A Crash Course in Feminism Mk. II (or, why everyone should be a feminist)

[Kirsten]

See, porn as a thing isn't bad, but the industry is largely unregulated and no one takes the complaints of sex workers seriously and it keeps feeding on male misogyny by getting harder and more degrading as time goes on and that stuff becomes more and more mainstream.

pretty much this. that is the problem with discussions about porn in general. as a medium it is perfectly fine, there are people who want to do it, people who want to make it, even people who enjoy the more extreme stuff. but it needs to be completely consensual, regulated, managed properly, and needs to be restricted.

[Tzeentch's Dark Agent]

Here is some of my Twitter dealings, doesn't provide much context but oh my days...
[url]http://imgur.com/E8B8K8y,pq8gZtG,7gEJMbN,82eWpul,EUZXkXh[/url]

Here is some context of what I was saying though
[url]https://twitter.com/SaviourAnarchy/with_replies[/url]

[Mr Mystery]

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29753702]Asda are facing a massive law suit over equal pay[/url].

It's broadly similar to recent successful cases taken against Councils. Less 'we have precisely the same job, but he is paid more*', more 'why exactly is my role paid less than his role'.


*Though that may still be part of it.

[Gotthammer]

Once more I can't help but feel a little useless, and ask the question, "well, what can I do to help?"

Essentially it's simple: stop looking at porn.

See most porn sites are [URL="http://nymag.com/news/features/70985/"]actually owned by a single conglomerate[/URL]:



So even the "free streaming sites" are owned by the companies that make the films and they use them to get ad revenue and as trackers for what is trending so they can be keeping up with "trends" as it were. So essentially even if you look at porn for free or other sites you're propping up the industry.

My view is that porn is, conceptually, fine (though the word has it's root in Attic Greek meaning "image of sexual slavery" >_>) but porn as it exists today is in no way fine and to me it's a #notallporn situation where, yes, not all porn features horrible abuse but how can you really know which is which? Also porn's distortion of sexual norms:

"But as I say, the actual moneymaker is gonzo. Now the father of gonzo is a man called Maxx Hardcore, who, when i first started doing this 20 years ago, no-one in the porn industry would go near him, he was so violent. When I was in Las Vegas in 2008, he had the biggest booth in the whole of the show. The fact that he has moved from the margins to the centre is very good evidence of where the industry is."

"Here we have encoded into masculinity and femininity power inequality - to be hot as a female is "f*ck me" and hot as a male is "f*ck you". ... And then of course shold there be a victim and a perpetrator we blame her for looking like a, quote, slut." - [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yiiY1nV2aU"]Gail Dines[/URL]

[DWest]

Here's a question that came to me- I wonder if our movie culture is part of the problem? Consider that filmmakers can do near-miraculous things (place actors on a whole other world, add/subtract/reposition limbs, make Tom Cruise appear sane, etc.); do you think that since we know what film can do, the porn-consuming audience might not realize that the things happening in front of them *aren't* being faked, or being dressed up to look better rather than worse than actuality? And if that's true, would that maybe be a good place to peeling back the layers, showing just how bad things can be?

[Psychosplodge]

make Tom Cruise appear sane

What film do they manage that in?

[Gotthammer]

I think it's more that the women in the films are degraded - they're called sluts and whores and worse, they're objects of ridicule (for instance when Anna Nicole Smith's son died Hustler ran a comic saying he probably died of embarassment, in the very magazine that sells women like her), they're seen as deserving of what they get. One need only look at how stigmatised sex work still is, how women in pornography are seen as having "daddy issues" - itself a grotesque thing where a woman is damaged by a man and mocked for it - being stupid or worthless. It's essentially making the women in pornography objects (Hustler printed a cover which was literally a woman's legs [URL="https://neurocritic.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/hustler-meat-grinder-cover.jpg"]sticking out of a meat grinder[/URL]). Which is why it is repeatedly shown that pornography use warps people's perceptions.

Users grow desensitised so need more and more extreme material. A producer was quoted as saying he'd literally run out of ways he could think of to use women. And do you know what the porn industry did? They fought and won to have a law repealed which banned the use of models who appeared under 18, bringing the whole jailbait thing into existence and creating men who were not pedophiles but were in jail for sexually assaulting minors as well as contributing to the increased image of sexualisation of young girls. I mean if you have people who have been using pornography since they were 11 or 12 and are now adults, how warped do you think their perceptions are?
We've had plenty of posts here about ridiculous school uniform policies against girls - where do you think the grown men got the idea that girls that young could be viewed as sexual and why is it getting more prevalent?

[Mr Mystery]

It's also far more....physical than used to be.

Bit of 70's bongo, and you get your ropey plot, then up, in, out, and off.

Now? To quote System of a Down - choking chicks and sodomy.

It's gone from mere titilation to constant male power fantasy.

[Deadlift]

My problem with porn is its (sometimes) portrayal of what sex is about. Sure it's fun to get a bit dirty but mostly what I've seen is degrading to women and I worry that teenage lads who watch a lot of porn before actually having sex, think what they see ie the rough stuff is how sex should be.

When my daughter is old enough to start having those kind of relationships I don't want her being treated the same way you see in porn. She's only 7 so I have at least 20 years before I have to worry about that but I assure you as many fathers of daughters on here will agree. If any young buck steps out of line and treats my little one badly. It's not going to end well for him. Similarly I don't want my son growing up with the wrong impression of sex either. The reality of how to treat a woman in a sexual relationship and what you seen in porn in my view are worlds apart.
Some porn I guess has it's place, but the older I get the less I like what I see and the more degrading it gets.

It's a sensitive subject I guess for me at the moment. Something very bad happened to a close relative this past Saturday and the wife and I are doing the best we can picking up the pieces. It's changed my views somewhat. The hardest thing is not doing what I feel I should in revenge. Police are involved but somehow it just doesn't feel enough. I feel like I'm letting my relative down by not doing what I feel I should. But with my own wife and children I'm caught between a rock and a hard place really.
I know many men say something along the lines of "if anyone did that to my (insert relative or close friend) I'd kill them". But when it actually happens it's really quite difficult knowing what is the right thing to do.

[DWest]

We've had plenty of posts here about ridiculous school uniform policies against girls - where do you think the grown men got the idea that girls that young could be viewed as sexual and why is it getting more prevalent?

I can only speak for American culture, but I don't believe that can be judged separately from the cultural lionization of youthfulness as the greatest of virtues. As pornography is a reflection of desires of society, it isn't surprising that a society that wants to remain as young as possible, as long as possible would also want to see young-looking porn stars. It doesn't make it right, but it also doesn't mean that this is something wholly invented by the porn industry.