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 thing I don't quite get, though, is how a pledge helps with that. I would think that a pledge would be for people who would otherwise use pornography: say, for men who have heavily used it, just come across feminist critiques, and been alarmed by what they find. People who would otherwise be tempted, making a commitment not to give in to that temptation. It makes less sense to me that someone for whom it's a flashback trigger would feel the need to promise to avoid it. (Or is that where promising not to date someone comes in -- a way to feel that other people share similar boundaries?)
So can you explain how that works, exactly? Again I'm not saying it's bad to avoid one's triggers or to seek constructive ways to deal with them. I'm just confused.
Also... for me personally, I found after a while that the whole avoiding triggers thing becomes impossible really quickly. I do think it's a wonderful courtesy when people give trigger warnings when they can, and I encourage it. But I also think, as someone whose triggers aren't nearly so odd or obvious, that they're not always avoidable. Because of this I sometimes think that some feminists are taking protecting people with PTSD too far. There's respect, and then there's "you're so damaged you can't see anything." I don't think avoiding porn falls into the second category -- I think it's a perfectly valid personal choice.
But I do get bothered, sometimes, by the way PTSD becomes a trump card in some of these debates. Particularly when, well, some people do choose to try and face their triggers and fears... and only protection ever gets discussed.
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Harmful or upsetting experiences of porn are greater than it's inclusion in abuse or as a weapon which are certainly the most extreme forms and not uncommon. I'm saying that those examples you provide are not varied enough.
To jump forward for a minute to your other question of where this posts ideas were raised, I raised them in the anti-porn comm. The post I made addressed the fact that as a mod I'm responsible for clearing people to join and how making those choices work within the goals of the community. It links in to your ideas in this post where I asked if community as a whole if they found the inclusion of other members and their beliefs problematic and how where they draw the line when they involve themselves with other people.
The post went on to other issues but that's where it started.
I threw that in there because my point is that whilst being a mod means I get to boot or keep people, it means I also get their stories for why they want to join and I get these week after week after week. It's not my place to make a value judgement on their situation or what steps they take in trying to move through it, but it's given me an idea of why they put their names to that site.
Maybe signing a pledge is reactionary at that point in their life as joining our comm is so that others can see it on their profile, maybe they just want to put their name to something that makes them feel like they are on the other side of the issue now. Like buying a badge for a cause.
I can made a damn good guess, but I can't be sure without asking and to be honest - I don't really see why I need to.
My comment to Hex was just that having issues with porn can go beyond a moral objection, it goes beyond the material, and for some people 'just not using it' is just not enough for themselves.
I am not sure there is all that much protection when it comes to being anti-porn =) it's not a popular position and one you can't hold without being forced to defend or lie about.
I'm not sure if I addressed your points, reading + comprehension is low today.
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What exactly do you mean here? I think I have a general idea, but I'm not sure, so I wanted to ask.
I am not sure there is all that much protection when it comes to being anti-porn =) it's not a popular position and one you can't hold without being forced to defend or lie about.
*nod* That's true, but there's also a lot of flak on the other side as well. A lot of people think that if a woman is anti-pornography, she is:
* a slut (which opens up a whole other can of worms about how people in our society feel qualified to judge women as lesser for being "too" sexual or sexual in the "wrong" way)
* brainwashed/empty-headed/not "serious" about life or sex or feminism
* willing to defend anything at all
* a traitor to other women
* only doing what men in her life want her to do (I've even seen this leveled at very out lesbians who aren't anti-porn)
* desperate for people's attention
* lying about what she really thinks to seem cool
And that stuff also gets old. There's also this weird thing in some corners of the blogosphere where women who aren't anti-porn get called "sparkly" -- this assumption that they're invested in femininity. I'm not... I'm fairly masculine, personally. The only way I can make sense of it, really, is this idea that femininity is frivolous, and we must be ignorant or we'd be anti-porn, so we must be frivolous, so we must be bimbos, so we must be feminine.
It's really kind of gross.
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