porn is not necessarily free of violence
One mistake (among many)in articles i've read by John Stoltenburg (founder of Men Against Pornography), is that "objectification" is an all-or-nothing act, rather than one of degree. When we look desirously at a lover, we are probably objectifying hir. Certainly when we gaze at a stripper on stage, or at a physically attractive person on the street we are privileging a person's physical appearence over hir subjective experience.
Where Stoltenburg gets it wrong though, is in asserting that any of that results in complete objectification. When I look at a naked body on display, and when I respond to it sexually, I'm *not* denying that there is a person involved, and I'm certainly not denying that that person can at any moment choose to have hir subjective experience privileged over my experience of gazing at hir body.
All the same, sexual objectification (and its extreme, gazing at porn) should not be let off the hook uncritically.
The anti-porn crusaders may simply have misidentified the victims. It's not the porn actors that are victims. It's not women as a whole (yes I've looked at a fair amount of porn, and yes it's conditioned my mind, and yet no, I don't expect or want my own interpersonal sexual experiences to resemble anything like the expereince of whacking-off to images, and emphatically no, I don't consiously look at female friends, colleagues, or presidential candidates as being "a collection of tubes to fuck"). Unconsiously, the jury is out and if you can sceintifically make a case that porn makes me hurt women, I'll accept it.
The real victim, though, is the consumer of porn. *When* I'm engaged in whacking off to porn, I've turned into a rather mindless collection of reactions to visual stimuli. It's not *that* terrible, but it's also not *that* far off from the man who sits on subways whacking off in public to women, staring fixedly at them, unable to interact with them in that moment as anything other than visual images.
When it comes to masturbation, my (relatively new) ethical principle is to only fantasize about people who've explicitly or implicitly given me consent. Implicit consent includes sex-workers and ex-lovers with whom I haven't had some sort of catastrophic falling-out with. It includes complete strangers whose images I might remember, but whose individuality I'll never have to engage with.
It doesn't include people I know who I don't know in a sexual context. Out of regard for me, it ought not to also include random images, celebrity images and the like.
The problem with porn is that it can make us brain-dead. I used to think that was true in my naive 20's and having gone through a decade of increasing sex-positivity, I'm starting to think that it's true once again. It's not an unmitigated evil, I don't want to ban it, and I don't even want to stop using it. It has positive aspects as well, some of which include education and expansion of one's sexual imagination. The more I use porn to explore things I'm not easily attracted to, such as gay scenes, gay SM, realistic SM with dominant men and submissive females (personally I *strongly* prefer engaging in the opposite), safer-sex scenes, scenes with body types I don't inuitively respond to -- the better.
*Sigh*.
I really don't understand myself. I'm a conservative bi-man wrapped in a progressive straight-boy, wrapped in a kinky polyamorously polymorphous pervert, wrapped in a traditional heterosexual monogamist.
I just want a lover who's *more* fluid and expressive than I am, and I'll be fine.
I haven't said that out loud (that I want a lover) in a while. Do I really want one?
*Sigh*
Maybe not. I do want more contact with more friends. That's it. Problem is that *they* mostly want lovers, and that precludes me from their life, and then I have to find a lover of my own.
I don't know, I'm rambling incoherently like a total fuck cuz it's 5:00 am and i haven't slept yet, and i'm hungry.
Where Stoltenburg gets it wrong though, is in asserting that any of that results in complete objectification. When I look at a naked body on display, and when I respond to it sexually, I'm *not* denying that there is a person involved, and I'm certainly not denying that that person can at any moment choose to have hir subjective experience privileged over my experience of gazing at hir body.
All the same, sexual objectification (and its extreme, gazing at porn) should not be let off the hook uncritically.
The anti-porn crusaders may simply have misidentified the victims. It's not the porn actors that are victims. It's not women as a whole (yes I've looked at a fair amount of porn, and yes it's conditioned my mind, and yet no, I don't expect or want my own interpersonal sexual experiences to resemble anything like the expereince of whacking-off to images, and emphatically no, I don't consiously look at female friends, colleagues, or presidential candidates as being "a collection of tubes to fuck"). Unconsiously, the jury is out and if you can sceintifically make a case that porn makes me hurt women, I'll accept it.
The real victim, though, is the consumer of porn. *When* I'm engaged in whacking off to porn, I've turned into a rather mindless collection of reactions to visual stimuli. It's not *that* terrible, but it's also not *that* far off from the man who sits on subways whacking off in public to women, staring fixedly at them, unable to interact with them in that moment as anything other than visual images.
When it comes to masturbation, my (relatively new) ethical principle is to only fantasize about people who've explicitly or implicitly given me consent. Implicit consent includes sex-workers and ex-lovers with whom I haven't had some sort of catastrophic falling-out with. It includes complete strangers whose images I might remember, but whose individuality I'll never have to engage with.
It doesn't include people I know who I don't know in a sexual context. Out of regard for me, it ought not to also include random images, celebrity images and the like.
The problem with porn is that it can make us brain-dead. I used to think that was true in my naive 20's and having gone through a decade of increasing sex-positivity, I'm starting to think that it's true once again. It's not an unmitigated evil, I don't want to ban it, and I don't even want to stop using it. It has positive aspects as well, some of which include education and expansion of one's sexual imagination. The more I use porn to explore things I'm not easily attracted to, such as gay scenes, gay SM, realistic SM with dominant men and submissive females (personally I *strongly* prefer engaging in the opposite), safer-sex scenes, scenes with body types I don't inuitively respond to -- the better.
*Sigh*.
I really don't understand myself. I'm a conservative bi-man wrapped in a progressive straight-boy, wrapped in a kinky polyamorously polymorphous pervert, wrapped in a traditional heterosexual monogamist.
I just want a lover who's *more* fluid and expressive than I am, and I'll be fine.
I haven't said that out loud (that I want a lover) in a while. Do I really want one?
*Sigh*
Maybe not. I do want more contact with more friends. That's it. Problem is that *they* mostly want lovers, and that precludes me from their life, and then I have to find a lover of my own.
I don't know, I'm rambling incoherently like a total fuck cuz it's 5:00 am and i haven't slept yet, and i'm hungry.