An interesting article.

[hkellick]

I stumbled upon this article via someone's journal. The article is written by a university professor about the harm that the porn industry is doing to women. I'd like to suggest everyone read it, regardless of sex or how much porn you may watch/have watched. A warning, though, that it is very long.
I feel like this article is important, not because I feel like I've sinned (In my entire life, I've only watched two porn movies.. a really bad Hentai Cartoon and (I swear to god, this IS true), a really bad Star Trek parody porn where we fast forwarded through the sex scenes and just watched the really bad conversation.), but because, I guess, I never really knew how harmful these were.
I don't believe that Playboy and Strip Clubs are necessarily harmful to women and that there probably is no connection between reading a Playboy and raping a woman. But porn videos on the other hand... well, like I said, I had no idea. I've never seen any.
Just go read.. and feel free to discuss here, if you so choose.

Comments

[dustkitten.livejournal.com]

No insult on the playground is worse than being called a girl, except perhaps being called a "fag," a derivative of girl.

How is fag a "derivative of girl"?

I have a lot of thoughts about porn. Some of them about relate to my sex life, some of them don't. One of them is this: If industry goes by the stereotypes, then men like the porn and women like the romance novels. Shouldn't, then, the "perfect" porn be romantic but explicit? Why don't these titles flood the market?

I have a friend who was in the "adult" industry, but she worked on her own terms. She only worked in lesbian porn--she's a lesbian herself--and, at one time, was part of a company that made "lesbian porn for lesbians." Written by women, directed by women, with only women in them. She called one of the titles, "The most romantic, sexy thing I've ever seen in my life and I am proud to have been a part of it." Of course, you can't find it now, and the company did not make enough money to continue its existance.

She took the money she made in these movies and went to law school.

If that's what a couple years in the adult industry--not even the big-sellers (if there is such a thing)--can pay for, tens of thousands of dollars of schooling, what's to stop any attractive girl/woman from taking this "easy" option? Heck, Renee was asking to dub the "oohs and aahs" for a lot of money once. She wouldn't even have had to take off her clothes.

*

My friend Patrick went to a strip club with friends, and started to go on a regular basis. Not because he wanted to get off, but because the girls there were so miserable. One thanked him for being the only thing about her job that made her feel "human." Quite a few of the girls were single parents. Most of them were on heroin. Eventually, he got so depressed himself he stopped going. He couldn't help them. They had expensive cars, drug habits, and no self-esteem.

*

On the other hand, the article does not go into the fact that there are probably thousands of porn titles that have the woman dominant, or that yes, there ARE women who enjoy complete sexual subservience (although perhaps not with six men at once).

"Delusional" begins with the idea that women want something more caring in a man, but ends with her begging for anal penetration and ejaculation.

Are these two things always contradictory? Can't a woman with more than "vanilla" sexual tastes look for a caring man? Can't a man be sensitive and caring and still enjoy anal sex?

We can stop glorifying violence and we can reject its socially sanctioned forms, primarily in the military and the sports world. We can make peace heroic.

I think that it's more important to project the idea that violence on the playing field should never be taken off the field. If a sports figure assaults a woman--well, why should he have the "right" to draw his multi-million paychecks?

I don't want to give up violence in my entertainment. I want to love Braveheart without feeling like a bad person. I will never pick up a gun, or a broadsword. I know the line between fantasy and reality.

Maybe we should worry more about that.

-A-

[lite.livejournal.com]

I'll agree the article isn't perfect, but I'll argue some of your points and discuss some of the others.

I'll give you that the article is only looking at a portion of pornographic films and ignoring a great deal of other stuff. This is a failing in his point.

I agree that the author is painting in big broad strokes about WOMEN IN GENERAL instead of individual people.

I think you make a number of different and not entirely connected points.

Pornography:
I'm not suggesting anyone take away the rights of any person to enjoy the sex the way they'd like (so long as that isn't negatively affecting anyone or anything not capable of making that choice for themselves: children, animals or whichever.)

The question is whether or not pornography breeds violence. Yes, there are some woman who might enjoy any and everything that occurs during one of those "typical" (I have no idea if they're typical or not) porno films. Does that mean all women do? Does that mean all women should be accepting of the fact that men find this sort of thing a real turn on?

OK. Let me try this on a different angle.
Let's say that you, as a woman, enjoy rape fantasies. It's your thing. You REALLY get into it. It hurts no one. So no problem.
Then you find a guy and he's into the rape fantasy thing too. OK. No problem. Still hurting no one.
Then you make a movie where the two of you engage in the rape fantasy, a small personal porno.
No problem?
Then you SELL the movie where the two of you engage in the rape fantasy.
Still no problem?
OK, so you sell the movie where the two of you engage in the rape fantasy. And it gets a few buyers of other people also interested in rape fantasy.
You with me? No problem, right? Because people know the difference between reality and fantasy.
What if you sell the movie to someone who then goes out and fulfills his own rape fantasy by actually raping another woman.
Do you still feel that the movie was OK?
Let's take it that final step. The coup de gracie.
You sell the movie to someone who then goes out and fulfills his own rape fnatasy by actually raping the daughter of someone you know.

There's a line somewhere where it stops being just about you and starts being about other people. Sex between you and your partner is just about you. Porn videos is about other people and the more people who have seen it, the more people it's about.

The problem isn't with one video either. It's with an entire industry of hundreds or thousands of videos, each showing something that may be too violent or too demeaning.

Violence: Now let's get to your other point. You say that you don't want to give up violence in your entertainment because you can handle it. You have the right to enjoy violence if you want to.
Most of us can handle violence.. most of us can handle alcohol too, which doesn't stop the rate of alcohol-related death from being, in the last 10 years? 15? 20? I dunno... of being in the top five of number of people dead per year.
Violence begets violence. You can handle listening to Rock Music.. but somewhere in Ohio.. two idiots can't and decide that they need to shoot up a school. You can handle violent video games, but somewhere in Chicago, some idiot can't and begins shooting up the freeway.
Personally, I don't like violence in my entertainment without a damned good reason. Violence is all around us and much of it is there just for the flashy effects. You mention Braveheart. Do you think movies need to revolve around body counts? Could the point have gotten across just as well without actually watching a batallion of British soldies impaling themselves on some scottish spears?
Even twenty years ago, our parents were making GREAT movies that didn't necessarily revolve around how many people died nastily. Our parents made great television too where the plot revolved around "Oh no! Mrs. Huxtable is pregnant again! Now what?" and not "Oh no! Tony has to whack Pussy before Pussy tells too much to the feds!"
Violence has it's place in society and I don't condone a perfect barney'esque world where nothing goes wrong and no one fights, but I do believe there is far too much violence out there in our media.

PART I

[lawchicky.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting article, though I find the author a little over the top with all of this. He talk about things like women and childred being forced into watching or making pornography, but then he never links up how most pornographic videos/films would do that.

Then he goes on and on about how he watching 25 hours of porn videos, and wound up feeling really sad for the women at the end of the day. FIRST of all, I think the way porn is set up to turn on the viewers is in short viewing segments. (The author acknowledges and agrees with this). Many of the videos are very graphic, but I think it's because the makers of the porn are well aware of what they need to raise in the men/women watching the video in order to sell it in the first place. People get turned on by their hormones, by adrenaline and testosterone, etc. These hormones are activated by things like graphic images. In short bursts, those hormones feel good, hence, people are turned on, hence the videos will sell. So why did he feel so awful after watching 8 hours of porn a day? This is what happens when you have TOO many graphic images thrust at you. Coming down from your hormones is quite a bit like coming down from drugs or alcohal, they physically change your body for a period of time.

Not for a second do I believe that watching a porn video is a sin. Most porn videos (I'm talking mainstream porn a la the porn industry) is made by actors, who are doing a job, acting! They are not forced into completing sex scenes, and at the end of the day, the same woman who had eight men ejaculate in her face is going home with a paycheck.. no different than the paycheck I might collect from defending a criminal. We all have choices with what we do in our lives, and I don't feel bad if a consenting adult decides to act in porn videos to support herself. Do I think it's a terrible/horrible/inhuman thing to FORCE someone into creating a porn video? OF COURSE, but this is not the case with the majority of what's out there.

Does porn make/encourage men to rape? I don't think so.. at least no more than any other medium may make/encourage a man to rape. Having studied criminal behavior, I feel strongly that there are two type of men in the world (I'm just talking about "men" to make things easier, the same applies for women). There are men who would violate another person's free will, and men who would not. A man who would not violate another person's free will is not going to watch a porn and decide that it might be a good idea to indulge his fantasy of raping women. People DO NOT drop their morals and values based on something they may or may not have seen in a porn video-- not for something as serious as violating another person. Now, a man who WOULD violate another person's free will is another story. This type of guy could get ideas from a porn video. Of course, this type of guy could get ideas from ANYWHERE, and it would be unfair to the media to blame them for causually being connected to a crime. With people who rape/murder/etc, there is something far more seriously wrong than whatever they may or may not have seen on television. (Example- a woman may kill her husband because he beats/abuses her. You can't blame the movie Chicago for encouraging her to kill her husband because a character killed her husband and got away with it).

Part II

[lawchicky.livejournal.com]

I agree with LITE that things today are more graphic than ever before. I have watching movies thinking that the fight scenes really could have been shorter or less graphic. However, when the movie is over I don't feel like going out and slicing people's heads off or something. (This is the same point Alana made). The media gets a bad rap as well. I did a term paper a few years ago about content and the media, and about how the media is used as a scapegoat for so many things. I strongly believe that the average person knows the difference between reality and fantasy. The fact that cartoon characters may do something on television does not mean that a child is going to try to do the same. I also would like to point out that while media may have become more graphic, it has not, by any means, actually become more violent. Violence in the world has been around FAR FAR longer than we have. When my grandparents were children it was not uncommon for them to play games like cowboys and indians or GI Joe. The oldest faerytales are laden with gruesome deaths and horrible creatures. Murder is not new. Rape is not new. Both of them are still perceived as crimes (rape moreso now than in the past).

Back to the porn-- I just find that the author in this article is making too big a leap of faith to thinking that porn degrades women. He uses an example where at the end of the video the woman is vindicated when she finds a man she can trust and she sleeps with him. #1- it's a PORN video, what do you think is going to happen at the end of the video, kittens and daisys? #2- So she talked dirty and wanted anal sex? Maybe she LIKES anal sex. The author completely overlooks the fact that women may enjoy sexual behavior. He makes it seem like a leap of faith that a woman could possibly --enjoy-- being deviant in the bedroom. Note to the author- I know women who enjoy all sorts of things in bed. They may be conventional or unconventional, but as long as they're carried out by consenting adults, and noone is getting hurt, there's no reason to condemn them.

Geez.. I wrote a lot. I think that's pretty much all I can say for now! DAMN... I wrote too much.. going to have to make two entries. Don't be mad LITEY!

[vissith.livejournal.com]

I didn't read the article yet. I just wanted to comment that I skimmed an article the other day that claims that pornography doesn't beget violence: it makes men less interested in women, because they are all disappointing by comparison.

There's always more than one layer...