Posted by Tamar on March 29, 2006, at 10:51:20
In reply to (((((Milly))))) *****trigger***** » milly, posted by Tamar on March 29, 2006, at 10:36:50
Yeah, well, no one expected me to be able to stay away from this thread, surely? :)
I’ll put my cards on the table first:
1. I have been raped and sexually assaulted on several occasions by various people, including friends and people in positions of authority in my life. These experiences have coloured my views of sexual politics.
2. When I look at porn I find it intensely arousing. My response is both biological and psychological.
3. I did not learn to masturbate until I’d been sexually active for five years (and after the rape and three of the sexual assaults). I chose quite deliberately to try to learn to do it in an attempt to reclaim my body and my sexuality for myself. I didn’t use porn because I felt that the sexual assaults had made me an object and when I looked at porn I felt uncomfortable with viewing other women or men as objects of my pleasure.
4. I have a professional interest in how sexuality is depicted and portrayed in popular culture.So now you know where I’m coming from. And here are my thoughts about porn:
1. Many people enjoy looking at other people naked, especially when the context is sexualised. I don’t believe there’s anything inherently wrong in seeking the pleasure we can find in admiring another person’s body, as long as we are not harming the other person in any way.
2. I believe masturbation is beautiful and important, and while I don’t think porn is necessary for a healthy solo sex life, I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I certainly don’t think I’m in a position to judge other people for their use of porn. After all, I find it arousing too.Having said that:
1. Porn is a multimillion dollar enterprise. It makes more money than all of Hollywood and all of rock music put together. Despite this, it usually has poor production values and is of generally poor quality. And the money does not line the pockets of the actors and actresses: the real money is in the hands of the producers.
2. Porn is ubiquitous. Its influence is enormous. It is widely considered acceptable nowadays, in contrast to previous generations. It plays a powerful role in western culture.
3. Masturbation was once considered profoundly unhealthy, but these days the medical world is inclined to suggest that in fact masturbation is good for us. The acceptability of porn has arisen in tandem with the acceptability of masturbation and also with an increasing sense of the individual’s right to sexual self-determination.
4. Studies about links between porn and sexual violence have not yet proved conclusive, though there does seem to be some evidence to suggest that consuming large quantities of violent porn is associated with violent behaviour. But it’s hard to know which is the chicken and which is the egg.
5. Much of the imagery used in porn emphasises power imbalances between men and women. (I’m not going to talk here about gay porn because I’m mainly interested in the influence porn has in culture and society, and gay/lesbian porn is much less mainstream. Oh, and when I say lesbian porn, I don’t mean the ‘girl-on-girl action’ which is aimed at straight people. I mean lesbian porn produced by and for lesbians.)
6. In most TV, magazine and film porn it is difficult to find images that adequately convey a mutually pleasurable and enriching experience. Part of the reason for this is the legal restrictions against depicting an erect penis. Another reason is that a great deal of porn depicts situations in which women are vulnerable and depend on men either for rescue or for validation.
7. Internet porn bypasses the difficulties of showing an erect penis, but unfortunately tends to depict situations in which women are ‘bitches’ or ‘sluts’ who are tricked by men into sexual contact they don’t want but which they ultimately experience as orgasmic because deep down they desire to be dominated. This is, of course, the semiotics of sexual assault dressed up as a borderline SM fantasy. And I’m disturbed at how this intersects with people’s real life experiences, because however we understand issues of freedom of choice, it seems to me that the women who work in porn are not likely to have had as much choice, advantage or privilege as women who work in careers which pay at a similar level.
8. If porn is widely consumed and widely considered acceptable, its influence should not be underestimated. My concern is not so much whether porn engenders a lack of respect for women, but whether it serves to reinforce the already massive gender inequalities in society (and of course, racial inequalities, because race often plays an important role in porn), and to sexualise those inequalities.
9. Porn not only depicts women as vulnerable, it also frequently depicts men as aggressive, out of control, dangerous, insensitive and preoccupied only with their own gratification. If I am concerned about the effect that viewing porn has on men’s view of women, I am also concerned about the effect it has on men’s view of themselves (and for that matter on the way women view men, since women use porn too).
10. Most mature and responsible adults can use porn without becoming monsters, and can leave the images aside when they’re finished with them. But the images adults use are also the images children use. The only arousing material available to children (I mean kids in their early teens) is material designed for adults. I really think that teenagers are at genuine risk from porn, because they’re still trying to make sense of their new feelings and bodily experiences and the adult world. I think the images used in most pornography are not suitable for kids, in the same way that films made for adults contain images of sex and violence that aren’t suitable for kids. The difference is that there’s a healthy children’s cinema but there’s no healthy teenage alternative to adult porn. If you’re shouting at your computer right now, I’ve probably touched on something very sensitive. And I should say that I’m not advocating porn for children, but I *am* saying that we shouldn’t ignore the fact that many children use porn or encounter porn, and I think it’s genuinely unhelpful for them.My solution (because I like to set the world to rights):
1. We need better porn. It should be produced to better production values and there should be more variety. I don’t want to see a man ejaculate on a woman’s breasts after every sexual encounter. If my sex life were like that I’d have stopped bothering years ago. We need funny porn, nostalgic porn, poignant porn, gritty porn, gentle porn, ironic porn and educational porn. We need a lot more vanilla porn.
2. We need to find ways of engaging fantasies about life rather than fantasies about death. So much porn is predicated on the idea of the sex war. I’d like to see porn that reflects the tenderness of sexual experience, whether in a casual encounter or in a 50-year marriage.
3. We need porn that’s less disposable: porn that we can watch over and over and still enjoy. Sometimes I get the impression that men (and possibly women) use porn as a means of reaching orgasm as fast as possible, and as soon as it’s over it’s time to clean up and hide the magazine back under the bed as if the images in the fantasy didn’t belong in our regular lives. Wouldn’t it be nicer to use porn as a means of increasing and sustaining pleasure, rather than getting it over as quickly as possible?
4. I don’t think it would take much imagination to make porn that affirms women and men as equals, or that affirms sexuality as a source of comfort and safety. Of course, many people have fantasies about domination or submission, or about dangerous sex, but I struggle to see why those particular fantasies have to be so very widespread. Again, I’d like to see more variety.
5. I’m going to end with an example, and it could be rather transgressive, but I hope no one will find it actually offensive. In my professional life I have encountered a great deal of interracial porn and I find it overwhelmingly disturbing. It’s often presented either as a white man’s fantasy of his wife being overpowered by a dangerous black man, or as a white man’s fantasy of overpowering an exotic foreign woman. I find it disturbing not only for political reasons, but also for personal reasons because I have had lovers who weren’t the same race as me and I hate to see the way people from ethnic minorities are objectified in porn. I feel it pollutes my memories of my own experience. For example, I spent only one night with my friend F, but I remember that it looked beautiful: the contrast between very dark skin and very pale skin emphasised the lines and curves our bodies made together. And when I see that same contrast used as a means of emphasising images of physical, psychological or political violence, it sickens me.Bring on the beauty.
Tamar
poster:Tamar
thread:624556
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20060324/msgs/626028.html