The No-Porn Pledge
I wish I could say I'm surprised this exists, but I'm not.
It's a site on which people can pledge not to use pornography, and not only that, to refuse to have an intimate relationship with anyone who does.
Which, yeah, hardly news, some conservatives do that sort of thing all the time, right? Except that this appears to be linked to anti-porn ( Read more... )
It's a site on which people can pledge not to use pornography, and not only that, to refuse to have an intimate relationship with anyone who does.
Which, yeah, hardly news, some conservatives do that sort of thing all the time, right? Except that this appears to be linked to anti-porn ( Read more... )
The difference between my views and yours I think (other than the obvious!) is that I feel I can support a movement without agreeing to everything and everyone in it. I don't agree with Christians who make sexuality seem evil but I will talk to them about their experiences being anti-porn because we still may have things to teach each other, even if you have to skirt around the differences to get there. I also think it's a matter of belief. If you feel extremely strongly about something whether it be against porn or eating animals or guns etc that it's perfectly acceptable to keep away from those who aren't. I mean, what's the point of keeping a friendship when you disagree on something so fundamental to your being?
As for your other points there's not enough room to discuss them all but I will say that a lot of people do recognise that the anti-porn movement is not perfect. What movement is? I've met pro-porners who think its absolutely fine that porn degrades women, that thinks its fine to have rape porn even though there is absolutely no guarantee it isn't real, that an 18yo girl put into porn by her father (he even gives her a brazilian wax) has a "choice" about what she is doing.
Personally I cannot NOT support the anti-porn movement. There will always be the hypocrites in a movement (Hillary Clinton voting for the Iraq war anyone?). It may sound silly but being anti-porn is a part of who I am. I cannot just stand by and watch society go to hell as girls as young as 5 want to buy g-strings and have friends who have been raped but won't recognise this fact ("I said no but he was so close to getting off that he kept going" and that is deemed okay because they have learnt that male sexuality is superior and that its a man's "right" to get off whereas it is not their right even to say no). I refuse to put myself in a position so many people I know do who just put up with the fact that their partners treat them like crap because they are acting out porn, or make comments about their bodies because they're not made of plastic. It is definitely a balancing act (I would never support an anti-porn site that was supporting homophobia) but I don't think that makes my whole cause defunct, just like bestiality porn cannot (and should not) destroy the whole pro-porn argument.
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What I do feel is that abolition is not only not possible, but also not any kind of solution to the problems our culture has. I really don't think that making certain kinds of visual media unavailable will change how people in our society think of or treat women. As Ren points out here, there's a lot that would still need cleaning up. And why presume that people, if they are affected by media to degrees that make them creepy, are more strongly affected by pornography than by Hollywood or television -- all things that we grow up with all around us, and are never expected to have to hide in any way?
and that is deemed okay because they have learnt that male sexuality is superior and that its a man's "right" to get off whereas it is not their right even to say no
I agree that that is terrible, and that it is widespread, but I don't think it comes from pornography. I remember feeling like I couldn't say no to someone's attentions myself (fortunately, he stopped kissing me when I froze up), long before I ever saw pornography or knew much about what it was. Whatever teaches us that men's sexuality is somehow better than women's or not to be denied, I'm deeply uncomfortable with laying that blame on pornography. In the pornography I've seen, the women are presented as really wanting all the sex (to an unrealistic degree, but this doesn't bother me terribly, as when I want to see something arousing, I hardly want to hear realistic characters say they're not interested -- just like I wouldn't want to see an action movie in which the main character broke his legs repeatedly doing the crazy stunts. It's supposed to be unrealistic), so it's hard for me to see how people are supposed to get out of it that no doesn't mean no.
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Again, I don't say this to suggest that you would do any of these sorts of things. I just think a lot of the bedfellows are creepy, and that even if I agreed with the general position it would still bother me a lot.
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I don't think all of the blame can be labeled on porn for every woman but I do think that there are a lot of people who do think that men naturally "need" porn and to act it out and to treat women like crap as if its a biological need like food or water. Also as to the women always wanting sex I think that establishes a belief that women are going to fall all over themselves just to get near a penis. In my reading of it porn depicts men's bodies as everything and women's bodies as nothing (and even less than nothing if they are not "perfect". There's a difference between consent and showing practically orgasming the minute they see a guy naked. I think its a way to show women as weak. The best explanation of it I have read is that women are now relatively equal to men in a lot of aspects but porn enables men to have the belief that these women aren't so strong because they'll be begging for it the minute they pull out their dick. It's not even quite that porn needs to show that no means no so much as continually showing women as never saying no to mean leads them to believe that women always want sex, even when they say no. The same applies to softcore mags that say things like "If she says no just give her oral for a second and she'll say yes!".
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I don't think the people who say that men need porn are saying that they have a biological need to treat women badly. I think they're saying that men have relatively high libidos and so they "need" to see things that are sexually arousing. I think the question of whether pornography does depict treating women like crap is a separate question. We can agree that men "need" it and then ask "okay, suppose people do need visual sexually arousing material. Now what do we depict and sell/give to them?" and not want to sell/give them what gets produced today.
As far as whether men do have a biological need for porn... well, no, I don't agree with that. But I do think that many people, particularly people with higher libidos (and men are the people in our society who are expected to have those, at least), use and like sexually stimulating media.
While I certainly do think porn's content could use improving, diversifying, etc. I don't see a problem with that in itself. I don't see looking at media as cheating, or as desensitizing for most people, etc. I see it as a normal thing to do, so the next question for me is not "how do we get rid of this?" but rather "how can we make better material?"
And it seems to me the exact wrong strategy to try to shut the industry down or be its enemy. If we don't want to see women depicted that way, we need to give the people making the images incentive to depict them differently. We don't do that when we're the ones trying to shut them down. (Seen most dramatically in that famous Hustler cover. That was, at least in part, a response to people calling them violent against women.)
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I can see what you're saying but I can also see the limitations. There are heaps of people who consider themselves pro-porn feminists who go on to watch porn that treats women like they are nothing. I do hink people become used to a certain type of sex/porn. Masturbate to women being degraded enough times and eventually that's what the viewer will get off to all the time. I think the fact that even people who claim to be against violence against women then go on to watch that kind of stuff and see it as normal because they do watch it and don't want to think of themselves as bad people.
I can't imagine a world in which porn is not violent agaisnt women because that is the nature of porn. I don't see porn as just a sex scene but as sex with violence/domination/power. WIthout that element I think most people who watch porn would get very bored, very quickly because they get off on the violence more than they get off on the sex.
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I'm not sure if this is responding to anything I said. Saying that arousing media can be fun for people isn't saying they'll die without it. So I think you've misinterpreted me, unless you said that to agree with me. :)
There are heaps of people who consider themselves pro-porn feminists who go on to watch porn that treats women like they are nothing.
Well, that's true; the position I hold is that anyone should have the right to look at anything they want, and not just the right but also shouldn't be harassed or bothered for it. So yes, some people will definitely be using all kinds of porn. And yeah, I don't really have the same sort of problem with that that you do. I don't think that looking at porn is any different from, say, watching movies -- and while I don't like some of the very sensationalistic stuff Hollywood comes up with, I also don't think that most people who choose to, say, watch realistic psychothrillers want to commit violence.
In order to believe that pornography does cause violence, I'd need to see proof. I have never seen decisive studies -- and, well, my mind flashes back right now to the bit in the Penn & Teller episode on porn where they're talking to Gail Dines, and ask "Could you cite some studies" and she snaps, "You keep hounding me about that, but the fact of the matter is there are no good studies! I just know what I do because I've studied media."
And the thing is, that's just plain not good science. And this was Gail Dines, luminary of anti-porn feminism, flat out saying this. So it's not something my side just magically concluded -- it's something a bigwig of your side said, straight out.
I suppose someone could retort "I'm not interested in science, I'm interested in women." But the thing is, here "science" isn't some kind of masculinist edifice but rather... what you do to know that there are in fact real, existing social trends that should influence social policy. If the data isn't there, there's no way to know whether the theory is something that actually holds up in the real world, or just an internally consistent way of thinking. And I personally am very, very leery of telling people how they ought to behave based on a theory that there's no data to support. So I'm going to have to ask you if you've got the data -- not to bully you or hold something over your head, but just because it makes no sense to me to agree that people should do something based on a theory there isn't data to support.
I think the fact that even people who claim to be against violence against women then go on to watch that kind of stuff and see it as normal because they do watch it and don't want to think of themselves as bad people.
Again... where's your data here? Where do you get this from? Why do you think that people's sexual desires vary that much? From what I gather from talking to people (which is not scientific data either, ftr) most people have a general sexual profile or identity and then can vary within that. I know plenty of people that have never and would never like the things I like, and there are plenty of things I've never been into that I'm still not into, despite considering myself pretty adventurous. So where is the data -- not just the theory -- to back up your claim here?
WIthout that element I think most people who watch porn would get very bored, very quickly because they get off on the violence more than they get off on the sex.
Again, where's the data? You keep saying that you think you know what porn users do, but you're not one yourself so why should I trust you as someone who knows better than us what we're doing?
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Sure. Why wouldn't I? Or anyone else for that matter?
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in reference to proof, and the ole herring: the plurual of anecdote is not data. some data includes:
In Harms Way: The Pornography Civil Rights Hearings, eds Dworkin and MacKinnon
Diana Russell's work (eg http://dianarussell.com/porntoc.html)
Pornography and Sexual Aggression by Neil Malamuth, and The Question of Pornography: Research Findings and Policy Implications by Edward Donnerstein, et al.
http://www.oneangrygirl.net/myth3.html
"In total, these studies show that viewing both violent and non-violent pornography can:
*increase the acceptance of rape myths
*increase male aggression toward females
*decrease sensitivity to the crime of rape
*predispose willingness to rape
*increase the acceptance of violence against women
*decrease support for women’s rights
*alter perceptions of “common” sexual behavior
*decrease sexual satisfaction with self and partner"
and this 2002 study, of 12000 people. That is a shitload of "anecdote":
"There has been some debate among researchers about the degree of negative
consequences of habitual use of pornography, but we feel confident in our findings that pornography is harmful," researcher Dr Claudio Violato noted. "Our study involved more than 12,000 participants and very rigorous analyses. I can think of no beneficial effects of pornography whatsoever. "
Edward Donnerstein has even stated: "The relationship between particularly sexually violent images in the media and subsequent aggression...is much stronger statistically than the relationship between smoking and lung cancer."
it is very noteworthy that there has been virtually no research on whether hate propaganda causes violence against the targeted groups, yet a lot of research does exist which correlates violence against women with pornography. victimised men (when victimised as blacks, Jews, gay men, etc) are far more likely to be believed than women when they are victimised as women.
is the view that hate propaganda can engender hate and violence also dismissed as anecdotal?...oh, wait, other oppressed groups aren't expected to prove it to ridiculously high standards before anything will be done to stop it.
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You've seen that movie? What are you going off of? Doesn't say anything about a cum shot there, so unless you have seen it, I'm gonna have to say you're not making much sense.
And hey, even if it does include such an image... why does that somehow magically negate the point I was making, which is that someone who chooses to watch that is not necessarily someone who also chooses to watch images of degradation.
As far as the studies, I appreciate you (unlike, say, Gail Dines) providing some, but I would like to ask why they're all so old. The Violato is fairly current, but when I was working on my thesis and citing studies, anything older than about 2000 was looked at pretty askance by my committee. If it's so easy to show this causation, why is almost everything there from the 80's?
Which, of course, is *prior* to the Internet, and therefore *prior* to a serious change in what is consumed and how. (NB: I'm not here implying that porn has gotten less violent, saying that. It may well be it's gotten worse. I'm just saying it's a serious fault that the studies of it would mainly be from the pre-Internet era. That would be like saying you can talk coherently about cars by studying covered wagons.)
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i would argue that negating genuine female pleasure and orgasm, which is typically produced through direct vulval and clitoral stimulation, is a form of degradation. degradation means a reduction of status, value, respect; abasement. If negating women's actual experiences with orgasm, being inclusive of clitorocentric sexuality, and so forth is not denying women value, respect, and status as humans with subjectivity, what is? calling opposite experiences equality is naive at best (eg in fellatio or intercourse the OPPOSITE things are occuring to the person whose mouth, vagina, or anus is being engaged as opposed to the one's whose penis it is).
They are so old because the research has already been done. Why replicate, over and over, what is already known to have negative effects? Not to mention that this research would have a more difficult time getting funding, considering both the results and the power of the pornography industry. For example, why would an institution fund a study in which the participants would become more likely to aggress against women, more likely to believe rape myths, perceive rape as less harmful to the victims, etc?
Gail Dines didn't produce studies in that Bullshit Penn and Teller episode. I just last week saw that episode--it was absolutely ridiculous. Russell, Dines, etc were edited to the point of making an absolute mockery out of them and their work. It's comedy, but it was fucking shameful for Penn and Teller to be such bullshitters themselves when they are making a claim to truth.
Again, why are women's lives reduced to anecdote? Why are books, that utilise studies and interviews, such as Pamela Paul's Pornified mocked with such fierceness (I know, Paul didn't get everything right, eg she seemed to have some traditional notions of sexuality, such that women have slow arousal and orgasm, when the reality is that often the correct stimulation just isn't there)? Why is any critical study of pornography, such as Jensen and Stoltenberg, vociferously objected to, based mainly on their maleness? Why is 4 cities civil rights hearings on pornography as discrimination against women dismissed as "so old"? Studies in the 2000s HAVE been done; but they have been dismissed as anecdotal, "not scientific," etc. THIS IS THE SAME RECEPTION THE 1980s STUDIES GOT WHEN THEY WERE PUBLISHED, AND CONTINUE TO GET OT THIS DAY.
I was pro-porn from the age of 8 until 12, as much as a preteen can be considered such. I've read numerous proporn, and even more antiporn, books. I've catalogued pornography that is available on Rogers, I've looked through hundreds of YouPorn videos, etc. They've not been published, obviously, but I do feel qualified to speak on this.
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Errm, because the effects may have changed in the absence of the context that the studies were conducted in? People and society change, any studies that discuss effects on society or people need constant reevaluation to ensure that they are still relevant! People aren't like physics - you can't study them once and be done with them!
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The work on pornography that is most important at the moment now focusses not on the representation of women in these images, but the economic/business side of the industry and how that affects what we see. I would argue that personal narrative is as important as empirical data in this work, but there are also a vast number of women who freely use pornography or take part in pornography and they are rarely given voices at all in the kind of research you're quoting -- or, indeed, at all -- because they don't say what anti-porn campaigners want to hear. However, I recommend Druscilla Cornell's work, by the way.
As for using Donnerstein as "evidence", where did you lift that quote from? The rest of his study does not back that theory up.
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