We talk about it here, and we defend it from its legions of enemies, but what do we really mean when we use the word?
In a challenging conversation at Ren's blog with someone who outspokenly dislikes porn, that question has been put to me. I'll start with a quote from that conversation, which I invited by suggesting the commenter ask me some questions about pornography. I'll state from in front that I'm not interested in debating with this person. I want the opportunity to answer specific questions rather than range back and forth over broad political issues.
I'm sure others will join in, but before doing so, I want all to keep in mind that I invited a visitor here and I would like this guest treated as politely as I wish we were treated in the territory she more often frequents. Let's see what kind of example we can set here.
"Pornography, I don’t like it. I think it shows a view of women’s sexuality that is unreal and exploits women. Admittedly, some of my attitudes are colored by personal preferences. If a man ejaculated on my face I might be tempted to erm….bite, hard. But that’s me, and I’ve heard other women say they like it. (I suspect they’re nuts, but then again….working for the open mind here.) Also, I think there is enough research on the shaping of men’s attitudes to warrant a close look at porn and its effect. Plus, enough women involved in porn have described their own exploitation to cause concern.
HOWEVER, I’m willing to listen to other positions. I’m just going to be very, very hard to convince. So… I’m going to have to think about what questions I want to ask. The first one that comes to mind regards the existence of women-centered “porn?” Ah, but, that is a mutually exclusive term. You see, *I* define “porn” as that which degrades, dehumanizes or otherwise belittles women (or men, for that matter). I dislike that which strips women (or men) of their humanity and turns them into vulvas, mouths, or penises with legs.
So, maybe we need to start with defining the term."
I have an answer to this, but it will need to wait a bit until I've forumulated it properly.
A sanctuary for supporters of sexual free expression and the adult sexual media.
Ok, good start. I'll look forward to your response before I say more.
ReplyDeleteFirst, I want to say that I am grateful for your request that I be treated with respect. I'm going to be honest and up front in my posts. I am willing to entertain the possibility that I may be mis-informed on some points. I am undoubtedly ignorant on some points as I've never been involved in the making of porn, and Ren is the closed I've come to knowing anyone who is. I have no problem exposing that ignorance, nor am I terribly defensive about it. But, there are other things I know a fair amount about.
I'd like to start off by stating the background and biases (that I'm aware of) that shape my thinking. I'm a (social-personality) psychologist and have been for the last 20 years. I prefer hard data and I know how to evaluate research. If I say "show me the numbers" it's because of that strongly entrenched bias. Opinion without data is just that: opinion. As they say, everyone has one...etc.
Also, please let me state unequivocally, that I am a liberal feminst. I am not a radfem.
Ok, I lied. I am not going to wait.
ReplyDeleteI tried googling your work. I saw some clips about rape? WTF?
That strikes me as a fairly confrontational definition of porn to use when talking to someone who's a pro-porn activist. Who's going to want to claim to be pro-degradation, dehumanization, and belittling?
ReplyDeleteBut that's really a side issue. The main problem with using that definition is that most people you talk to probably won't be, but instead will be going with something like the dictionary definition, just referring to sexually explicit material in general. Using non-obvious definitions impedes communication.
Ah, but my point was that perhaps *my* definition of porn is not the dictionary definition. Is everything sexually explicit porn? Not unless it's degrading/dehumanizing/belittling. Sexually explicit without those elements is (to me!) erotica, not porn. Maybe that's part of the problem? Do people assume I lump everything that is sexual into the porn category?
ReplyDeleteI tend to interpret erotica as material that's suggestive without being explicit. Which might be my opportunity to have an uncommon definition, but then I don't actually have cause to use the word that often.
ReplyDeleteI can't speak to the assumptions people make about you, since I hadn't really seen much written by you until recent events. But I think that in a lot of cases all sexually explicit material is going to get tarred with the same brush, so it's useful to have a general term to refer to... all sexually explicit material.
Not to mention that while opinions can vary on what's degrading, dehumanizing, or belittling, there seems to be a reasonable consensus on what's sexually explicit.
Good point. I have no problem with sexually explicit, per se. I don't include that in the genre to which I object.
ReplyDeleteRachel,
ReplyDeleteI have no data. I am not a researcher, administrator, Ph.D. or tenured gender studies professor. I don't want to change your view. I respect it.
On the topic of opinions and 'pornography', I do have some thoughts. As far as I can tell, 'pornography' is not a fact in its definition. 'Pornography: the fact' exists in the existence of written laws that attempt to describe the term, but mostly these laws codify the punishment and enforcement of themselves. The 'facts' of pornography are the facts that there are laws about pornography and that we talk about pornography. I suppose that it is also a fact that we discuss pornography, argue about it, purchase it and tell people things about it.
Those things can be observed, recorded and produced. So, they are the realm of fact, concerning pornography.
Since people's personal definitions of the word pornography differ from one person to the next, the actual definition of pornography seems to exist only in opinion. Some opinions are very similar. A lot of people agree with each other that pornography is bad or good or neither or something else. A lot of people are pretty sure that their definition of pornography is the correct one.
But is it? Is anyone's opinion of pornography the correct one? Is it reproduceable / testable / quantifiable like a fact is? We can test a fact and the answer will not alter. If the answer to a question varies from one person / group to another, then is it a fact or is it an opinion?
Pornography is tied to sex, very often but not always. Sex is a trigger for many people and no big thing to a great many others. I am not convinced that because someone is emotional about pornography, that I should treat that person's opinion as a fact. There are so many social and personal triggers regarding sex that I don't think we could ever list them all from now until the end of our species.
So, what I am trying to drive at is this...
In social structures, we will come to an agreement for our behavior that is designed for the overall good of our group. Murder is against the law. So is driving on the wrong side of the road. These laws (agreements) exist because we agree to band together for our mutual good. There is no fact that murder is 'wrong' or 'bad', because we cannot actually produce 'bad' or 'wrong' for anyone to see. We simply agree that for our own good, that killing is 'bad' and not to be tolerated. This belief and agreement is so widely held and very few people ever contest it. Therefore, this agreement which is widely accepted and unquestioned in its definition resembles a fact very much. It's a judgment, it's an agreement, it's a goal for society to follow - but it is not much of a real fact.
It seems to me that pornography falls into some very similar patterns of agreement, strong opinions, sex triggers, intimacy, gender in society, personal experience, interpretation, conflation and repetition.
I can't and won't tell you anything about you, your view of pornography or the values you ascribe to it. That would be disrespectful. I just cannot see how anyone's opinion of pornography is the 'right' one and that the rest of us are bound to that interpretation or the actions.
Everyone's opinion of pornography is true for them...for me...for you. Our opinions are not wrong - but they are not facts. So, what I offer is to listen to yours or anyone's. Let's agree with each other or not, but let us agree to respect each other.
-arvan
Arvan, you have my respect and will continue to do so until I have strong reason to not respect you. Usually, that happens when I'm disrespected first. (Of course, perpetrators of certain heinous acts are a different story. I am unaware than anyone I've "spoken to" in blogland is in that category.)
ReplyDeleteIn fact, I've been a bit hoisted by my own petard. I should have defined what *I* mean when I say porn at the outset especially since it's never properly been defined. Remember,the Supreme Court waffled on that one decades ago.
Now, what shall we call that genre that I protest? Degrading/demeaning/dehumanizing sexually-explicit media? DDDSEM?
Now, about that quick, operational definition of porn. I see right away where we begin to part company, and it's all about a word, rather than about what it actually describes.
ReplyDeletePer Winter Lights, pornography for me is simply the explicit depiction of sexual activity between consenting adults, created commercially for the purpose of arousing other consenting adults who view it.
Also, like her, I define erotica as a less explicit depiction of the same thing.
So, for you it seems the word porngraphy is pejorative in itself. To me, it simply describes the content of the image. On its own, I don't see it as having political implications one way or the other.
When we get down to specifics, the whole thing gets a lot more complicated.
But porn itself: simply commercially produced sexually explicit content.
And I might add that when I use that word, I use it only to describe lawful pornography, which means that it was made by consenting adults for consenting adults.
Sexually explicit images of any other kind, i.e., involving children, animals or non-consenting adults, goes by a different name. I call that evidence of a crime.
One other point, regarding reliable data. I share your preference for specifics, but showing you numbers won't be easy, for reasons your background as a social scientist uniquely qualify you to understand.
The numbers you want to see don't exist because unbiased, peer-reviewed research concerning pornography is virtually non-existent in itself, as even one of its most bitter critics, Gail Dines, admitted in a nationally televised interview not long ago.
Funding for such research is nearly impossible to get. Universities and foundations won't touch this topic, and what does pass for research is almost always funded by organizations seeking to validate an existing bias and conducted by individuals who have been vetted according to their sympathy for that bias.
Some statistics regarding certain aspects of porn production can be established as valid because they derive from empirical metrics, such as the incidence of STIs among porn performers (though as we've seen, even those can be distorted for propaganda purposes).
But numbers regarding the social impacts of pornography, or for that matter its impact on the lives of those who make or consume it, in any broader sense await a kind of non-partisan research that hasn't been done.
I have no doubt before we're finished here that some survey data will be introduced, but I'll probably challenge it first by wanting to know where it came from. If the source turns out to be an individual or organization with an anti-porn agenda, I think you'd agree that its scientifically suspect at best. There are no pro-porn organizations as such, so no industry-funded research that might contradict it can be had, and if it could, it would be equally unreliable.
Empirical proof of anything here will be in short supply. That is no more to my liking than it is to yours, but those who claim otherwise are not credible unless their results were generated with scientific objectivity, something in very short supply where pornography is concerned.
So I can describe what I've seen, but that might be dismissed as lying, and no doubt will be by others, and repeat what I've heard, but can't vouch for it.
We'll be dealing with the subjective here to an uncomfortable extent.
That said, it's my turn to ask you to describe the characteristics of the genre to which you object, having already found that explicitness alone isn't the source of your criticism.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteConcerning the rape thing:
ReplyDeleteWow! That's a shocker! I'd like to know exactly what phrase you used to google my work. I tried several variations of my name along with other words, including both porn and rape, and other than a familiar hate-screed from one of the rad fems who wants me dead (she's said as much), I couldn't come up with any reference to rape at all.
For the record, I have never made anything I consider to exist in the same universe as rape, though perhaps my outspoken disavowals along those lines might have created an accidental nexus of some kind.
I'd appreciate it if you could help me out with this. If there's something of mine floating around amid all the stolen porn on the Internet attaching my name to the "R" word, I'd love to know where it turned up so I could attempt to ... get in touch with the parties responsible. That just isn't on, period.
Most freqiemtly, when my name is associated with rape, it's because someone is accusing me of engaging in it, enabling it, inciting it, etc. because I make porn, not because of anything specific to the porn I make, which is all about mutual pleasure between consenting adults. I have some very particular reasons of my own for being especially careful that nothing I make is ever linked to the idea of sexual conduct in the absence of fully informed consent from all participants.
So, I'm with you on WTF? I have no clue. If you can give me one, I'd be grateful.
Jesus, that's all I need ...
Wait a minute. I went back and tried googling in a different order. I came up with some clips involving the lynching of two young black men, one named Ernest Green (no "e") a number of years ago for allegedly raping a white woman. Obviously, no relation.
I also came up with an item concerning a rape trial here in which Sharon Mitchell, director of the Adult Industry Medcial Healthcare Foundation, of which I was chairman of the board of directors at the time, testified as an expert witness in a rape. I'm quoted regarding her testimony. Again, unrelated to pornography.
It appears I also show up on Ren's old blog denouncing Kyle Payne, a bogus anti-porn feminist, for committing rape, a charge on which he was tried and convicted. Again, nothing to do with porn.
The only response that seems at all close to the mark, ironically, concerns my relationship with Nina and how we met, 20 years ago, when I was an assistant director on a picture in which she appeared. She and I both agreed that her scene, as written by the producer, implied rape and that we didn't like it, so we changed the scene without his knowledge, which was the start of the friendship that led to our marriage.
That's all I got. Like I said, maybe you can help me out with this.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=ernest-greene&hl=en&emb=0&aq=f#
ReplyDeleteTry googling Ernest Greene and look for videos. Still reading your response.
Regarding research, feminist scientists have long understood that research in any endeavor is not value-free. Our response is to call for diversity in those doing the research. That way we can identify the biases in each others’ work and our blind spots. The preponderance of evidence is then that which (pardon the pun) carries the most weight. Certainly there are numerous conflicting results. The best one can do is examine the research methodology, the specific questions asked, and see which hypothesis is most strongly supported. From your response, I am sure you are educated in the philosophy of science to know that we never, ever “prove” anything. In fact, you can’t prove I exist outside your own imagination (solipsism). The scientific method is geared toward discovering that which is most likely to be true.
ReplyDeleteOf your questions, that is the most easily answered. Answering what characteristics I find objectionable is more difficult. This is for a few reasons. The first is that we are talking about a monolith. I’m quite sure there a lot out there I am clueless about. Another reason is that there are different levels of offensive.
The most blatant is the “rape fantasy.” It’s abhorrent, demeaning, and inexcusable to perpetrate the myth that women want to be raped. There may be some attraction to what a woman might misunderstand rape to be, but no one – male or female – wants to be raped. Rape is violence, not passion.
More subtle is the objectification of women. The “porn” I’ve seen portrays women as existing for the pleasure of men. Now, granted, many women might and probably do find it highly arousing to pleasure her man (or woman, for that matter). But the porn portrayal of the Stepford Bimbo is unrealistic and will give a distorted view of women’s sexuality. I am far more than a mouth or other orifice waiting “receive” a penis and it’s “load,” as it were.
Actually, let me broaden that objection: It unrealistically portrays the sexuality of both women AND men. Women are more than a handy orifice and men are more than a penis with legs. Porn is pretty demeaning to men, too, if you get right down to it.
Now, I’m not going to go all puritan on sex for the sake of sex. Me, sex outside the context of a mutually respectful, affectionate relationship holds little appeal. Does it appeal to other women? It probably does appeal to some. Hell, there might be a point in my life when it even appeals to me. Fine and good. If the “porn” portrays women as being fully functioning persons whose sexuality is only one aspect of their personhood, I’m going to put that into my erotica category.
Ok, enough for now. I’m interested in your response.
Before I respond to your longer post, I want to thank you for clearing up the mystery on the rape thing attributed to me.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I was looking in the wrong place. You were looking at Google video and I was looking for text references.
Now that i've seen what you saw, I can see what happened, but not how.
I did indeed shoot two episodes of short-lived series called Jenna Loves Pain, featuring the biggest star the industry ever knew, Jenna Jameson. They're very pretty, rather soft and thoroughly conventional BDSM videos with all-female casts and all action shown, based on a rather trite format in which Jenna voice-overs a diary she's kept of her BDSM experiences, which are all 100% voluntary and invariably shown as enjoyable sex play for all concerned.
Nothing mean or nasty in either picture, although if you find power play and BDSM inherently objectionable, you won't like it and you may not care that those who were cast in it are BDSM players in their personal lives who all claimed and seemed to be (that subjective thing again) thoroughly pleased with everything they did, all of which was meticulously negotiated with each performer before the first footage rolled.
What I DID not shoot ais the clip that goes with the title "XXX raped restrained Pornstar Jenna Jameson Loves Pain" that appears half way down the first screen. It looks like a snippet of some softcore pirate thing, but I don't recognize it at all, or anyone in it, and have no clue how my name or the name of my picture got attached to it.
Tomorrow, I'm going to see if I can find out.
This is one of the things that happens on the Web all the time that pisses off everyone I know in this business - performers, directors and producers alike. The footage from A gets stolen, passed around from one illegal downloader to the next, picks up new titles and new credits as it passes from hand to hand and then shows up just like this thing did.
I'll be on the phone to my attorney first thing. Maybe we can shame someone into taking this rotten thing down.
A question for Rachel;
ReplyDeleteYou might call me a pornographer as I've drawn my own porn pictures since forever.
I share Ernest's definition that porn is stuff produced to arouse. So we speak for example of "foot porn" to refer to pictures of feet made for the purpose of arousal by foot fetishists, even though there is noting obviously explicit, sexual, and certainly not inherently degrading or dehumanising about pictures of feet.
I also believe in Sturgeon's law: like 90% of everything, 90% of porn is crap. That's part of why I've always drawn my own. And among that crap, a lot is degrading and demeaning and unrealistic, just like 90% of the mainstream movies that come out each year demean our intelligence, glorify violence, and offer a twisted and unrealistic view of how the world in general (and relationships in particular) work.
My question to Rachel now: would it be fair to assume that what you understand by "porn" and object to is the most awful and vile portion of this 90% of crap, rather than "the medium" as such?
The reason I ask is because I do object to awful porn. But the way I try to contribute to a solution is by trying to create what I consider to be non-awful porn - in an extremely limited and modest way, of course, but I think that is, fundamentally, *the* best and only way to combat the "bad" porn.
In a way similar to how (I believe) we can only combat incivility on the internet by trying to have more civil and mature discussions. ;)
rachelcervantes said...
ReplyDelete"Now, what shall we call that genre that I protest? Degrading/demeaning/dehumanizing sexually-explicit media? DDDSEM?"
If it were me, I'd just go with something like "really degrading porn". It won't avoid any of the arguments about what's degrading and what's not, but it gets the concept across.
Ernest Greene said...
"But porn itself: simply commercially produced sexually explicit content."
What about material that isn't produced commercially? In the written and drawn stuff (my preferred flavors most of the time), there's a lot of amateur and/or small press stuff. I usually think of it as porn too.
(As for those search results, I think it's the old google magic in action. That list of names looks the same as the one for Jenna Loves Pain, so that video was probably just posted on a page that also had something from JLP posted. I've seen similar totally random things come up with google images, except there it's easy to bring up the source page to figure out why they thought, say, a picture of an old building was relevant to a search for tulips.)
rachelcervantes said...
"The most blatant is the “rape fantasy.” It’s abhorrent, demeaning, and inexcusable to perpetrate the myth that women want to be raped."
Perhaps I can address this, since I seem to end up seeing a fair amount of it regardless of what I want. (For the record, all of my examples here are in the "drawn porn" category.)
And I think very little of what I've into suggests that anyone wants to be raped. Eventually stops resisting, maybe, but actually wanting it? I can only think of one thing I've seen that even comes close, and even the characters in the story think it sounds insane. (Although they still have sex. And then the person who previously asked others to rape her goes and rapes someone else. That doesn't make sense!)
I guess there was also a story where the entire thing turned out to be the main character's dream. But fantasizing about things one wouldn't actually want to do isn't that unusual, although I don't do it myself.
"If the “porn” portrays women as being fully functioning persons whose sexuality is only one aspect of their personhood"
This is something I've had trouble figuring out before, but I'm not sure if I can explain it properly.
Well, at least as far as porn produced by the American industry, a lot of it's just sex. Sometimes there's a story, but it's usually nothing worth the effort. (I'm led to believe Japanese porn does this better in at least some cases, but as I don't speak the language this is hard to verify.)
If porn only shows the sexual aspect of a person... that kind of makes sense, as porn is typically only showing sex. This does not seem to me inherently different than watching a concert and only being shown the musical aspect of a person. But musicians are assumed to have lives (whether the accursed paparazzi will leave them to it or not). But when it comes to porn, there seems to be this idea that anything not shown doesn't exist. It doesn't make sense to me, and I've never gotten a clear explanation as to what they feel it would take to accomplish what seems like a a fairly redundant goal, or if you can in fact do it at all under the heading of just recording people having sex.
Well, this thread didn't take long to develop a life of its own, and I appreciate its constructive tone so far. My one concern here is that we already have enough tangents going to spawn a dozen other threads and I'd like to try and maintain some focus in addressing Rachel's questions, which was my original intent here. I don't control the dialog, and don't seek to, but don't want that objective to get lost.
ReplyDeleteTherefore, I'll clarify a couple of other points raised and then get back to Rachel's first responses as quickly as possible.
First, to WL (sorry for abbreviating screen names, but it saves characters and these responses have a hard ceiling).
Amateur porn made strictly as a hobby is still porn in the broader definition of sexually explicit material intended to arouse, but if it's not commercially distributed it falls outside the controversy over pornography and society at large, which is inextricably interwoven with commercial dissemination. Even many antis make grudging exceptions for hobbyist porn. It's a fair point to raise, but I don't think that's where the differences of opinion really lie.
Eli - same-same with illustrated and written porn for personal use. And I agree with the 90% crap assessment. I work uphill against it every day and hope before we get done here to identify some of the obstacles to that climb.
One day, if I get out of here alive, Nina and I joke about the might tome I'll write entitled "Must Porn Suck?"
Personally, I don't think it has to, but I don't deny that most of it does. And the frustrating part of it is that this is so not because we can do no better, or because those directly involved in making it just don't care, but rather because the system of commercial production is a Rube Goldberg device that, while it evolved on its own, couldn't handicap attempts to improve the product more efficiently if that were its actual goal.
There is, as we know, amateur and/or indie porn made outside the system that manages to find its way into commercial distribution, but that is a niche market and, again, not the thing over which people argue.
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteBefore we proceed to your long post, I noticed earlier a shorter comment regarding BDSM that has now vanished. I'm going to make the inductive leap, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong I'm sure, and suggest that you took it down because it opens a whole other topic that could take us away from our more general discussion. If so, I'm relieved because I think we have plenty of other stuff to consider with broader implications.
However, so you know where I'm coming from, I feel I should disclose that about 80% of the porn I'v made in my 25 year career is BDSM-related. That is my personal sexual orientation and portraying it as I experience it, which is overwhelmingly positively, was one of my goals in abandoning a mainstream film career to work in this medium. I felt the subject had been disasterously misrepresented in the only medium where it was represented at all, that being porn, and that something needed to be done about it. I like to think I've moved the line on that a bit.
Ironically, the balance of my work has been in the making of instructional videos with Nina on a wide variety of subjects and practices. We've made almost fifty such videos under the Nina Hartley's Guides umbrella and while you might have issues with some of the practices we've chosen to address over the ten year run of this million-selling series, I suspect even you would find their manner of presentation more or less acceptable. Each begins with a detailed 20 minute discussion among Nina and the performers of issues surrounding the specific techniques to be demonstrated, followed by a visual presentation with narration covering the techniques in detail and rounded out with an idealized "fantasy scene" illustrating how the techniques can be integrated into a satisfying, mutual experience for those wishing to try them.
By the time these are done, I don't think anyone would disagree that we've established the individuality of the personalities involved or dealt with the questions we've raised.
So there you have it. My own work ranges from that you might find most prolbematic to that you might find least, with very little in between.
If at the end of the broader conversation you still feel like taking on the woolly BDSM porn thicket, I'll start a new thread just for that. It deserves it, but not at the expense of derailing this one.
Ernest, I prefer Ren tell you privately why I asked that it be removed. I do not want the reason on the open board.
ReplyDeleteNow,I need to take a couple days away from this. It's a bit intense and I have a lot of "real life" happening. But I'll return in 48 to 72 hours. Deal?
Rachel,
ReplyDelete"The most blatant is the “rape fantasy.” It’s abhorrent, demeaning, and inexcusable to perpetrate the myth that women want to be raped. There may be some attraction to what a woman might misunderstand rape to be, but no one – male or female – wants to be raped. Rape is violence, not passion."
No argument with the latter premise, which is beyond dispute, but around the issue of fantasy we have a profound difference of opinon. I have never made a video built on such a fantasy and don't imagine I ever will.
Mainly because of legal concerns, rape fantasies are virtually non-existent in mainstream commercial porn. Though I personally believe that the fictional depiction of a rape fantasy should not be off-limits, and deplore the fact that two people i know are sitting in jail right now for creating such a fictional depiction in which no rape took place, the real myth here is that such depictions are wide-spread in porn.
If you define rape as Gail Dines does, then all porn is rape. But if you define rape as the infliction of sex acts on an uniwlling person through the use of force, which is pretty much the legal standard, there is next to none in domestically produced commercial porn.
In written fiction and some kinds of illustrated material, these fantasies get some play, but in video and internet porn, we're talking unicorns here.
So the first thing you single out is essentially a myth-based objection. Rape porn does exist in some other societies. It's popular in Japan and not completely invisible in Europe. But here, I'd be surprised if you could find an example of forced intercourse in commercially distributed American porn.
If you don't believe me, I think it's incumbent on you to produce some evidence. And by evidence, I don't mean the kind of "evidence" used in the anti-porn survey cited at tedious length in The Price of Pleasure that defines consensual spanking as violence. I believe in sticking to common sense interpretations of language, so unless you're talking about forced intercourse, you're changing the subject, not establishing a fact.
It is a common feminist claim that such material is widespread, but that claim is simply false. The hard number here is so close to zero as to defy finer quantification.
Just as it is a fact that no one really wants to be raped, it is also a fact that many women and men fantasize about forced sex, though in their fantasies, it always involves the perfect partner and the ideal set of circumstances, resulting in no harm to anyone.
Wishing that people didn't have these fantasies, or insisting that they're socially constructed and wouldn't exist in a more evolved society, does not will them away. Shaming women for having them, of which I have read countless examples on feminist blogs and in feminist literature, only isolates the women who have the fantasies and are well aware of the difference between what gets them hot as an idea and what would be horrific as a reality. I don't think their fantasies grow out of misinformation. I credit both men and women with the ability to differentiate fantasy from reality and don't see this as a borderline in need of policing by outsiders.
Nor do I think that a depiction of a clearly-identified rape fantasy, such as is common in romance novels marketed almost exclusively to female audiences, perpetuates the myth that women want to be raped.
What statistics exist regarding availability of all types of porn and the incidence of rape shows there to be less rape in porn-tolerant societies than in those that vigorously repress porn. Correlation is not causation and I think there are other, more important reasons for this ambiguous statistical reality, but it certainly doesn't support the idea that porn availability of any sort produces an increase in sexual violence.
Moving right along:
ReplyDelete"More subtle is the objectification of women. The “porn” I’ve seen portrays women as existing for the pleasure of men."
I would call that a highly subjective measure. The porn I've seen shows men and women enjoying a variety of different kinds of sexual behavior together. You may not find what they're doing enjoyable to watch, or be able to imagine enjoying it yourself in real life, but both male and female performers manifest (not always convincingly) pleasure in what they're doing. It never ceases to amaze me that this is not evident to those who view porn through the blinkered vision of sexual politics. You've got people, male and female, in a room having sex and enjoying it. That the male orgasm is more visible than the female orgasm does not mean that both aren't portrayed.
There are sub-genres of porn, to be sure, in which the power dynamic puts male pleasure ahead of female pleasure, and we could argue about those, but in the main, porn's idea about sex is that it's fun for all parties involved.
"Now, granted, many women might and probably do find it highly arousing to pleasure her man (or woman, for that matter). But the porn portrayal of the Stepford Bimbo is unrealistic and will give a distorted view of women’s sexuality. I am far more than a mouth or other orifice waiting “receive” a penis and it’s “load,” as it were."
Here I have to blow the ref's whistle. The term "stepford bimbo" is an insulting cliche. Porn performers are human beings. We know that and you're supposed to. Their appearances may be as "unrealistic" as the apperances of entertainers in Cirque du Soleil, but entertainers are idealized, not objectified, by the personae they adopt for work. So lets have no more Stepford Bimbos references, please. You're talking about women I know as friends and colleagues.
And BTW, most men don't have ten-inch penises, but I don't consider the men who work with me freaks, nor do I feel threatened by what they have that I lack.
As for giving a distorted idea of women's sexuality, I have to wonder who sets the standard for that and how it's defined. Women's sexuality varies widely by individual. I would say that the sexuality in porn is not unrealistic for a self-selected minority of men and women who are professional sex entertainers, and therefore just a bit more likely to be somewhat extreme in their taste for unusual sex practices and for sexual exhbitiionism than the population at large.
Like professional athletes, who sex performers tend to resemble both physically and psychologically in my fairly wide experience of both, those who perform in porn know they are presenting idealized portrayals of activities that are not meant to be duplicated at home. Again, I give the audience credit for knowing this too. I've seen the anecdotal testimony - gobs of it - that maintains otherwise and I think it's hogwash ginned up for afternoon TV during sweeps week.
I don't look much like Tiger Woods and can't play at any level approaching his, but I can still enjoy a round of golf without feeling insecure because I can't match the pros.
As for the recognition that you, like every other human being are more than the some of your anatomical parts, again, I think both pornographers and porn viewers get that. But in porn, the subject is anatomy, not romance. You may argue that it is an ugly, vulgar, literal medium, but that is a matter of taste, not politics. Sexually explicit depictions are explicitly about sex as a physical phenomenon. You've already stated that you do not view that as inherently harmful, so what is the problem with purely literal portrayals of sex in isolation from other matters that does not apply equally to sports?
So far, we seem to be disputing matters of personal preference rather than matters of fact. De gustibus non est disputandum.
"Now, I’m not going to go all puritan on sex for the sake of sex. Me, sex outside the context of a mutually respectful, affectionate relationship holds little appeal. Does it appeal to other women? It probably does appeal to some. Hell, there might be a point in my life when it even appeals to me. Fine and good. If the “porn” portrays women as being fully functioning persons whose sexuality is only one aspect of their personhood, I’m going to put that into my erotica category."
ReplyDeleteIt's clear to me that you haven't seen much story-driven feature porn, but rather have viewed sex scenes in isolation, or in the context of all-sex productions.
You made the rather startling assertion upthread that we're dealing with a monolith. Hardly. Though porn haters furiously deny this, there is vast variety in the thousands of porn titles produced every year, ranging from Candida Royalle's romanticized, woman-centered features to John Stagliano's all-anal-sex extravaganzas.
People tend to find what they're looking for, and in that way porn is something of a rohrshach test. If all you see are snippets of hardcore footage, which is what porn critics tend to see because that's what's cherry-picked for them by those who want to give a certain narrow impression of a huge and complex phenomenon, you may conclude that nothing else exists but what we call "hydraulics."
Were you to see, for example, my picture Surrender of O, though I'm sure you'd find the BDSM content problematic at best, you'd also see that half its three hour running time is deovted to action and dialog that, while revolving around sex, is very much about the personal dramas of the characters involved, who are a mass of contradictions, some likable and some not. Given that porn performers are physical players more akin to athletes and dancers, as already stated, than classically trained actors, I think they acquit themselve admirably at rendering the compliexities of the characters they play.
I never thought of myself as a maker of erotica, which I consider a somewhat presumptuous description of my labors, at least if I'm the one offering it, I suppose you might say that's what I am by the criteria you establish.
I still don't think you'd like my piictures, and if the erotica thing got around, it might ruin my reputation, but this does point up the definitional problem that brings us full circle.
So far, what I've answered are propositions, granted at my own instigation, not questions. I'd rather address the latter. You seem to think you know a lot about porn but from what you've said so far, I think your perspective seems pretty limited and I would feel I was being more useful in addressing the processes by which porn is created, where we might actually find some agreement.
However, I will go on to deal with broad social constructs like "bad modeling" (a particular bette noir of mine) if that's where you want to take this.
"Ernest, I prefer Ren tell you privately why I asked that it be removed. I do not want the reason on the open board.
ReplyDeleteNow,I need to take a couple days away from this. It's a bit intense and I have a lot of "real life" happening. But I'll return in 48 to 72 hours. Deal?"
Sorry, missed this while posting. No problem. I'll be here.
s'cuse me while I quote myself:
ReplyDelete"For eons now, or at least since the early seventies, it seems as if there has been an endless debate going on about what makes something art, what makes something erotica, and what makes something porn. For a long time, I’ve held forth a very simple way of determining that. Both art and erotica can have nudity…but if your shit is spread and you have a cock or other object shoved in you somewhere…it’s porn. It can be artistic, but it’s porn. Art and erotica can be suggestive, but if a works sole or primary purpose is to make cocks hard or cunts wet? PORN."
http://renegadeevolution.blogspot.com/2009/01/here-have-some-spleen.html
And I stand by that :)
For me, I don't find the definitions of "pornography" that have "harmful" built into the definition to be useful. I think that when we do that, the discussion is over before it begins. No one actually wants to see anyone being harmed.
ReplyDeleteSome people do have violent fantasies, and that's a whole other topic. Personally my view is that many people can differentiate fantasizing about violence from real violence and would not wish real violence on anyone. But I want to put that bit aside for now because I think being on the same page about a basic definition is necessary before getting into the thorny questions about whether depicting the uncomfortable stuff is OK or not.
What I do think pornography is is material that has as a primary aim to arouse people. I include all kinds of things here: videos, stories, drawings, art. I think one of the things humans make is material to excite one another. Some of this stuff is gross. Some of it is high quality. Some of it is weird. Some of it, the stuff that people are usually talking about when they worry about the harms of porn, is filmed sex that involves people playing roles of some kind. The stuff people tend to get most upset about is even more specific: made by a large and (somewhat, anyway) mainstream industry, which adds concerns about profit motive, concerns about playing to certain audiences even if producing what those audiences like is dangerous or demeaning, etc. But I don't think "pornography" refers only to the things that industry produces -- much less to the most hardcore or most disturbing or out-there things it does.
I think a broad definition like the one I give is necessary because if you don't use a broad one, you run the risk of suggesting, say, that anything filmed is harmful when you haven't got strong enough evidence for the claim all of it is.
Or you run the risk of creating distinctions between media designed to arouse without defending your distinction strongly enough. I don't really, for example, understand the distinction people make between "porn" and "erotica." If we just say that "erotica" is anything non-exploitative, yes, we have a distinction, but that still doesn't give us any rubric yet for determining which things exploit and which do not.
And I personally am leery of the idea that particular acts exploit. There are many sex acts I personally don't care for and don't want to see depicted, but I don't feel confident, personally, about asserting that they are degrading.
For example, I don't really like seeing bodily fluids, so I can definitely understand some women's feeling that "money shots" or whatever one wants to call them are degrading. But at the same time, I don't feel at all sure they are inherently degrading, because I know that part of my dislike of them simply comes from the fact that I don't like anything messy. Gooey things kind of ick me out and I don't like looking at them. I get grossed out by commercials for tomato sauces that feature cute kids with sauce smeared on their faces. So I honestly don't know if I tend not to like seeing semen on someone because I feel there's something wrong with it inherently, or because my gut reaction is "Yecch, sticky!" without the mitigating factor of, say, enjoying my own partner's emissions because evidence of his pleasure is more important than my mess squick.
Because I know this about myself and because I enjoy other things about pornographic photos or films, I generally shrug off the messy bits I don't like. Is it possible I'm reacting to degradation and not "sticky, eww!" I suppose it is. But like I said, I don't feel sure I could assert that, and it bothers me when people tell me they know better than I do what really makes me not like something, as some strident anti-porn folk do when they assert things like "any woman knows what demeans her."
"For example, I don't really like seeing bodily fluids, so I can definitely understand some women's feeling that "money shots" or whatever one wants to call them are degrading. But at the same time, I don't feel at all sure they are inherently degrading, because I know that part of my dislike of them simply comes from the fact that I don't like anything messy."
ReplyDeleteI do, but that's beside the point, which I guess is about the question of whether or not ejaculating on someone is degrading. As always, props to you for not making it all about your reaction to something.
Frankly, I don't think outdoor pops are degrading and I know most performers absolutely agree. A porn scene is a job, not a date. It's work with someone who you don't know in an intimate way and aren't required to. That external pop think keeps the moment at some distance so it remains a performance.
But beyond that, the external pop is an additional margin of safety for sex workers.
The irony is that it's life-saving. For about ten years before we had regular HIV testing in porn, there were no condoms used at all and the epidemic was raging. Why didn't more women die as a result?
I've had this conversation with Sharon Mitchell and Nina and many other survivors of that era and we all agree that the lack of internal ejaculations was the thing that saved any number of female performers' lives. The last time we had an outbreak of HIV back in 2004, two of the three women infected on the job were infected by internal ejaculations, which had become a sort of fad that, I hope, has largely passed as a result.
But of course, as we all know, external pop shots model bad behavior for real couples in the real world, and what are the lives of a few performers when compared to bad modeling that might result in the women whose lives matter feeling "pressured" to do something degrading?
This is what I mean when I say I want to talk about the realities of making porn, not people's vast social theories about its impact on those who don't have anything to do with it and can just as easily avoid it and those who consume it if they want.
Ernest Greene said...
ReplyDelete"Amateur porn made strictly as a hobby is still porn in the broader definition of sexually explicit material intended to arouse, but if it's not commercially distributed it falls outside the controversy over pornography and society at large, which is inextricably interwoven with commercial dissemination."
I think I understand what you're saying, but I'm not entirely sure I agree. There's some things that really only apply to large-scale commercial porn. But while it would not discomfit me greatly if all commercially produced porn were to abruptly disappear, I don't think it'd take long for the more rabidly anti-porn to turn to whatever's left.
"But in porn, the subject is anatomy, not romance."
Personally, I like romance with my porn. Part of why I'm less into live action stuff really.
Trinity said...
"There are many sex acts I personally don't care for and don't want to see depicted, but I don't feel confident, personally, about asserting that they are degrading."
There's something I ran into a while back that sort of made me rethink a number of things, mostly related to consent, but I think part of it might apply to this.
Personally, I've never been bothered by 'money shots', though sometimes they interested me and sometimes not. Eventually I figured out that I just liked seeing people wet, as long as it's not messy or dirty. But it doesn't seem like it'd really do much for the person being ejaculated on; it's entirely for the benefit of the observer. (Whether that's one's partner or the person watching a video.) And part of the argument about it degrading seemed to be that it was basically a pointless act. That didn't really feel quite right to me, but I wasn't really sure how to explain it.
Until I started reading about asexuality. I found many interesting things, among them descriptions of asexual/sexual romances. In some cases the asexual partner, while not being interested in sex themselves, will do sexual things with the sexual partner, because it makes their partner happy. People in love can do nice things for each other.
And if that can apply to having sex at all, why not to minor things as well?
but if it's not commercially distributed it falls outside the controversy over pornography and society at large
ReplyDeleteWhile this may be true about the controversy, the fallout of any broad and vague censorious legislation *will* also affect non-commercial porn, and teenagers putting their photos on myspace, etc.
Neil Gaiman wrote some insightful things on that topic here.
WRT to anti's and "big time" porn production...
ReplyDeleteI've been in and made some video. I draw smut, a small bit of which was once put in a big time smut company magazine. I write over the top out there fiction with graphic sex in it...none of it pulished. I have done cam work for a "big company".
I am in no way "big time"...yet I have been called everything in the book, threatened and all kinds of other nice things.
In this case, as it were, size does not matter. I am open about what I do, and what I like. That seems to be enough to draw serious fire. The fact that my whole "porn opperation" amounts to pretty much me makes no difference at all.
All true about amateur or small-scale porn being stigmatized, its creators facing various personal consequences, etc.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, legally, if small-scale operators manage to get on the legal radar, they're more likely to be prosecuted than big companies because they're less able to defend themselves and thus are forced to plead out and accept convictions. This makes prosecutors look like they're winning a few.
And there's also that business of prosecuting kids for sexting and other preposterous overreaching by LE to hammer people who don't even think of what they do as porn-related.
We've even had our first conviction in decades over written-word porn in the Karen Fletcher case.
However, the national debate over porn is still centered on the porn industry. Much of the hostility toward porn, particularly on the left, is cloaked in the mantle of opposing a vast, exploitative cartel of "pornstitution."
Thus the argument is two-pronged - against the content itself and against the way the product is made.
While the former is a major concern regardless of scale, the latter is directed primarily at producers of mass-market porn.
The fact is that no kind of porn, regardless of who makes it, what's in it or how it gets distributed, can be considered even remotely safe, either from unwarranted denunciation or legal consequences.
It's worth noting that of the 80-plus pornography prosecution convictions boasted of by Brent Ward's DOJ under Bush, all but three involved individuals far from mainstream porn who were forced to plead out in order to avoid jail.
Sorry for any misunderstanding I created there.
I've run into a bit of a problem. While I appreciate the opportunity to have this conversation, I simply don't have the time right now to do it justice. That's the flat-out honest truth. I realize some folks will think I'm retreating but I can’t help that.
ReplyDeleteI can’t address all the points raised but I will summarize my position. It’s true I’ve not seen much porn in the last 20 years. Why would one spend much time examining something one doesn’t like, after all? What I have seen shows a rather odd view of women’s sexuality (as I briefly described above).
BDSM is a whole different ballgame. Portrayals of women wanting to be hurt is a serious problem for me. It’s quite clear that modeling certain behaviors increases performance of those behaviors. (The classic demonstration of this is the famous Bobo doll studies done decades ago.) Granted, normal, healthy adults will not run out and start hurting women because they saw bdsm modeled. But, you know what…there are an awful lot of sickos out there. There is no question those people are vulnerable to such modeling. Let’s say it leads to 1000 women being hurt because of such exposure. Is that enough reason call bdsm porn problematic? Or 100 women? Or 10 women?
Sexually explicit media in itself does not bother me. Women shown as objects, degraded or debased bothers me. Let me pose this question: How much porn includes this sort of portrayal?
Finally, what about the women who say they were engaged in making porn against their will either by outright force or even subtle coercion?
So, regretfully, I can’t spend much more time with this. I do appreciate the opportunity to engage in the discussion. I still and always will dislike women shown as debased, degraded or exploited. I will continue to voice my objections. I suppose you could count me among the anti-porn crowd, but my tactics and approach are different from the anti-porn crusaders. I see no need to cast sex-workers or pornographers as the enemy. I see no need to attack. In fact, I’m going to lay my cards on the table here. I believe that if we maintain cordial relationships, I might actually say something someday that gets heard and might make a tiny difference. And, I might learn something myself. In fact, I’ll spend some time considering the comments on this thread as I’m not through processing them as yet. You see, I’m willing to entertain the thought that I may be wrong about some things. Are you?
Besides, I like Ren. She makes me laugh and has some fine qualities. (And I’m too afraid of her not to..LOL!)
Ernest, how about this? You recommend one porn film to me to review and I'll see if I can sit through it. Then, I'll post a critique (IF I can get through it).
ReplyDeleteHi Rachel,
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry you don't have time for this discussion, I really hope you haven't been made to feel forced to "retreat"... :(
If you would still happen to find time to elaborate, there are two things that bother me a little about your explanation; it seems to me you started out by defining porn as "problematic" (if it's not problematic you don't consider it porn) so when you ask "when is problematic porn problematic?" I'm puzzled where you're going with that. Problematic porn is obviously problematic; the problem is we have a lot of opinions but few objective measures to determine where on the merit-vs-demerit scale any particular work is located.
Secondly, what is implied when you say that certain porn is problematic? I mean, I don't really get a sense of what you think should be done about the 'problematic' porn...
OK, even though I'm not really part of this conversation, I am one of the bloggers here, and I do think there are points that deserve response. Notably this:
ReplyDelete"Let’s say it leads to 1000 women being hurt because of such exposure. Is that enough reason call bdsm porn problematic? Or 100 women? Or 10 women?"
I've raised this argument before, but I'll raise it again. It is *known* that alcohol consumption has public health effects. (And I'll note that these are *far* better established than is the case with pornography.) Drunk driving, violent acts committed in a disinhibited state, long-term problems health problems caused by overconsumption, and the rest of it. However, we have chosen as a society not to prohibit the consumption of alcohol. In and of itself, alcohol consumption is not even socially discouraged, and there is no serious movement to either prohibit alcohol nor to alter social norms to encourage mass teetotaling.
Instead, the burden is placed on alcohol consumers to use alcohol responsibly, and actions like driving drunk or abusing somebody while drunk carry stiff penalties. Increasingly, being drunk is not considered a mitigating circumstance for such behavior.
One could argue that a blanket alcohol prohibition would be more effective in lowering the rate of alcohol-fueled social problems, and that by not doing so, we are allowing for a certain degree of harm and even death as "acceptable losses". However, one must balance this against the very real costs of prohibition – the increase in crime that came about during Prohibition related to the illegal alcohol trade, plus the very real infringement on individual rights toward a majority who consume alcohol and harm no one. (One can make many of the same arguments concerning the present marijuana prohibition.) Prohibition has its costs and losses too. How acceptable are they?
In general, I find this line of "precautionary principle" argument to be a very weak one – that is, if you can find *any* degree of harm that can be linked back to a particular product or factor, that is a reason for either prohibiting or at least strongly discouraging its consumption. And yet the baseline of "zero harm" is non-existent for practically anything you care to look at. Allow the free exercise of religion and you'll end up with a small percentage of violent fanatics. Allow the consumption of fatty foods and there will be a certain number of heart attack cases that will come out of it.
Again, why pornography is so dangerous that it needs to be clamped down on in a way that other forms of expression or other products are not is a case that has not been effectively established in anti-pornography arguments.
winter_lights writes:
ReplyDelete"'But in porn, the subject is anatomy, not romance.'
Personally, I like romance with my porn. Part of why I'm less into live action stuff really."
I actually think there are several porn producers and genres in live action porn that do go heavier on romance than most. One would be the admittedly small niche of porn oriented toward heterosexual women, notably Candida Royalle's films. Another would be the often-disrespected "girl-girl" porn genre (lesbian porn aimed generally at heterosexual men), notably Viv Thomas, Abby Winters, Girlfriends Films, and the like.
At least, depending on how you define "romance" in movies. If you mean the partners seem into each other and show a great deal of affection, and there's at least some "set up" for why the characters are together, that kind of porn is definitely out there. If you mean elaborate plot line establishing the ins and outs of the characters relationship – then you're up against porn budgets, performer acting ability, etc, and that would be something that's hard to find even in most feature porn.
Eli, I really don't know what should be done. I wish I did. I was sincerely asking a question when I wrote that.
ReplyDeleteYou see, I am willing to listen to what people have to say on the matter. I simply don't have time or inclination to engage in debate (which Curious Blue seems to think my goal was, by the way).
Again, thanks to those of you who took the time to discuss the issue.
As a former film critic for Adult Video News, I can make recommendations for progressive porn films, Rachel.
ReplyDeleteBack in the 1990s, I moderated panels at the Socialist Scholars Conference at which Nina spoke. My list was called, "Progressive Pornography on Video: A List of Lust for the Politically Correct".
Prominent on the list was Debbie Duz Dishes (Nina's first big hit), Shades of Ecstacy (Hal Freeman's socialist porn film) and just about the entire oevre of Candida Royalle's Femme Productions.
I haven't updated the list in years, but I would include all of Nian's How-To series and lots of the shows made by Girlfriends, Abigail, Abby Winters, Sweetheart, Viv Thomas, LezLove and Greystone, which specializes in same-sex kissing.
So I have given you some specific titles as well as companies. If your local video outlet doesn't have them, remember: Google is your friend.
Sheldon said:
ReplyDelete"Back in the 1990s, I moderated panels at the Socialist Scholars Conference"
Wow – I had no idea. How did you get that gig?
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteI'm going to give it some thought, and will respond when I have the time regarding your concerns specific to BDSM porn, about which I feel quite passionately, and quite passionately believe that you're ideas about it are wrong and that you're asking the wrong questions about it.
Otherwise, as I started this thread with the intention of providing information for you and anyone sharing your overall views who might have a genuine interest in that information, I see no reason to invest much more time in a thread that will be old news to everyone here otherwise.
It seems you're pretty set in your ideas on this whole topic anyway, and I doubt anything I say will make much difference, so this entire exercise appears increasingly to have been a waste of time.
As for suggesting something for you to watch, I think not. It seems pretty clear from what you've said already that nothing I propose will be persuasive.
Now I'm going to lay my cards on the table. If this was an example of an attempt to open dialog between opposing camps with the idea of arriving at some common ground, it illustrated nothing so much as the impossibility of such a thing and the futility of the effort.
As I said at the beginning, I think you're clearly a reasonable and well-intentioned individual, unlike many of those you consider allies in this matter, and if this is the best I can hope for with you, why would I bother at all?
Nothing personal, but we're on opposite sides and nothing either of us says is going to change that.
As promised, more on the BDSM thing, which is so clearly wrong-headed it has to be addressed for the benefit of other readers, but beyond that, I think we're done here.
And I'll also spare a moment for yet another reply to those half dozen "ex porn performers" and their complaints, as despite the fact that they number so few after forty years of legalized pornography, they get disproportionate attention and something needs to be said about that.
You gave me no specific examples of such claims to work with, so I'll have to address that topic in a very general and probably not very useful way, but I don't intend to duck the question.
All that remains is the sense of puzzlement I feel at having started with this whole thing in the first place.
Ernest, you know what's strange is that I'm feeling the same way. I'm feeling kind of frustrated and impotent (no pun intended). I had no intention of trying to change your mind, but rather being open to the beginning of a dialog. I think what's most frustrating is I feel a real pressure to come over to the other side. Maybe that's coming from me, but I'm feeling that me changing my feelings is the only acceptable outcome to you.
ReplyDeleteWhat I think is happening is that because of your past experiences with anti-porn crusaders you are hyper-sensitive to anyone who is anti-porn. I would be, I suspect, and I think I'm seeing that in the pro-porn folks too. I am feeling like opening a dialog and taking baby steps is not enough for you.
I have not shared your experiences so this is not a criticism. Rather, it is with some regret that I come to this conclusion. I could learn from you, and I think you from me, but the gulf is too wide, past histories too ... fraught with rancor to allow a bridge.
But, thank you for making the attempt.
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteFor the record, I never thought you'd change your fundamental opinions, had no interest in changing them and any pressure you may feel toward that end I suspect may be projective. I would have been satisfied with a fair hearing and, as usual, I didn't get one.
All I ever intended to do was be informative. Perhaps my mistake lay in suggesting that you raise your objections first, so this thread ended up being about your objections, rather than about facts relating to the realities of pornography.
I absolutely do not care, even a little bit, what you think about porn. I do care how you and others think about it. Informed disagreement is one thing. Disagreement based on unsupported preconceptions is another. You struck me as someone who might be open to receiving some accurate information and who might challenge others to base their arguments in fact. I still think that's true in the broad sense, but clearly not where pornography is concerned.
I don't consider myself hyper-sensitive for taking grave exception to the falsehoods routinely spread about me and what I do and the ugly way in which they're stated. That is a perfectly normal response to the viciousness of others. I don't think I've demonstrated hyper-sensitivity here and I reject that charge as unfair in the same way I reject the charge that I wouldn't be satisfied unless you came to agree with me.
Anyway, enough said. We're done.
How did I not give you a fair hearing?
ReplyDelete"I think what's most frustrating is I feel a real pressure to come over to the other side. Maybe that's coming from me, but I'm feeling that me changing my feelings is the only acceptable outcome to you."
ReplyDeleteI kind of think that is coming from you, actually. I'm not so vain that I think a short discussion is going to change somebody's mind who's very invested in opposing pornography or certain types of sexuality. I think part of the reason debates about porn are so polarizing is that they are based on some very deep-seated positions on how one feels about one's own sexuality and that of other people, one's fears, desires, overall social values, etc, and simple discussion of facts only goes so far in this regard.
Nevertheless, you do routinely throw out facts and arguments about porn that, I think, have some very straightforward answers. Why shouldn't these points be addressed? Unfortunately, my experience with you is that you're very quick to read this as personal attack and, well, that's your issue, not mine. I have no idea what your life experience is – maybe you've just had too many experiences of men talking down to you and are hyper-defensive – I don't know.
I will say that I'm glad you at least attempted dialogue with someone here, because usually the few anti-porn feminists who come by here aren't interested in dialog at all, but simply about talking *at* us and making accusations. "You do this/You are that." I think its safe to say that "Fuck that noise" is the universal response to this on the part of bloggers here.
So I'm glad that somebody from the other side is sking some actual questions, but its a pity you feel so attacked when someone has some simple answers.
(Interesting coincidence - while doing a little googling about this, I found some commentary written by Nina Hartley...)
ReplyDeleteNow that I've gotten some sleep, something more to the point about the "degrading" thing. As far as I can tell, there's no way to even come close to defining it objectively. That doesn't make it worthless, it's still a term people can use to describe how the feel about something and have people know what you mean. But I don't see any way to take it further than that.
Different people can view the same basic act in very different ways. Is someone really being degraded if they don't view themselves as being so? And then there's people who like that sort of thing, or so I'm led to believe. There's even the possibility of partnerships where one person finds something degrading and another doesn't, but both are happy with the situation. And in porn, if one person watches something and thinks it's degrading, and one watches it and doesn't, which one is right? (And either of those people could like or dislike the actual act portrayed.) How can one make policy on something like this?
As far as I can tell, the argument usually comes back to the issue of templating anyway - the worry that people watching porn will think that certain behavior is normal, and will go on to mimic that behavior and/or expect others to do so, with potentially disastrous consequences. I have several reasons for not thinking that's an issue.
1. Porn which models behavior that would be considered the most dangerous (hard BDSM, for instance) is actually not that common. That's not to say someone can't stumble across it by accident, but it's going to be mixed in with all sorts of other porn.
2. There are very few ubiquitous behaviors in porn. (About the only thing that comes to mind is the whole ejaculation thing. And even that will usually not appear in all-female porn.)
1 and 2. If the porn someone consumes is homogenous enough that it could lead them to start making assumptions about other people's likes and dislikes, it's probably already too late. The only likely reason for such homogeneity is that they've decided they're solidly into that particular fetish, and any behavioral effects are already set in stone.
To put it another way, I think people generally don't imitate what they see in porn, they seek out porn that imitates what they already want to do. (I think that can even apply to things one hasn't actually heard of. There's one thing that I really like that once I discovered it, I realized that I was looking for something like it all along, and could see the traces in which close-but-not-quite things I liked and disliked.)
rachelcervantes said...
"Finally, what about the women who say they were engaged in making porn against their will either by outright force or even subtle coercion?"
This, on the other hand, is a simple question. The people doing the forcing or coercing should be taken out and shot.
"If you mean elaborate plot line establishing the ins and outs of the characters relationship"
ReplyDeleteMore this really. That's why I'm more into things like erotic fan fiction and animation. In fan material, even if not a lot of time is spent on setup (and sometimes there is), there's the original story to draw on. And from what I've seen the creators of erotic animation are generally willing to spend more time on things other than sex even if sex is the point of the exercise.
I guess instead of saying romance (although I'm quite fond of that), it'd be more accurate to say that before I can really get too interested in watching people have sex, I have to have some other reason to be interested in them.
"To put it another way, I think people generally don't imitate what they see in porn, they seek out porn that imitates what they already want to do."
ReplyDeleteYes, this point exactly.
"This, on the other hand, is a simple question. The people doing the forcing or coercing should be taken out and shot."
And that. Though, thankfully, coerced porn is a great deal more rare than its made out to be by antiporn sources.
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteThis is a big, complicated subject that needs lengthy, fact-based discussion to be understood outside the context of any one person's political opinions.
We got right into political opinions and none of the specific knowledge or insight gained from 25 years of doing this made it onto the thread.
You made your opinions known and then made it clear you had no further time or energy to invest here.
I don't consider that being given a fair hearing.
It's not personal and I don't want to carry on about it. And I'm not joining in the general recriminations over who said or did what. It's not that important.
It's just sadly symbolic of the way people talk past each other when it comes to porn.
Knowing that I've made five hundred+ pictures and been doing this for most of the time it's been legal, if I considered the subject of porn interesting at all, and labeled myself a scientific thinker, I'd have about a million questions to ask of someone with that kind of experience.
Since those questions weren't asked, I didn't get to answer them, and I've always wanted to so do for someone who didn't necessarily agree with my stance on the subject, but did want to know from someone with direct knowledge whether or not certain things I'd heard were true. For a minute, we seemed to be going that way, but the minute passed very quickly.
I was prepared to put some work into this and didn't get the chance. That's why I feel I wasn't given a fair hearing.
And if not from you, I don't expect I'll ever get one from anybody who identifies as anti-porn. That is intended as a compliment, and also as a lament. I hope you'll accept it in the spirit intended.
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteThis is a big, complicated subject that needs lengthy, fact-based discussion to be understood outside the context of any one person's political opinions.
We got right into political opinions and none of the specific knowledge or insight gained from 25 years of doing this made it onto the thread.
You made your opinions known and then made it clear you had no further time or energy to invest here.
I don't consider that being given a fair hearing.
It's not personal and I don't want to carry on about it. And I'm not joining in the general recriminations over who said or did what. It's not that important.
It's just sadly symbolic of the way people talk past each other when it comes to porn.
Knowing that I've made five hundred+ pictures and been doing this for most of the time it's been legal, if I considered the subject of porn interesting at all, and labeled myself a scientific thinker, I'd have about a million questions to ask of someone with that kind of experience.
Since those questions weren't asked, I didn't get to answer them, and I've always wanted to so do for someone who didn't necessarily agree with my stance on the subject, but did want to know from someone with direct knowledge whether or not certain things I'd heard were true. For a minute, we seemed to be going that way, but the minute passed very quickly.
I was prepared to put some work into this and didn't get the chance. That's why I feel I wasn't given a fair hearing.
And if not from you, I don't expect I'll ever get one from anybody who identifies as anti-porn. That is intended as a compliment, and also as a lament. I hope you'll accept it in the spirit intended.
Don't know what happened with that double post. Sometimes it just does that. Sorry for repeating myself, even if unintentionally.
ReplyDeleteNow, about this coercion thing and everyone's desire to shoot somebody over it.
Remember that I defined pornography for this discussion as lawful. That means made by consenting adults.
Anything else is not lawful porn. It's rape of which someone has made a record that constitutes evidence. The correct way to handle this is through criminal prosecution for the act of rape.
There is no coercion in the making of lawful porn because coercion would make it unlawful.
I think that's pretty clear.
I'll get back to the other stuff later.
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteOne other thing. Please don't tell me what I'm frustrated about. I think I can figure that out on my own and articulate it quite effectively.
One last time, I did not expect you to change your attitude and am not frustrated that you didn't.
This is what I mean by not getting a fair hearing. I stated my motives quite clearly. Nothing was concealed. I wanted to talk facts and you said you did too.
That didn't happen and that's why I came away frustrated.
Dialog requries communication. That didn't happen here.
But I did learn something from the effort. It's just not something positive. It would appear that if factual information runs counter to a priori assumptions, factual information loses.
This isn't the first time I've been taught that lesson, but I still have a difficult time accepting it.
This blog can now go back to being by, for and about people who are broadly pro-porn. There are plenty of other places people can go to read about the evils and harms of porn if that's what they're looking for and have their convictions confirmed without challenge.
I think what you missed was how draining all of this was on me. I found it consuming large amounts of time and energy so I was honest and stepped back rather than try to continue and begin responding out of exhaustion.
ReplyDeleteYou were quite civil and I thank you for that. But, yes, you and I cannot find any common ground it seems.
You were even quite civil when you told me to leave and not come back. That was nicely done, and I will abide by your invitation to leave.
ReplyDeleteThere is this that I can say for Rachel, even as I disagree totally with her analysis: she did make an honest effort to defend her particular POV, and she was willing to listen to arguments on the other side, even as she ultimately rejected them. That's a world's improvement over what usually comes out of antiporn opponents.
ReplyDeleteNow...as to the actual question of defining "pornography".....well, I guess that I have to cite Bubba Clinton's historic phrase of "depends on what the meaning of 'is' is".
There is the classical Greek definition: "journal of whores".
There is the modern definition that I use: depictions or written or spoken accounts of explicit sexual activity designed to sexually arouse people (in the same way that comedy makes us laugh or horror films make us frightened).
Then there is the popular metaphoric definition of "porn" to mean something obscene and so over-the-top" that arouses emotions (as in someone describing propaganda against climate change legislation as "eco-porn"; or Robert Scheer using the metaphor of "missiles as erect penises" in the subtitles of one of his books (i.e., "The Pornography of Power").
For the most part, though, the definition of "pornography" is definitely in the eye of the beholder. It can be as much one's most precious attractions, as it can be another's greatest fears.
Personally, I tend to define porn in its most broadest state as literal, spoken, or written media depicting explicit sexual content intended to induce erections and wet panties and the response of a desire for sex, whether through masturbation or with one or more other persons. Whether others may respond with indifference or derision is not that important to me as the main purpose of sexual arousal.
Now...what people who view porn actually do with that state of arousal is their own issue' as long as they don't coerce others or involve children and respect the wishes of others, I don't think that it is our business to overanalyze or criticize them...let alone, persecute them for having these desires.
Later on. I'll more directly address Rachel's concerns.
Anthony
IamCurious is, well, curious, as to how I got to run stuff at the Socialist Scholars Conference.
ReplyDeleteWell, I was an active member of the Democratic Socialist of America, who revived the Conferences in the 1980s after they had started decades earlier, then stopped for a time. Because there was room for so many panels and workshops, there was a real hunger on the program committee for something more exciting than the usual boring talks and leftist economic theory, US imperialism and working within the Democratic Party.
So they "discovered" identity politics, and I was able to package my porn workshops as a manifestation of same. They ran every year from 1989-1996, and Nina keynoted in 1991 and 1994.
Once I got married in 1996, I no longer had the time or energy to continue them.
Recently, my work at the SSC has been channeled by Melissa Ditmore of the Urban Justice Center's Sex Workers Project, who continues to showcase discussions with sex-positive viewpoints.
I guess I never put two and two together – you did the ''Shmate'' interview with Nina, way back in the day, right? Great interview, BTW, and deserving of republication in some form.
ReplyDeleteI am not now, nor have I ever been, a Republican.
ReplyDeleteFunny you should mention republication:
ReplyDeleteSheldon was generous enough to mail me a copy of the original Shmate interview around 5 years ago, which I transferred into pixellated form and posted to some of my Nina Hartley fan groups over at Yahoo! I had also posted a copy over at my old Red Garter Club website, but unfortunately the files associated with my site were destroyed when my site was hacked into one month ago.
All is not lost, though....I managed to find over at my Aphrodite Nation Yahoo! fan group a file containing Nina's original interview....and I will be transferring it to the SmackChron (my existing SmackDog Chronicles blog) tonight and tomorrow as blog pages. When it is finshed, I will provide the link.
Anthony
All righty (or lefty, is it is)....the interview is now listed over at the SmackChron blog; it is in 5 parts and can be found in the Pages section.
ReplyDeleteIt's pretty much the original as Sheldon sent to me back then, though with annotations included by me for clarifications.
Read and enjoy.
Anthony
On an orthogonal topic:
ReplyDeleteThe latest cattiness du jour on offer from feminist "big bloggers" toward deluded porn chicks:
Amanda Marcotte
Kate Harding
"Liberal" feminism shows its true colors.
Sad but true.
ReplyDeleteUnlike current radical feminism, which is uniformly sex-negative, pro-censorship and dreary, liberal feminism is a wider tent.
With LF, you'll have anti-censors of both the sex-positive and sex-negative category. In addition to the snarling "Gossip Girl" tone of the aforementioned bloggers and their like-minded posters, you'll have anti-onanists like Prof. Michael Kimmel, editor of "Men Confronting Pornography" who at least has been very good at denouncing the Dworkin/MacKinnon machinations.
Now I know the first poster on this thread said she's a liberal feminist, but she has not shared with us her views on Dworkin, MacKinnon and their notorious 'Model Ordinance'. If she thinks she can support that and still not be a radfem, then she is just another Cervantes tilting at windmills.
Sheldon,
ReplyDeleteWell put. It seems the only thing the two major branches of activist feminism have in common is their dislike of porngraphy. Except that the radical branch considers the liberal branch guilty of not hating it zealously enough.
Either way, there's no respect for sex work or sex workers to be found among any of them. It's become a badge of hipness for a certain kind of Ariel-Levy-Pamela-Paul liberal feminist to distinguish herself from those silly Third Wavers with some vociferous porn-bashing. They're just more snarky about it.
I find myself wondering how baffled and betrayed the Third Wave pioneers must feel about seeing this kind of trash under the bylines of those who, on other issues, they regard as allies. The better-known voices in that camp have been remarkably quiet about the backsliding regarding sexual freedom that's taken hold in mainstream feminism. Perhaps they haven't noticed it, or more likely they're reluctant to rumble with new enemies while still dealing with the old ones.
As for Rachel's claim to be a liberal rather than radical feminist, given the blurring of the distinction betweent the two these days, I don't think she's off-target. Liberal feminists have edged close enough to radical feminism at this point that almost anyone can identify as either and be at least half-right, as long as they have the correct position on smut.
I don't like them, never did. But why am I called on to defend my brand of feminism? And what makes you think I don't respect (female) sex workers? Curiouser and curiouser.
ReplyDeleteRachel Cervantes (For some reason it won't take my open id log-on.)
Rachel,
ReplyDeleteFor the record, I'm not calling on you to defend your brand of feminism here or anywhere else. I do think that liberal feminism and radical feminism have drifted closer together when it comes to arguments about porn and sex work and gave some examples.
As for respecting sex workers, you may not have said you don't, and you may in fact respect them, but what about this?
"But the porn portrayal of the Stepford Bimbo is unrealistic and will give a distorted view of women’s sexuality. I am far more than a mouth or other orifice waiting “receive” a penis and it’s “load,” as it were.""
At the time, I made it pretty clear why I thought the term "Stepford Bimbo" was offensive to sex workers.
And what exactly is suggested by the insistence that follows to the effect that you are " more than a mouth or other orifice waiting “receive” a penis and it’s “load,” as it were?"
What does this say about what you think of the women who appear in pornography? I can't imagine one I know who would find such a description of who they are based on the work they do as anything other than disrespectful.
I also note that in your latest comment, you parenthetically implied that your respect for sex workers, if that's what it is, applies only to female sex workers. Male sex workers, of whom there are obviously more in porn than in any other branch of sex work, would seem to be automatically excluded from the respected category by that parenthetical gender reference, if I read it correctly.
Overall, I don't feel you've been treated unfairly here. You've made some very bold assertions in your early posts that run counter to prevailing opinions in this space and you've been challenged on the content of those posts in a way far more polite than anything any of us could expect should we be so foolish as to venture our dissenting opinions on any of the blogs kept by many of those you hold dear.
Nevertheless, you found the experience of being challenged as you were here exhausting and draining, in your own words, and chose to depart, convinced that the dialog was impossible and more firmly set than ever in your opposition to pornography, then went back to your own blog to be consoled and validated in that decision.
Some here more or less took the same view from the opposite side. You have your allies and we have ours. Some of ours are as suspicious and inclined to the most negative interpretations of criticism as some of yours.
Nothing curious about it. As you say, there is no bridge that can be built over this chasm and far beyond porn, that bodes ill for other progressive issues on which we might find common ground.
Contrary to the "leftist men do love their porn" tripe, the dispute arises out of fundamental ideals regarding personal liberty across a broad range concerns, and for all those other concerns to be sacrificed according the litmus test of opposing sex-work is deeply unfortunate.
Ernest, I was responding to Sheldon's (very polite and appreciated) questioning whether or not I am liberal fem.
ReplyDeleteNow, about female porn workers and my assertion that porn portrays women as orifices and men as penises with legs (and granted, I have not seen porn in a very long time; if it is substantially different, I will reconsider), that has nothing to do with the women who are the performers. It has to do with attitudes the medium portrays. Many mainstream films and novels exhibit the same attitudes/stereotypes. I don't like them either. That does not mean I disrespect the actors who are in the films. Hell, I don't even always (or completely...this I have to think about) the script writers. After all, Sigmund Freud had some pretty messed up ideas about women and he was a genius (wrong about women in many ways, but still a genius). In fact, in some ways he was quite feminist. I am quite able to see the complexity that being human entails and can deal with and appreciate ways in which people often are self-contradictory.
As to male sex workers, I truly don’t know how I feel about them. I don’t know enough about them. I don’t know any. I do “know” a few women sex workers and porn performers (on line, anyway).
And as to why I bailed on the discussion: As is expected, every post I made drew responses and questions from multiple other posters. That’s fine, and good, as it indicates an interest in engaging in dialogue. However, responding to all of that requires more time and energy than I have right now. I believe I said earlier that I was short on time and feeling exhausted.
And as to feeling treated unfairly: That is how I respond to you. *I felt* (I won’t try to say it was coming from you, I only say I felt) some hostility and a great deal of mistrust coming from you. Simply put, I don’t “need the downer, dude.”
Hi Rachel!
ReplyDeleteThank you for your gracious response to my post.
As a film critic for Adult Video News(AVN) in the 1990s, I put together a number of "Best Of"-type lists. One was the "Sapphic Scorchers" list that has been published on the R.A.M.E website/newsgroup, another was one I showcased at NOW gatherings and the aforementioned Socialist Scholars Conferences, both in the '90s (damn, that was some decade).
That list was "Progressive Pornography on Video: A List of Lust for the Politically Correct".
I included all of Candida Royalle's Femme Productions shows, Nina's 1st big hit, "Debbie Duz Dishes", and her early educational-leaning takes in her "How To" series. It also includes classics of the 1970s, like Damianoi's "The Devil in Miss Jones", and several of the comedies of Chuck Vincent, the soap operas of Cecil Howard, and the "surreal" porn of Rinse Dream (see other thread on this forum). And a shoutout to the late Hal Freeman/Mark Weiss' socialist porn flick, "Shades of Ecstasy"
I have not updated my list in several years, but I'm sure it would be bulging (hah!) with many offerings from Girlfriends Films, Triangle, Abigail, Sweetheart and the rest of the growing, serious multidimensional "all-girl" porn.
There's lots of this stuff out there. Most importantly, it makes money. Lots of it. That's why it keeps being made, repeatedly. Women Seeking Women is now up to Volume 56!!
But, that doesn't mean that "one-dimensional" porn is inherently reactionary or misogynistic. Wall-to-wall sex films(mistakenly labeled gonzo by academic frauds like Robert Jensen) focus exclusively on the sexual nature and activity of all its participants, male and female.
It's not like the viewer is treated to seeing, say, Max Hardcore expound on global warming for ten minutes before engaging in rough sex with young adult women in pigtails.
More importantly, having a sole focus on sex is a good thing. It's part of the process of normalization of sex that is necessary to overcome the puritanical ethos of our society.
If you think that sex is a good thing, that it's not inherently evil, then you would support seeing it displayed in the aforementioned context ON ITS OWN, without having it connected to anything else. If there is an overall theme that connects most types of porn, it's that consenting sex among adults is a good thing in and of itself.
By the way, there is nothing preventing you from using your own imagination to supply your own multidimensional context to the one-dimensional porn flickering on your TV screen.
"And as to feeling treated unfairly: That is how I respond to you. *I felt* (I won’t try to say it was coming from you, I only say I felt) some hostility and a great deal of mistrust coming from you. Simply put, I don’t “need the downer, dude.”
ReplyDeleteI am not given to indirection. If I felt hostility and mistrust for you, I wouldn't hesitate a blink to say so in exactly those terms. In fact, what I felt was very much the opposite, which is why I invited you here to have this discussion. I was disappointed by the way all that shook out, and I expressed my disappointment in terms you characterized as civil throughout, so I'm left a bit confused about how you come to the conclusions you do about my motivations.
In debating someone with whom I disagree, and I only bother to debate those whose intellect I respect, I like to think of myself as generally a hard but fair fighter. I don't back away from a position simply because someone else doesn't like it, but I don't personalize the process until an opponent chooses to do so and I didn't feel you did.
But speaking of unneeded downers, I don't feel that anything has been gained or will be gained by continuing a conversation in which the assumption of good faith is not mutual, so I choose to let go of this one.
However, I will not leave unchallenged assertions you make here that I regard as in need of rebuttal. The rebuttals, if there are any, will be for the benefit of other readers, but I think we're pretty clear at this point about the futility of trying to open a channel of communication between the two of us.
Indeed. The most frustrating part of it all was your resolute refusal to even allow the possibility that you might have some role in the thwarted endeaver. I've been mightily resisting the urge to respond with "bite me" (I'm afraid you might!) but your portrayal of yourself as defender of the poor, downtrodden porn industry against the big, bad feminist meanie was too much for me.
ReplyDeleteI doubt you can see the humor in this, but I've come to the conclusion that that is not my problem. You are correct, sir: We will not be "friends," we can not communicate, and while I freely acknowledge that I own a piece of that, you own a bigger piece. So, to quote one of MY favorite TV stars, "bite my shiny metal ass."
Yes, I'm irritated. Still, there are certain ludicrous aspects of this that are funny as all hell.
I think I'll steal the Futurama line and incorporate it in my new motto: Bite my shiny metal ass because I see a windmill. Oh, my shiny metal ass is clothed, of course, because I simply couldn't bare it and resemble ... gasp ... porn! Adios!
Ok, for all of that, I wish you well. Vaya con Dios. Tilt ... tilt .. . tilt.
Yup, I had a feeling I would regret that damn post. Ernest, before I even look to see if there has been a response, let me apologize. I was out of line.
ReplyDeleteYour apology is accepted, of course, and I regard it as entirely sincere.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, it changes nothing. It's difficult to defend oneself against the charge of having no sense of humor, particularly in the face of something that is manifestly not funny.
See, I also regard your previous post as entirely sincere.
I have no doubt that both accurately reflect your feelings, and saying your sorry doesn't make anything go away, any more than what I say in response will change the way you or others think of me or any "male pornographer."
You couldn't be more wrong about me and that's really not my problem. If you think I'm a defender of the porn industry, rather than the people in it, you're entirely mistaken, but that's all about you, not me.
Since your initial comment, in slightly different form, stands as a thread of its own on your blog with your apology as a comment, I'm sure you'll get plenty of support back on your own turf. What you've done there is issue an open invitation for similar personal attacks that will inevitably ensue.
I wish I could believe that this would be the end of the whole misbegotten venture, but I fear there will be further sequelae no matter what I say or do.
I do regret one thing, which is that I enabled the whole business in the first place. That was a mistake that I will not repeat.
Sorry I can't be more gracious, but you can be sure I'm exercising all the self-control I can muster not to express my feelings even less tactfully.
We're definitely off for tea. Perhaps it would be best if we canceled all further engagements as well.
I missed this latest go-around with Rachel Cervantes, but her responses don't speak well of her. Particular how she followed up with his on her blog, here. Once again, she's feeling subtly disrespected, I guess because some man or men actually had the nerve to disagree with her. This reminds me of a rather unpleasant interaction with her I had about a year ago, which I even wrote about over at my other blog, since I wasn't getting a fair shake in the least over on her blog.
ReplyDeleteIf I had to nail down one thing that makes "feminism" such a bad word among so many people, it has to be this – that feminist ideology is so many individuals tragically joined at the hip to petty insecurities and resentments that cause many feminists to behave like complete assholes on a very basic human level. This goes for hatefulness I and other have been on the receiving end of from Ms. Cervantes (to say nothing of her fanatic friend Laurelin), and the petty snobbery I brought up in regards to Amanda Marcotte, Kate Harding, and the like.
I consider responding to her and decided against it.
ReplyDeleteAs I said, no minds were changed and none will be in this case, so what's the point of continuing an unpleasant exchange? She chose to get personal. I choose not to.
We've each had our say and I'm over the whole thing. But your description of your earlier round does suggest a certain consistency. She made the same argument about acceptable levels of violence in this thread, though no proof of any risk of increased violence due to exposure to pornography was educed to support it.
And BTW, I know Dr. Malamuth and have discussed this with him at length. He does not regard any of his conclusions as indicative of porn's ability to trigger violent behavior in anyone. At most, he sees a temporary spike in aggressive ideation with no behavioral changes resulting.
But that is a mere fact, and we know how important facts are to disputes of this kind.
You are certainly right to take the high road here, Ernest. Once again, it seems that somebody just wants to get a rise out of you or one of the other men who post here regularly, then use that as evidence of porn-fueled male aggression.
ReplyDeleteStill, I wanted to mention my earlier interactions with Ms. Cervantes because it certainly is in keeping. It was something I'd held back on earlier, seeing as she was holding out an olive branch of sorts, and that maybe I had said something impolite in my earlier interactions with her. Now I see that apparently short of lockstep agreement, she's going to see any kind of response from a man on this side of the issue as an attack on her personally.
Agreed on all points. Again, I have to own a certain naivete on my own part in this situation. I have ample reason to be skeptical of any professed good intentions from anyone who identifies as anti-porn from the start. This isn't the first time someone from that camp has come around expressing some desire for engagement in a reasonable tone that quickly evaporated once the engagement began.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, I've been drawn into similar situations on other blogs with other commenters and the outcomes have been remarkably similar. I've grown increasingly certain that this is a deliberate tactic and I won't fall for it again. The outcome is invariably a distracting disruption of dialog among those who have legitimate issues to discuss.
I believe this is known as trolling, and it says something a bit poignant about the desire for some kind of reasoned engagement from those on our side that we respond to it by laying out the welcome mat, as opposed to the hissing, spitting welcome any of us can count on if we dare show ourselves in their exalted company.
Nevertheless, these exchanges are not entirely worthless. A neutral observer is unlikely to come away with a favorable impression of those whose idea of debate is middle-school name-calling.
Oh my. Rachel seems ever so shocked and indignant over my observations of her behavior here and on her own blog. She can hardly believe it that anyone would have the temerity to accuse her of trolling after having been told by her to bite her ass and piss up a rope.
ReplyDeletePositively outrageous that anyone should take umbrage at that kind of language, or entertain suspicions about her motives under the circumstances. Why we're actually making the radfems look good in her eyes.
As I said before, some people choose to take these things personally. Others merely choose to take them apart.
I have tried my best to keep myself out of this argument for the obvious reasons....but now I just can't help myself.
ReplyDeleteSounds to me like Rachel is up to her usual tricks of playing the same "good cop" routine that Nine Deuce plays so well with the radfem crowd...but with the addition of the patina of deniability wrapped around her pretensions of being a "liberal feminist".
Problem is for her, though, when faced with actual facts from men who actually know what the hell they are talking about and who aren't quite so willing to play her game, the old radfem within her bares her teeth and snaps back.
And yes, Rachel....despite all your denials, I am calling you a radfem. Maybe not quite as extreme as Delphyne or Stormcloud or Sam Berg or Laurelin, but if the shoe fits.... Only my opinion; no one else's.
Like I said...probably a good idea that I abstained from this debate.
Anthony
On the contrary, Anthony. I think you called this one just right.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Ms. Cervantes, she will be taking an hiatus from blogging because "the idiots and miscreants" were getting to her. I would presume by that she means us.
ReplyDeleteWe can now expect to be accused of silencing her, despite the fact that she was cordially invited to post here at whatever length and by her own admission, treated in a civil manner. No one here suggested that she bite their asses or go piss up ropes, as she suggested to me. She also accused me of painting myself as a victim.
Nevertheless, after having trolled to her heart's content here before flouncing, she will be the one made out a victim.
You can take that to the bank.
Hmmm, I suppose I'll take "idiot" for the insult that it is, but I might cop to "miscreant", at least, as a synonym for "infidel/heretic", with the added connotation of "willfully so". :)
ReplyDeleteAgreed. I'm not much offended by the term "miscreant" as it's actually defined. In fact, I've been known to describe myself that way.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I think this was just an incorrect usage in context and means something quite different, considering the source, more along the lines of "wrongdoer."
Among other things, she seems to be lexcicographically challenged.
I'm a disappointed how this turned out because I was looking forward to having something like a "porn facts 101" that the ignorant could be referred to on future occasions. Ah well.
ReplyDeleteEli,
ReplyDeleteThat was exactly what I had in mind as well. Such a thing would be useful and if I ever get the time loose, which is very difficult during this season, I may attempt such a thread.
I really did want to provide information on this one rather than bicker with yet another hostile, narrow-minded individual who had clearly already concluded she knew everything before she got here.
Very disappointing but no surprise.