PZ refers, no?
It will, if you persist. We’ll see if you live up to your claim.
John Morales
“You do realise you’ve just identified yourself with one of the outraged dudes [who] hate feminism [and] always deny hating women to whom PZ refers, no?”
I’m not outraged, I’m in disagreement, there is a massive difference and if you notice there was no hate in what I was asking, there is none now.
I’m asking how I could disagree without being labelled as such, I’m beginning to think that is an impossible task, thank you for providing an example of what I was talking about.
It will, if you persist. We’ll see if you live up to your claim.
I see and understand, I came to ask a question and make a point and I appreciate you taking the time to answer me.
[meta]
Philip, you came in waving red flags and honking a klaxon, what did you expect?
It being perceived as hate has very little to do with how you’re disagreeing, and everything to do with what you’re disagreeing about.
Only if you follow or precede your statement about how you’re “completely against the exploitation of women and completely against treating women as anything but equals” with something (or a defence of something) that clearly contradicts those feminist values. “I’m not a racist but…”, anyone?
So did I. He introduced me to the larger group, but I knew him long before I got into BDSM.
Why is it that the dudes who feel “compelled” to defend porn never read what we’re actually fucking saying?
Where the fuck did ANYONE even mention the word “censorship” or “banning”? Why can’t you wankers READ the actual WORDS being used?
You’re talking to feminist women who enjoy excatly what you’re trying to pretend feminists want to “ban”, ffs.
Same thing happens with discussions involving guns.
It is amazing how often this needs to be said.
Not talking about Philip here:
I wonder if the assumption that women are objecting to only one’s tone instead of one’s argument – regardless of what the women actually say – is just subtle sexism.
YOu know, fluffy ladybrainz can’t possibly have the ability to argue the point, and all that.
Well.. This type is found in “very badly made” porn. My parents, somehow or other, got hold of some at some point, until they finally threw the whole batch out. It was, quite literally, worse than anything you can possibly find today on the internet. It seems like the three major formulas for porn today are:
Theme – This is catering to specific tastes, and include anything from “oops, maybe I should have pulled out, but baby, you where the one that said it was OK to not have a condom.”, to black on white, white on black, etc. Its very specific to the audience.
So called amateur – anything from stolen tapes, to people actually submitting their own home made ones, to mass produced stuff that involves, again, the ‘theme’ that this is somehow real people doing it. You can generally tell the difference in that, for example, if its the, “my neighbor wants to do me”, theme, the real ones are not well filmed, and don’t go out of their way to “promote” the idea that the wife/husband just left for work, and the neighbor just happened to be nearby. Very rarely you get something that either you are not sure, or obviously is self made, but not crap quality. They tend to be from other countries. lol
Spoof films – Pirates, etc. They do the porn semi-badly, and not plausibly, since its what its main focus is, and they think they need to cram in as much as possible, even if the result is stupid and boring. They do dialog almost as badly as the cheesy stuff my parents stumbled over way back when, etc. Basically, nothing other than the sex is taken seriously, and then, its bad for being in the middle of a barely less that totally stupid movie. But, heh, at least its not the remake of “Deep Throat”.
That later thing they had a special on, on Showtime, or something. I came away with the impression that, if that was what was running the “main” porn industry, then the producers, actors, and directors, from at least the two studios involved in trying to remake it, where so bloody stupid that they its like trying to exploit a puppy. Even if its exploitation, they wouldn’t have a damn clue it was happening. I mean, how else do you describe people who literally think that writing like a 4 year old = good script, that the original movie was “good”, or that, if you are, is with the second production company, that wanted the right to remake it, having contracted to do so, you can then just keep the name, and throw out the whole entire original script, and that the owners, even if they are idiots, would go for it? I felt like I was watching Idiocracy, from inside one of the “Hot Latte” sex shacks… lol
No, if “porn” is going to change, its either going to turn into what it has on the net, or its going to change through movies like “The Short Bus”, from the Canis Film Festival. Actual decent acting, in plausible circumstances, where the sex is “tangential”, even if necessary, to the story. The industry itself seems to be a mix of semi-smart people that are out to produce “product”, and complete morons, who are probably in the industry for no other reason than that they couldn’t get down the idea that its bun-burger-bun, not burger-bun-burger.