Porn - Part 3: further comments on this theme
These comments are based on a post by the wonderful sanmiguelmalo who made a post based on mine (but he was the first one with the porn post way back when). Lol, actually this is almost my exact reply (with a few additional comments
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2. but i totally agree, being hardwired doesn't mean you don't have the rational ability to make your own decisions.
3. i also totally agree that objectification in and of itself isn't anything bad. i think we do disagree on exactly how optimistic we are about how malleable or suggestible the mind is. i think it would be totally awesome if society were saturated with hyperobjectified representations of male physicality/sexuality. that said, i really do sadly have to say that i think my position on how optimistic we should be seems to be backed up by what i observe in popular culture. to wit, the ascendence of the man show. haha. but seriously, are you just surrounded by really nice guys all the time? i know some absolutely fucking awful pigfuckers and how they see women is how i fear men at large are suggested to see women. it's great that you know guys who can totally jerk off to miss november with one hand but write a scathing editorial on the worthlessness of the VFA with the other. i just don't think they're the majority.
4. if you noticed i sort of don't address the charge against or the defense of porn as an act of power or free, mostly because i'm also totally conflicted on that. in a perfect world people should be able to do whatever the hell they want, but in a perfect world there isn't a horribly imbalanced power structure between men and women. and again, the main point is that teh pornz is bad, it's that what porn is out there and what porn is popular is possibly an important indicator of not the best gender dynamics in society.
5. see 4! to be honest, i haven't seen that much lesbian porn. it's not my bag, baby. hehe. the participation of the nonwhitemale in the porn industry for me also runs into our disagreement on how unproductive the majority of porn may be. by participating in it without first dealing with gender power dynamics, does it legitimize what it should be fighting? is there a sense or optimism that one day it will be the dominant share of the industry? is it unfair to expect it to do anything other than be available for its market?
ps i'm so guilty as pointed out below of being heteronormative i didn't notice :\
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your comment (can someone teach me how to quote?):
"but seriously, are you just surrounded by really nice guys all the time? i know some absolutely fucking awful pigfuckers and how they see women is how i fear men at large are suggested to see women"
On the contrary, I don't know a single guy that doesn't behave in a disrespectful manner at some point (to put it mildly). I think even the "nicest" of guys are guilty of all sorts of selfish, sexually insensitive behavior, not even to mention the not-so-nice guys and assholes out there.
What I'm saying is, we're letting them off the hook with all this "porn makes them do it" and "men just need to sew their wild oats" bullshit. By all means, jerk off to miss December, but for fuck's sake if you happen to meet her, don't rape her. Or any other woman.
Now you can either say that men aren't capable of that, which means they are hopeless, they can't help it, and there is nothing we can do about it.
Or we can accept porn as inevitable (attempting to stamp it out will only make it more desirable) and stop letting men off the hook when they screw up, press charges, stand up for the fact that it's unacceptable, and quit with the "boys will be boys" shit.
I just want to see people be held accountable.
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i hope you don't think that "porn makes them do it" or "boys will be boys" is my position? :o
i'm saying that society through multifarious means, one such mean being the dominant style of pornography, contributes to objectifying and sexist conceptualizations of women which then enables and excuses fucked up male behavior. i'm not saying that if we stamped out porn no one would rape anyone anymore. but what i am saying is that maybe if women weren't so objectified and maybe if boys were taught that women were people and not sexual possessions (i'm implying, possibly unfairly that standard pornography tends to teach the opposite lesson) boys would act more respectably.
i'm all for holding people accountable. but solely punishing socially reinforced behavior and being blind to the social conditions that enable and encourage that behavior doesn't make sense to me. yes, i'd like to personally see every rapist castrated with rusty piano wire via their anuses, but the objective side of me wants to eradicate social conditions that may contribute to that behavior.
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I guess it's a matter of the proverbial chicken and egg and we're on opposite sides of the causal coin, so to speak.
More on this later, I'm tired :)
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I realized that girls' "sex ed" consists of hiding anything having to do with sex from them, fast forwarding any movie scene with sex in it, and covering little girls' eyes until they are ready for the clinical "sex talk."
Boys on the other hand, get there little hands on porn as early and often as possible. My best friend was showing me his father's Penthouses/Playboys at age 6.
I will admit that this can have an effect on how boys view girls from the get-go. And I think little girls should be exposed to sex earlier so that they can defend themselves and not have to rely on boys/guys/men as their "teachers" later on.
My other point is that, yes we should eliminate root causes, but if they are here to stay than we should reform them from within - more "nonmales" are participating in/consuming porn and this is making a mark. Also, you'd be surprised at how much is tolerated and how much goes unpunished. Not just punished but allowed to happen in the first place, which needs to stop.
BTW see disclaimer in comment further down.
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i definitely agree that we have to deal with porn and not just decry it and demand censorship. i think it's great people are trying to change it from within but as we both agree that it's not the root of the problem, the problems associated with it won't go away through anything that happens internal to it.
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Whenever we talk about "men/guys" out of the context of humanity in general, we tend to get a distorted picture. I also challenge anyone to find a woman/girl who doesn't behave like a bitch at one time (or many times) or another (also because of accountability we can't shout "my genes/PMS/men made me do it!") It's not that I have a low view of men as I kind of have a low view of humanity in general.
There are assholes and bitches out there, and nice girls and nice guys screw up, and usually someone isn't all bad or all good but some complex mix in between.
We live in a fucked up world and we do the best we can.
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