A crash course in Feminism (or, why everyone should be a feminist)

[eldargal]

There was actually a proper study done into whether increasingly hard pornography had an impact on mens treatment of women, and it came out with quite a damning 'yes it does'. I can't remember the name of the woman who led it, though. I'll try and find out.

Not all pornography is bad, though. Appreciating the beauty of the naked female form or two attractive people making love isn't bad. But watching girls be systematically abused and demeaned purely for sexual gratification is.

The control of sexuality thing is a big stumbling block for feminism. On one hand women should be in control of their sexuality, on the other it is easy to convince impressionable teenagers that sexual liberation means promiscuity and you end up with a situation where women are expected to have sex and are considered odd or prudish if they don't want too. This is sadly where we seem to be, in the Anglosphere at least. It needs to be about the womans choice and not being judged or pressured wither way, not what a male dominated society expects. It is a very, very complicated issue. It does feed into the birth control/abortion debate, though. The easiest way to try and impose a traditional morality on women is to deny them the ability to mitigate the consequences of exploring their sexuality. The consequences for men are no where as severe, to quote one of my favourite cartoons:

Parenting a teenage boy is easy, the worst they can do is ruin some teenage girls life. Parenting a teenage girl is impossible.

Sad but true.

It's half past six in the morning so I apologise if I'm a bit rambly or unclear.

[DarkLink]

Yeah, it's a problem when just about any time sexuality becomes an issue in a tv drama or news report you can pretty much shout "double standard" regardless of the circumstances.

Though again it's about race rather than sex, there's [URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeixtYS-P3s"]this[/URL]. Morgan Freeman is awesome. While it's certainly not always an appropriate answer in some cases, in the long run the only way to negate sexism/racism is to stop talking about it. You need to take action to get the ball rolling, but somewhere along the line you need to stop the ball from rolling any further, and that's the tricky part a lot of the time.

I got ya. I'm happy to be amongst the terminally feeble-minded then.

Don't feed the troll. Unlike Psychosplodge and Eldargal, the troll is incapable of having a well-mannered, mature discussion. Just Ignore him. It's a really nice feature for the rare occasion it is needed.

[eldargal]

Agreed, and we have made significant progress in that regard. There is much that was once highly controversial in women's rights which is now not even talked about because it has become acceptable (voting, entering politics, sex before marriage, having any access to birth control, being barred from a profession etc). If these issues are being discussed it is generally only by a very vocal minority with an axe to grind.

Some of the issues that do still need to be talked about, like closing the pay gap (which is happening, by the way, it down to 12% from 16% in 2000) are unfortunately being overshadowed by silliness like trying to force 50% of company boards to be female and whatnot. Nevermind the numbers of women in board rooms, lets get the majority of the populace being paid equally before we go trying to smash the glass ceiling. But, it isn't questioned that women should be paid for the job they do not what gender they are.

[Hive Mind]

There was actually a proper study done into whether increasingly hard pornography had an impact on mens treatment of women, and it came out with quite a damning 'yes it does'. I can't remember the name of the woman who led it, though. I'll try and find out.

If you're alleging that there was a study which showed that pornography inculcated an attitude of violence towards women being ok, no there wasn't. No study has ever been able to demonstrate such a link. Malamuth and Fishback's studies came closest, but even they admit that their study was systemically flawed and carried out with far too small a sample size.

What the studies have shown is that people seek out the pornography that they're into because they're into whatever that depicts, no study has ever shown that pornography creates behavioural habits. In the realm of male attitudes to women pornography is a symptom, not a cause.

[eldargal]

There was a study that found that some pornography helped normalise various behaviours against women, ranging from an expectation that women should remove their pubic hair and engage in sodomy to a belief that all women enjoy rough sex and orgies. It is grossly simplistic to argue that pornography in general is the cause, but it is also disengenous to dismiss it purely as a symptom.

You will note I never mentioned violence in my original post.

[Hive Mind]

There was a study that found that some pornography helped normalise various behaviours against women, ranging from an expectation that women should remove their pubic hair and engage in sodomy to a belief that all women enjoy rough sex and orgies. It is grossly simplistic to argue that pornography in general is the cause, but it is also disengenous to dismiss it purely as a symptom.

You will note I never mentioned violence in my original post.

You will note that I started my post with the qualifier "if you're alleging"...

I'm pretty sure you're describing Malamuth and Fishback's study from the sound of it and like I mentioned before, even the authors had problems with its 'conclusions'.

It is obvious that an idiot watching pornography might get unrealistic real-life expectations from it just as it is obvious that an idiot watching crap like Sex In The City might get unrealistic real-life expectations from it. Where both fall down is that there is no evidence that these people actually do anything that impacts anyone else in pursuit of those unrealistic expectations, unless you're MacKinnon or Dworkin and you want to count feeling 'upset' (with no attempt to explain what 'upset' means) at some of the things that sexual partners might request.

In short, there is absolutely no evidence that pornography causes any harm whatsoever.

[eldargal]

The names you mention do not sound familiar (not that it means much). Actually when it comes to women's rights what a partner expects is important. There is little difference between a man feeling entitled to a virgin bride and a man feeling entitled to anal sex or for women to groom themselves in a certain way or what have you. It comes down to women being expected to conform to a certain male imposed ideal.

The study also found increasing rates of vaginal infections due to fecal contamination, stemming from anal sex, in the general community. So there are also health implications if a rise in sodomy amongst heterosexual couples is due to pornography.

I'm not particularly against pornography myself, but I fail to see how pornography involving men urinating on women in a subservient position can be seen as anything but degrading to women in general, for example. Regardless in the scheme of women's rights I think pornography is a relatively minor side issue.

[Hive Mind]

The names you mention do not sound familiar (not that it means much). Actually when it comes to women's rights what a partner expects is important. There is little difference between a man feeling entitled to a virgin bride and a man feeling entitled to anal sex or for women to groom themselves in a certain way or what have you. It comes down to women being expected to conform to a certain male imposed ideal.

Except the evidence shows that men generally do not feel entitled to anal sex or anything else because of pornography. They may desire it, but they generally do not feel entitled to it and even when they do, they do nothing about it. Of course men rape, but there is no evidence that they rape because of pornography. There is no difference in male expectations of sex because of pornography and women's expectations of relationships because of Mills and Boon or Harlequin books. Neither is harmful, neither is important and both are fostered only by idiots.

The study also found increasing rates of vaginal infections due to fecal contamination, stemming from anal sex, in the general community. So there are also health implications if a rise in sodomy amongst heterosexual couples is due to pornography.

If.

Also not really sure what this has to do with what we were talking about. Unless you're alleging that those women were raped anally and then vaginally because of pornography this is apropos of nothing.

I'm not particularly against pornography myself, but I fail to see how pornography involving men urinating on women in a subservient position can be seen as anything but degrading to women in general, for example.

Knackers. It might be degrading to that woman (though if that's what she's into it wouldn't be) but there are no implications at all for women in general. Even if it is degrading to that woman, so what? It's a job. Plenty of people find working their menial jobs plenty degrading, no-one cares.

[Grenadier]

Just because there is no evidence doesn't mean there isn't any harm. The thing is it is a thing you can't easily measure. There is harm though. But with porn all we really have is anecdotal evidence. We won't find hard evidence like "Debbie Does Dallas made Pervy Frank rape this woman." Simply put: with porn there is no smoking gun evidence with which you can directly link a harm to it.

When one really examines porn and society you do begin to see how certain things combine. Such as public perceptions of it. We could legitimately imply that porn has contributed to the alarming trend of underage girls sending nude pics of themselves via cellphones or online sites. But the implication requires theorizing. It's all about social views, ideological views, morality or lack thereof, pornography, etc. It's nothing more than theory we can work with and our best and only real evidence is anecdotal. So there's no sense making the argument. But likewise there is no sense in dismissing it outright.

The key factor here is this: how can you blame a thing like porn for what individuals do? In order to blame porn for child molestation or raping of women you have to ignore the individual's personal responsibility. If we do that then maybe we can blame porn. But then how would that be right? It wouldn't at all.

It reminds me of when people got up in arms about heavy metal music. Remember how they blamed Ozzy Osbourne's song "Suicide Solution" for someone who committed suicide? It went to court and all as I recall. How is it Ozzy's fault this guy killed himself?

"Well he listened to the song so he must have gotten the idea from it."

Entirely removes the individual's personal responsibility. This is also like the old "violence in video games makes violent kids" argument.

Now, porn is no different in that regard. Porn does in fact display certain attitudes and behaviors that can indeed be harmful. Especially the more extreme kind of porn. We also have a hyper-sexual society with ever waning morals regarding sex. There are people out there who think child porn is perfectly acceptable. That's its okay for teens to have sex. Etc. And porn now is more accessible than ever before thanks to the internet. And the porn industry itself is very exploitative of women. Many of whom willingly allow themselves to be exploited. For example Traci Lords. She was underage when she began her porn career. False I.D. So she knew what she was getting into when she was 15. She let herself be exploited. But that doesn't excuse those who put her in movies.

But we don't need to argue these points. Because there's no end to such an argument. There is legitimate reason and anecdotal evidence that does support the view that pornography does create some harm in terms of a larger and social scale. And no doubt there are individual cases. At the same time the pro-porn side of the argument has some valid points. Primarily because porn (as it pertains to society) has the convenient shield of escaping blame because in the end it's the individual's personal responsibility.

Porn may not make me rape a girl. Call of Duty may not make me go out and shoot someone. And Ozzy isn't going to make me want to kill myself or use drugs. Because I have personal responsibility. However, such things could "encourage" me indirectly by glamorizing these acts. Still, if I do any of those it's entirely on me and not the product.

[DarkLink]

Some of the issues that do still need to be talked about, like closing the pay gap (which is happening, by the way, it down to 12% from 16% in 2000) are unfortunately being overshadowed by silliness like trying to force 50% of company boards to be female and whatnot.

I actually seem to recall reading somewhere that the pay gap is actually smaller than those statistics would indicate, in that more women than men pick careers like child services or only working part time while raising a family. Or something to that effect. I don't remember the source, though.