No, Porn Doesn’t Prevent Rape
| August 31st, 2006Via Riba Rambles, I see that last month, Northwestern University’s Anthony D’Amato suggested that more porn leads to less rape. D’Amato points out that rape prevalence (as measured by the federal government’s big National Crime Victimization Survey) has gone down in recent years (his comparison - he calls the decline in rape “steeper than the stock market crash that led to the Great Depression” - may be the single least relevant comparison I’ve ever read).
D’Amato points out that even as rape prevalence has declined, porn consumption has gone up:
There is, however, one social factor that correlates almost exactly with the rape statitistics [sic]. The American public is probably not ready to believe it. My theory is that the sharp rise in access to pornography accounts for the decline in rape. The correlation is inverse: the more pornography, the less rape. It is like the inverse correlation: the more police officers on the street, the less crime.
The pornographic movie “Deep Throat” which started the flood of X-rated VHS and later DVD films, was released in 1972. Movie rental shops at first catered primarily to the adult film trade. Pornographic magazines also sharply increased in numbers in the
1970s and 1980s. Then came a seismic change: pornography became available on the new internet. Today, purveyors of internet porn earn a combined annual income exceeding the total of the major networks ABC, CBS, and NBC.
(Okay, the “sic” was cheap of me. Whaddaya want? I’m running a blog here. G’way.)
Three problems with D’Amato’s theory:
1) During recent years, the NCVS has found a steep decline in all violent crime, not just rape. It seems likely that whatever’s causing the decline in all violent crime measured by the NCVS, is also causing the decline in rape measured by the NCVS; but it seems unlikely that pornography reduces all violent crime.
2) The NCVS measurement of rape prevalence is crap. Many other studies - including two major studies conducted by the Federal government - have found much higher rates of rape prevalence than the NCVS. Particularly notable is this study, by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, which directly compared the NCVS’s methodology for measuring rape prevalence with modern “best practice” survey design - and found that the NCVS vastly undercounted rape.
(D’Amato does say that the decrease in rape is collaborated by other sources, but he doesn’t cite any specific sources other than the NCVS).
3) D’Amato has no measurement of porn prevalence other than internet access, nor does he do any real statistical analysis. In contrast, studies with sophisticated statistical analysis and more accurate measures of porn usage - such as the study published in Four Theories of Rape in American Society - tend to find that porn usage has little or no correlation with rape prevalence.
D’Amato has one good point; there is no evidence that the rise in internet access (and, presumably, in porn usage) has been accompanied by a rise in rape prevalence. That makes it seem unlikely that porn is a cause of rape, as some radical feminists have suggested.
My own belief is that whatever porn’s effects on rape prevalence are, they’re probably too small to be measured.
UPDATE: Abyss2Hope and Feminist Law Professors both have excellent posts critiquing D’Amato’s paper.
[Crossposted at Creative Destruction, where no mouse fears an elephant. If your comments aren’t being approved here, try there.]
August 31st, 2006 at 10:51 pm
During recent years, vastly increased internet access has also correlated with a steep decline in all violent crime, as measured by the NCVS. By D’Amato’s logic, increased porn consumption must reduce all violent crime.
I agree with your conclusion, but not with this part of the reasoning. If we widen the net further to all crime, are we likely to see porn as a factor in, say, fraud, drug crimes, drunk driving or tax evasion? No. This is a classic correlation problem, but it isn’t proven by comparing with a wider pool of unrelated incidents. Felony DUI is up in many places, so this same reasoning would lead one to belive that porn accessibility were negatively correlated with drunk driving incidents.
Now, it happens that I take on belief (I don’t make any empirical claims) that a less repressed culture is likely to have less sexual violence (that is, I agree with the thesis, but via intuitive belief), and I think that porn access plays a role there. I don’t think our good fella has shown that to be true.
This comment was written by fishbane.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2006 at 11:13 pm
Fishbane, I think the way I worded that was very bad. I’ve rewritten that paragraph to make my intended meaning clearer.
I’m not sure that I think a less repressed culture necessarily means less rape, although I think the two things can go together.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
August 31st, 2006 at 11:34 pm
Ampersand,
I hope I didn’t come off as too critical, and I agree with your revised copy.
I can imagine less repressed cultures that are more sexually violent, so I agree with your ‘neccessarily’ construction, and I want to be clear that I’m stating a belief about generalities, not an assertion about absolutes. I do believe that, though, as a general constructor for behaviour. I don’t know how to debate it, though, without resorting to thin anecdotes that shouldn’t convince anyone.
This comment was written by fishbane.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 12:20 am
You didn’t come off as too critical at all! You were very helpful - your post pointed out to me that I needed to do the rewrite.
I think we’re in agreement about sexual repression; less sexual repression may not automatically mean less rape, but a society with both less sexual repression and as little rape as possible seems to me to be both possible and desirable.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 5:21 am
Forgive me if this is a truism, but isn’t rape about power, not about sex? In which case, the availability of porn won’t make any difference?
This comment was written by Helen.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 6:30 am
Repeat after me, children, “Correlation does not equal causation”.
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 6:47 am
Knock yourself out:
http://tinyurl.com/l9ejs
http://www.nationallawcenter.org/education/education/the-harm-of-illegal-pornography.html
This comment was written by Pony.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 7:04 am
My recent post that dissects several elements of this study may be of interest. Porn Up, Rape Down Or …
This comment was written by Abyss2hope.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 7:22 am
I think no matter how you slice it, with porn decreasing or increasing rape rates, like others have said here, correlation doesn’t prove causation by a long shot.
I can see the porn-rape connection in that violent porn suggests it’s acceptable to use women as needed, that they’re commodities free for the taking (as lots of mainstream film, TV shows, and advertising also suggest). But there’s likely enough people who use porn instead of taking the risk of unwanted contact with a real live woman, and even more who use porn without any desire to have sex without consent at all to even out the stats.
I also agree with the possibility that less repression (and less censorship of sexually explicit materials) can lead to less rape. If we can be more open about our desires, we can understand what is acceptable to act on and what’s not. We can also create an open honest dialogue about past or current abuses in our own lives. If we’re all taking about it, we’ll recognize that the abused in our culture have a strong front with which to effect social change. Better legislation that actually convicts rapists (or even the threat of same) can lead to fewer rapes.
@Helen - I don’t think we can entirely divorce rape from sex. I think many men who rape do just want to get off, and they use a woman’s body without her consent because they can get away with it. The power they have over a woman might add to their experience, but power is not always or exclusively the primary stimulus to action or even a part of the picture for some men. I think your “truism” came out of a rejection of the idea that men are just so gosh darn horny they can’t control themselves. I still reject that notion of the rapist as good-ol’-boy with needs that must be satisfied. I also believe rape is often a means of expressing or maintaining power, just not in every case.
This comment was written by Sage.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 7:25 am
The problem with the whole analysis is that the rise in porn consumption, assuming there is such a rise and it’s accompanied by a rise in porn production, is itself a form of sexual exploitation. I’m not saying it’s rape, please notice (though sometimes it’s that too). But it is paying desperate or naive people to do something most of us find degrading, namely, have sex with strangers for all to see. I don’t know whether looking at porn is harmful or not, but producing it is, so the sanguine attitude about the rise in porn is troublesome in one purporting to be concerned about the incidence of rape.
Comment to Helen: Surely rape is about power AND sex. A rapist’s way of exerting power over the other person is sexual (compare this to someone who exerts power by denying the person access to the bank account, or by hitting him/her).
This comment was written by Amy.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 7:31 am
Could it not be that rape in all probability is not declining - but the reporting of it is? When we see mass images of women constantly ‘willingly consenting’ to intercourse, why would any rape victim think that anyone would believe them? After all, I am assuming increased viewing of pornography is not just by men, but also women and girls. So when you have many women and girls watching other women either ‘coerced’ or ‘willing to sexually please men in any way’ on screen - why would they necessarily believe that their account of rape would be believed.
Why wouldn’t we assume that pornography or let’s say ANY depiction of ’stereotypically gendered heterosexual’ intercourse would affect how we view sex? It has for sure affected the amount of multi-partner intercourse and frequency of it…. why wouldn’t it affect how men view women in general and how women view themselves?
This comment was written by AradhanaDevindra.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 7:42 am
Part of the problem here is a sort of statistical fallacy at work here related to Josh’s point about causation. What happens at the structural level is not necessarily what happens at the individual level. This data does not show what happens at the individual level, determining causation at the individual level would have to involve a control group and an experimental group. Such a study would then try to see if rape was more common in the experimental group who was exposed to porn, than it was it the control group not exposed to porn.
Here, in Amp’s analysis above, we are talking about structural changes not individual changes. I tend to think that excessive consumption of violent pornography would lead to a slight increase in rape at the individual level. However, none of the data here, and ethical concerns would make such an experiment prohibitive. No internal review board would accept it. Moreover, the room for measurement errors in rape prevalance is really high, as suggested above.
This comment was written by Rachel S..Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 8:02 am
Anthony D’Amato is an untalented propagandist of pornography. Arguments like his have been used for at least two centuries to justify the existence of prostitution and pornography. Only people unfamiliar with the reality of the pornographic industry will take him seriously; them, and those who consider their personal pleasure more precious than the life and health of the women and children filmed while raped (Deep Throat, by the way, is rape, the rape of Linda Boreman on tape).
Ann Bartow has a good take on this. In a comment to this post, she remarks:
Many women are raped for the sake of pornography, but they are invisible to D’Amato and the pornsturbators who cling to his unoriginal “findings”. Apparently, coercing a woman to be “double-penetrated” for some “free XXX” portal is not rape rape.
Although I agree on most issues with the radical feminists I read on line, it woud be dishonest of me to call myself anything else than a pro-feminist with a socialist background. However, I cannot understand why you wrote the following:
Do you still think there is a rape culture, or not? Does pornography have a function in that culture? Finally, and this is a serious question: does pornography have any effect at all on its consumers?
This comment was written by Jimmy Ho.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 9:26 am
Porn isn’t about sex either. It’s about power and control.
If it weren’t, women would be allowed to go topless in public. Or breastfeed in public. And porn wouldn’t be considered “free speech”. Oh, the list is endless.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 9:39 am
Eating food is about power too.
This comment was written by Rob.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 9:55 am
There are still an awful lot of men who coerce women into having sex. Usually these men know the women they coerce. Such men don’t regard themselves as rapists, so it’s safe to say that A) Many of the women involve don’t call the man’s actions rape and B) It’s one of the major reasons why D’Amato’s notion is pretty much a crock.
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 10:58 am
I think it’s safe to say there’s something much more complex going on here than just “porn causes rape” or “porn lowers incidence of rape.” Neither porn nor rape exists in a vacuum, and there are so many other influencing social factors, that I really don’t think we can reduce it to such a simple black or white statement.
This comment was written by Amber.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 11:13 am
The proliferation of porn increases the incidence of rape and decreases the reporting and conviction.
Porn gives financial incentive (which is the most powerful incentive) to produce porn, which necessarily involves coercing, forcing, and otherwise manipulating women into sex which does great harm to them. I’m talking about the women used in porn, whose humanity Ampersand erases as a fantasy creature.
Porn makes rape seem normal, therefore women are less likely to report, and police are less likely to be bothered.
Porn decreases the likelihood of prosecution, because its message is that women are masochistic beings who are to blame for the harm done to them.
porn teaches that women are less human than men, therefore it’s okay to rape us.
This comment was written by saltyC.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 12:12 pm
Q, SOME porn isn’t about sex. But (without, really, please, without getting into the whole sex-pos-porn thing again) quite a bit of porn is about sex. Sorry, but such a broad “porn is not about sex” statements sounds fairly ludicrous. I mean hell, there are probably some instances of RAPE which are about sex (at least in part); porn is a lot less violent than rape.
ms_xeno: when you say “such men don’t regard themselves as rapists” are you implying that they should, or should not, consider themselves as such?
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 12:37 pm
They should, Sailorman. You can access exhaustive and exhausting threads in the archives of this very space in which men who profess to at least sympathise with feminism are constantly hedging their bets;Thinking up convoluted reasons why if you force a woman “just a little,” it’s not rape. Or they smugly intone that maybe to some knee-jerk man-hater it’s rape, but really a fellow just needs a woman’s body to orgasm inside sometimes. They can’t help themselves. [snif !]
IOW, you can get some men to acknowledge that rape exists, but they will never acknowledge any remote possibility that they themselves have forced or coerced women into sex. Or that it’s important to consider the possibility. As others here pointed out, you will also find apologists incapable of entertaining the idea that any woman in a porn film has ever been coerced into “performing” acts that she did not want to.
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 12:41 pm
I won’t try to drift too much, Sailorman, but I’m of the camp that in the patriarchy, the majority of heteronormative sex isn’t about sex either. You can’t divest sex, or porn, of it’s power dynamic in a social setting that predicates gender into a power hierarchy. Get rid of the Virgin/Whore dynamic and then we might begin to see porn that is sex. But then again, it wouldn’t be porn, would it?
:p
But there’s that little quibble at the back of my mind that is squeaking to me: “well, if porn is sex, then how can it also be free speech? If it is free speech, then how can it *not* be about power?”
But alas! (ha!) I am drifting.
So, back to rape! pronto!
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 12:59 pm
If someone coerces sex because he wants sex, how is that rape? Rapist are motivated by power.
This comment was written by Rob.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 1:12 pm
[exagerated stage voice: ]Sooooo, Qgrrl, how about all this crazy weather we’ve been having ? [/exagerated stage voice]
[whistles, stares at the sky...]
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 1:18 pm
available to teenagers and adults. The Nixon and Reagan Commissions tried to show that exposure to pornographic materials produced social violence. The reverse may be true: that pornography has reduced social violence. I’m skeptical; I’ve not read it. Ampersand apparently has: Three problems with D’Amato’s theory: 1) During recent years, the NCVS has found a steep decline in all violent crime, not just rape. It seems likely that whatever’s causing the decline in all violent crime measured by the NCVS, is also causing
This comment was written by aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 1:21 pm
ms_xeno: Oh, I see. Because “coerce” is used with such a wide definition in the blogosphere (esp. the feminist blogosphere), your choice of “coerce” instead of “forced” or “compelled” is what made me confused. I think of rape as involving violence (force, or threat of force) or some other form of nonconsent. While I know the dictionary definition of “coerce” involves force or compulsion, a lot of folks seem to say that a man can “coerce” a woman into sex by promising to buy her diamonds, for example. Which is slimy, and bad, and nasty–but is not technically coercion, nor rape IMO.
So I don’t think we’re in disagreement at all.
Q: Got it ;) Write a post somewhere on the free-speech thing, willya? Sounds like an interesting thread….!
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 2:10 pm
uh, yup. Lotta rain ’round these parts.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 4:29 pm
Yes! Thankyou, Amy.
This comment was written by alyx.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 5:47 pm
But there’s that little quibble at the back of my mind that is squeaking to me: “well, if porn is sex, then how can it also be free speech? If it is free speech, then how can it *not* be about power?”
Easily. “Free speech” means in effect any human product that we can transmit electronically and have no convincing reason to restrict.
This comment was written by hf.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 7:18 pm
“AradhanaDevindra Writes:
September 1st, 2006 at 7:31 am
Could it not be that rape in all probability is not declining - but the reporting of it is?”
Yes, thank you!
I’m old enough to remember that brief period of time in the 70s and 80s when the media took rape somewhat seriously and was fairly responsible in how they reported these crimes. Now rape is either ignored completely or turned into nuts/sluts 24-hour-news side-show craziness. I’m stunned by the type of smears leveled at victims through defense attorneys on the cable shows. Even worse, the most grotesque accusations go completely unchallenged by todays news readers.
Honestly, the media was never feminist, but attitudes about rape and rape victims have regressed so dramatically in the last decade, and that’s reflected in what I’m seeing on my TV screen these days. I can certainly see why young women in particular would be less apt to report at all.
Oh, and yes–I can see how raunch culture imagery would play into this regression, too.
This comment was written by gayle.Report this comment to the moderators
September 1st, 2006 at 7:51 pm
Let’s just say rape is sex without informed consent. Now do you get it Sailorman?
This comment was written by Pony.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 4:16 am
Amy: The problem with the whole analysis is that the rise in porn consumption, assuming there is such a rise and it’s accompanied by a rise in porn production, is itself a form of sexual exploitation. I’m not saying it’s rape, please notice (though sometimes it’s that too). But it is paying desperate or naive people to do something most of us find degrading, namely, have sex with strangers for all to see. I don’t know whether looking at porn is harmful or not, but producing it is, so the sanguine attitude about the rise in porn is troublesome in one purporting to be concerned about the incidence of rape.
Hey Amy. I was ‘talent’ as part of a porn movie, I wasn’t harmed, I wasn’t desperate, I wasn’t naive, and if you find it degrading, don’t watch. None of the people I worked with were desperate or naive, nor were they harmed.
Is there porn out there that meets your definitions? Yes. But try not to paint all porn the same way. My desk job is more degrading, harmful, and treats me with less respect than he porn I was in.
Speaking of which, off to be degraded….
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 4:32 am
Josh (who is a man?), didn’t get harmed while acting in one single pornographic movie and he can testify that nobody else did, so y’all pron-haters better shut up! If you don’t watch a rape, it makes it stop mangically (not a typo).
This comment was written by Jimmy Ho.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 5:17 am
Porn is typically about sex, the definition of pornography is ‘The writing(s) of prostitutes’.
Rape is not. It is about power and control.
This comment was written by Sam.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 5:45 am
Sam, I think I would say that erotica is about sex. Shared, mutually fulfilling sex in which the shared nature of the joy and pleasure is evident in the medium. Porn is about power and control. Any time when the pleasure and joy of one party in sex is (at best) superfluous or (at worst) undesired, it is about power and control, not sex. Sex is mutual, not masturbation into a body.
This comment was written by odanu.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 6:40 am
Sam, you are right about the etymology(porne still means “prostitute” in Greek), but the modern meaning comes from the use of the word “pornographer” as “one who writes about prostitution” around the 18th century. It has been popularised in France by Restif de la Bretonne, who published Le Pornographe, a treatise on the ways to regulate prostitution (from a user’s point of view).
This comment was written by Jimmy Ho.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 6:43 am
(I hope it is clear that this was merely a precision, not an objection to what you wrote.)
This comment was written by Jimmy Ho.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 6:51 am
I forgot to add the date for the publication of Restif’s book: 1769.
And Odanu:
How long will we have to say that?
This comment was written by Jimmy Ho.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 7:33 am
Josh Jasper, I once went to a bar and saw people smoking, they were happy and it didn’t harm them. So smoking can’t be harmful.
The truth is, prostituting is far more harmful than smoking and you have to see the whole lives of the prostituted women to see the acute harm. The childhood abuse and molestation is not something that shows to someone like you. By someone like you I mean a john, because men in hetero porn are more like johns than prostitutes. You don’t see the lack of alternatives, the drug use, the destroyed human potential, the shortened life span, the daily humiliation.
For you and those others confused by “rape is not sex therefore if I am motivated by sex I can’t be a rapist”… most of the time, a rapist does not realize he has raped. To a rapist, rape is sex. To the rape victim it is not sex. understand now?
Strippers are never turned on by their job. It’s only about sex to the john. Hookers are not turned on by sucking dick. The difference between prostitution and rape is that the prostitute is supposed to pretend she is turned on, she is suppoesed to pretend it’s sex for her.
Get it now?
This comment was written by saltyC.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 7:50 am
I’m reminded of a time when my baby’s daddy asked me if I was ever raped. I told him, not until the time when he raped me. He was like “when?” I reminded him of the incident, and he said “oh yeah, well that wasn’t that bad.”
This comment was written by saltyC.Yeah, I’m sure for him it was a blast. Yes it was part of the overall abuse and battery designed to make me “act right”, and it was also very pleasurable for him, he got hard, he ejaculated.
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September 2nd, 2006 at 7:54 am
Josh (who is a man?), didn’t get harmed while acting in one single pornographic movie and he can testify that nobody else did, so y’all pron-haters better shut up! If you don’t watch a rape, it makes it stop mangically (not a typo).
It looks a lot like I’m getting accused of rape here.
SaltyC:
Strippers are never turned on by their job. It’s only about sex to the john. Hookers are not turned on by sucking dick. The difference between prostitution and rape is that the prostitute is supposed to pretend she is turned on, she is suppoesed to pretend it’s sex for her.
Well, as I WAS a prostitute, and I DID suck dick, and for the record, I WAS turned on by it, so just try and listen before you lecture sex workers on what they feel, and what sort of porn they made.
I mean it. This attitude is more demeaning than making porn. The people I made the porn with were respectful. None of you people are. I’m quickly coming to the conclusion that the anti-porn squad here is nothing but a bunch of arrogant asses who’re more interested in being bluenose dudley do-rights than in the actual lives of the people they claim to protect.
Everyone here LEAPT to the conclusion that, as a man in porn, I was acting in het porn,
Wrong.
And then everyone decided I was a rapist. Real nice going, people. Talking with anti-porn activists is *far* more degrading then actually making it. None of you would ever listen to someone who’s not miserable in amking porn. Those people don’t exist, right? Or they’re rapists making het porn.
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 8:13 am
Gimme a break, I didn’t accuse you of rape. You wrote “if you find it degrading, don’t watch“. Many of us have pointed out that women and children are raped for pornography, so our concern goes far beyond “fidning it degrading”.
So, you acted in one gay pornography movie? In this case, your experience is even less relevant to the discussion, since you were responding to Amy, who was very clearly talking about straight pornography, which constitutes the largest part of pornographic consumption. What’s next? “Some men get raped, too”?
So we degrade you? Never mind, you too can blame it on “some radical feminists”, I’ve heard it works wonders.
This comment was written by Jimmy Ho.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 8:20 am
sorry josh, but being in one porn movie doesn’t qualify you as a “sex worker”
And your testimony that you get turned on every time you suck dick for money doesn’t negate the testimony of most women prostitues that it doesn’t. Your experience is not the reality of the ones who as Dworkin put it “do the lion’s share of fucking”
And for uour information, you do not represent “sex workers” side vs the “anti-porn” here, there are many “sex workers” on our side in this very discussion, and we are talking about women living in a male supremacist context, so you are missing the point.
This comment was written by saltyC.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 8:24 am
Nowhere in Amy’s post did she mention the word “straight”. Also, the porn I was in was not gay.
Are there any more totally wrong conclusions you’d like to leap to?
So we degrade you? Never mind, you too can blame it on “some radical feminists”, I’ve heard it works wonders.
No, I’d rather blame a lack of respect for people who’ve been in nonexploitative porn, and a general refusal to acknowledge we exist, or if there is an acknowledgement, it’s to attack us as patriarchy enabling traitors. Also, on the tendency of people like you to put words in my mouth.
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 8:31 am
So what? Senior Wneces never quit smoking and he lived to 103, what relevance does that have to the fact that smoking is harmful? I’m not saying you don’t exist, just that your experience has no bearing on whether Porn exists by destroying women.
This comment was written by saltyC.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 8:32 am
I mean Senior Wences.
This comment was written by saltyC.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 8:44 am
What I wrote is that Amy “was very clearly talking about straight pornography”; even though she didn’t explicitely state it, the comments preceding hers were talking about “Internet porn” “in general“, which is de facto equivalent with “het porn”. Amy didn’t object to Sage’s gender-specification (in comment nb. 9) through expressions such as unwanted contact with a real live woman”.
This comment was written by Jimmy Ho.It is D’Amato, not “us-people”, who is conveniently talking about pornography in abstract, as pointed out by Ann Bartow in the part I quoted in comment 13.
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September 2nd, 2006 at 9:20 am
sorry josh, but being in one porn movie doesn’t qualify you as a “sex worker”
And your testimony that you get turned on every time you suck dick for money doesn’t negate the testimony of most women prostitues that it doesn’t. Your experience is not the reality of the ones who as Dworkin put it “do the lion’s share of fucking”
You know, the more I try and explain myself, the more personally insulting you people get. I see no reason to keep correcting you every time you either put words into my mouth or insult me.
The *only* point I was trying to make in my original reply to Amy was that not all porn is exploitative. I did mention that plenty of porn is, but just that not all is. I figured speaking from personal experience might be helpful.
In return, I got insulted, and had several incorrect assumptions about my experiences explained to me as if they were fact.
There’s not much more I can say here other than that you repeatedly assumed things that were’t true and tried to put words into my mouth. At that level, it’s not a debate, so I’m outta this discussion.
You and Jimmy Ho can have a hearty round of self congratulation for having been so vile to me that I saw no point in sticking around and constantly correcting me when you lied about what I was thinking or saying, or what I had done.
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 9:38 am
You’re just trying to redefine the terminology.
It was actually through this site that I first came to understand the fact that most rape is about power. It was tough for me to understand this at first since I don’t have the necessary introspection to a rapists mind.
But as a young healthy male, I do have introspection to watching pornography, and I can tell you I don’t get off imagining how much the porn industry might cause suffering to some women. Mainstream porn watchers (or men at least, to generalize my introspection) get off at seeing unrealistically sexually willing hot females. Deep down inside, every sane porn watcher understands that this is just fantasy.
Btw, if porn is about degrading women, why do so many guys get off at watching femdom?
This comment was written by Mikko.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 9:43 am
So desk jobs are more degrading than porn. (Same bullshit, different day for that argument.) Which is fun FUN FUN !!! But you’re working at a desk job anyway. I look forward to your explanation that you chose a desk job over porn because you actually love degradation, or someting equally nonsensical, Josh.
But not in this thread, okay ? Somewhere else. Even if you had the time of your life making porn, your experience is not representative of the heterosexual women that are the primary subject of the thread. One important distinction between gay male porn and hetero porn that I love to mention on these threads is that former has a mandatory condom policy nowadays. The latter does not. That ought to provide one valuable clue that even in a heterosexist society, male bodies have more status than female bodies– even in porn.
I don’t know if gay male porn could be linked to sexual assault in the gay community. It’s an interesting subject. At any rate, there is same-sex domestic violence, so with or without porn, the gay community is not a sexual utopia. And I’ll go out on a limb and guess that if a gay man was concerned about a connection between gay male porn and same-sex assault, he’d have to tread extremely carefully for fear of giving homophobes a whole new form of “heterosexual panic” to justify queer-bashing with.
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 9:49 am
Josh, I believe you can get ‘turned’ on by sucking some random dude’s dick for a camera. Hell, I can even believe that many female prostittutes, strippers and porn-stars are occasionally aroused by sexual intercourse with strangers. As the truth is when you have constant stimulation to your body - you well, are probably going to get stimulated. There are even a certain percentage of women (I think it is about 12%) who ‘orgasmed’ during rape. Hell, about 30-35% of women who breast-feed orgasm while breastfeeding.
But if we look at being ‘turned’ on and ‘liking it’… I think that’s where the difference is. Obviously, the rape victims and breastfeeding mothers don’t experience the orgasm with ‘pleasure’ but with discomfort . A friend who does supportwork on a women’s health phoneline, is always surprised by how many first time mothers are horrified when they are sexually aroused by their babie’s suckling. They often think ’something’s wrong with them’. It’s quite a natural response really, but no one says that’s having sex with your baby…. No one thinks of it as sex.
Now, I am not saying that you are in denial about having sex in your porn flick. I am sure you enjoyed having sex - it’s like a one-night stand really, and no one here is going to deny that you enjoy having sex in a one-night stand.
But I will raise the criticism that other’s have raised, you are not a seasoned porn star or sex worker. I am sure there are types of porn that are created amongst ‘consenting happy adults’ - but does that really take away from the fact that nearly all het porn is about stereotypical gedner roles, in which women’s bodies are solely about being ‘fuck-object’? As a man who’s starred in gay porn - you should know about stereotypical het sex anyways…. And hearing plenty of criticism about gay porn from profeminist gay men, leads me to believe that many times in gay porn - the man that does the penetrating often uses “SEXIST” terms to describe how he is fucking his ‘bitch’… again drawing on het terms for ‘dominance/masculine’ and ’submissive/feminine’. I’m not going to add anymore to that, as I’ve never seen gay porn. But I am sure that you can understand what I am trying to get at….
Additionally, I do think it’s offensive that you as a man do not realize that your socialization is far different than that of women and thus your experiences are not reflective of the experience of women and the majority of women participants in the sex industry.
This comment was written by AradhanaDevindra.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 10:05 am
Let me be a bit more clear : I don’t want to talk to people who insult me, and make incorrect assumptions about what I was doing without bothering to ask me. If you can’t deal with me from a position of respect, and if you’d rather jump to conclusions instead of AKSING me about my experiences, I’m not talking to you, because it’s not a conversation to begin with.
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 10:09 am
Act like a jackass, get treated like one. What a concept, J.
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 10:16 am
Josh, if you want respect, try earning it. You showed up in this thread to give glowing reviews of your two-hour career in porn, along with the same old tripe about how you’re working a “regular” job even though such jobs are sooooooo much more degrading than making porn films. You knew exactly how a lot of feminists would react to that, so save the crocodile tears, okay ?
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 10:18 am
It’s the internet, no one really knows you - if you don’t/do want to be clear go ahead - it’s really no loss to any of us who ‘aren’t really listening to you’ anyways. It just forces us to take you even less seriously than we already do, if you aren’t going to step up to the plate.
whatever…
This comment was written by AradhanaDevindra.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 10:18 am
Josh, whether or not you were harmed in the depiction is really not the point. The point is that your pleasure or lack thereof, as the object of the porn, was immaterial, superfluous, etc….you didn’t matter, except as an object which provoked ejaculation. That’s what is harmful about porn…that it creates an idea that sex is a state in which only one person’s pleasure/joy/full, heartfelt participation is required.
As for femdom, again, Sam, the pleasure or lack thereof of the woman performing the domination doesn’t matter. She is again the object, a prop for the pleasure of the man who is masturbating to an idea that he can “get someone to do that to him”. Most people who are into B&D and S&M will tell you, honestly, that in many ways the sub has most of the power, directing the script, as it were. It is not necessary that the depiction of B&D be porn. It can be erotica (i.e. shared and enjoyable to all parties), but it is very common that it is.
I’m not changing terminology. It’s generally agreed that there is a substantive difference between erotica and porn, and that difference is in whether those depicted are subject and object (or just objects, if the subject is only the one viewing), or subject and subject. I.E., the difference between pleasure being mutual and shared, and one (or more) persons’ pleasure being either immaterial (who cares) or undesired (I’m getting off on her/his pain).
This comment was written by odanu.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 11:06 am
Jimmy Ho wrote:
Jimmy, in the post you were replying to, Josh didn’t say that anti-porn folks should “shut up,” or anything that can honestly be interpreted as saying that anti-porn folks should “shut up.” Furthermore, your comment - the first one in this thread which used insulting another poster as its main content - set off a huge decline in the quality of posts on this thread.
Josh wrote:
Saying that the other folks here are treating you with contempt, and not listening to what you write, was entirely legitimate. But the above statement is nothing but insulting other posters, and isn’t appropriate on “Alas.”
Similarly, the general tone of contempt with which many posters here are treating Josh is not appropriate on “Alas.”
The next person, from either side of the debate, who I perceive as treating other posters without respect will have their post deleted and be banned from “Alas” for 24 hours. If y’all want a space where pro- and anti- folks can trash each other, there are literally dozens of blogs other than this one in which you can do so.
Also, my moderation decision is not a subject for discussion here. If you want to argue with me about my moderation, take it to email, or to a thread about moderation. Comments on this thread about the moderation policy will be deleted.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 11:18 am
That’s what is harmful about porn…that it creates an idea that sex is a state in which only one person’s pleasure/joy/full, heartfelt participation is required.
No, it doesn’t. Porn certainly didn’t create that view, and not all porn uses or reinforces it.
I’m not changing terminology. It’s generally agreed that there is a substantive difference between erotica and porn,
Generally agreed among a minority of English-speakers who want to change the terminology. Or so it seems in this part of America.
This comment was written by hf.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 11:26 am
There’ is no “stepping up to the plate” because no one is interested in actually listening unless I say exactly what they want to hear.
What I’m seeing is that lots of the people here seem to think they get a right to personally insult people who disagree with them, make up lies about what they feel, and generally demean them.
And then I get told I’m crying crocodile tears. Look, if any of you think I’m being a troll, go ahead and say it. Don’t be shy. I’ll leave.
odanu, I don’t think there’s an agreement that you can somehow tell pornography from erotica just by looking at it. Would you consider the movie I was in erotica or pornography? Can you even tell without having seen it?
I’m 99.99% certain that no one here has seen the movie I was in. But *everyone* has a conclusion about what I was doing, how I felt, etc… The first thing people did was jump to the conclusion that it was het porn. The second thing was to assume I was in gay porn (still wrong). Also, lots of insults. Which according to other people here, I either deserved, or provoked intentionally.
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 11:27 am
Fine, Ampersand, I’m out.
This comment was written by Jimmy Ho.When I said I don’t understand why you had to concede D’Amato “one good point” and join him in pointing to “some radical feminists” without giving any name or reference, I meant it.
Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 11:29 am
Sorry, Amp. I’ll try and restrain my hackles.
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 11:39 am
Way back in post #13, Jimmy Ho wrote:
It’s obvious to me that a woman being double-penetrated for a free XXX portal against her will has been raped.
However, a woman who has “vanilla” sex against her will is also being raped. The way you wrote the above makes it could be read as implying that it’s the double penetration, rather than the lack of consent, that makes something rape.
I wrote that because if porn is a significant cause of rape, then it’s likely that a massive increase in porn prevalence would be correlated with an increase in rape. However, no such increase in rape is apparent in studies of rape prevalence.
I said “unlikely,” however, not “impossible.” It is certainly possible that there has been a significant increase in rape that has not been measured.
It’s also possible that other aspects of society have been changing to significantly decrease the likelihood of rape, while simultaneously increased porn prevalence has been increasing the likelihood of rape, resulting in little or no change in rape prevalence even though porn is a significant cause of rape.
Occam’s razor, however, suggests that if a massive increase in porn is not accompanied by an apparent increase in rape prevalence, then porn probably is not a significant cause of rape.
1) Yes, I think there is a rape culture. This post is the best outline of what I think rape culture is.
2) I think mass media, including but not limited to porn, contributes to rape culture. I don’t see porn as something massively different than the rest of mass media in terms of its impact on rape culture (I do see differences in other terms, of course).
3) Well, obviously it has some effect on its consumers, or else who would buy porn? However, in terms of turning people who would otherwise be non-rapists into rapists, I think it has an effect only on an extremely slim margin. See comment #80 on this post for a fuller explanation of what I mean.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 11:49 am
I’m out too. But since this thread has been hijacked by a male and his agency my perspective, as a former *whore, would not be heard anyway.
*We didn’t use euphemisms then, and I never do, now.
This comment was written by Pony.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 11:50 am
Mikko [b] Deep down inside, every sane porn watcher understands that this is just fantasy.[/b]
But do they really? I am sure most men are not just rapists waiting to happen when they watch porn. And I am aware most men do not believe that they are living in one giant porno where gorgeous women will just rip open their clothes at every opportunity. But what is more problematic and insidious about pornography (mainstream het porn to clarify) is that the expectations men place on women’s bodies is unrealistic. The expectations that men have when they want their gfs to perform threesomes/lesbian acts with other women - is demeaning, and influenced by porn. I know, as even I have been asked this many times in recent years. It’s not just that threesomes are ‘demeaning’ (they are) but this act is seldom expected to be performed with two men (of the female partners choosing) - but rather two women and one man. I know lesbians who’ve been picked up at LESBIAN clubs for the sake of het threesome adventures. Whatever happened to women’s only spaces? The assumption under all this IS THAT WOMEN ARE SEXUALLY AVAILABLE ANYWAY THAT MEN LIKE IT. Pornography HAS influeced the way sex is communicated/acted upon between men and women.
When you see that most young girls are ‘competing’ to be more beautiful than the next in a world where men largely ‘only go for hot women’ - don’t you think that pornography has increased the expectations that men have for women’s physically? Why would boob jobs in the UK double ever since the explosion of internet porn? Is this not a correlation? Why are so many women constantly undergoing plastic surgery. Now it’s not just your average celebrity who feels compelled to undergo the knife - but every sarah and sally!
Why would male expectations of how women’s pubic hair should be ‘groomed’ even be an expectation. You’d obviously have had to see some woman’s pubic hair groomed in the first place to know that it ‘looks better groomed’:
http://www.reclusiveleftist.com/?p=360
Men have always demanded that women be physically attractive, but since the easy accesibility of porn this expectation has dramatically increased. Additionally, you can see how pornography has affected women’s clothing and accessories, where women are following what/how porn stars dress. Having worked in the accessories industry for sometime, it doesn’t surprise me when people automatically assume that I have seen the latest issue of playboy or maxim and that they want “the earrings she’s got on”, or the ‘bracelet” or whatever shit….
[b]Btw, if porn is about degrading women, why do so many guys get off at watching femdom?[/b]
1) how many guys get off exclusively on femdom? how many guys watch ‘regular’ porn and complement their viewing habits with watching the occassional femdom videos?
2) How many guys watch femdom period? Quite a small number when compared to cazillions made by mainstream porn. Looking at whatever percentage this is, it’s not hard to see that femdom like other types of porn is a ‘fetish’. it’s not necessarily something that ALL men watch all the time.
3) What about the aesthetics of femdom? Sure you can put on a few layers of darker make-up - but what’s a domme really look like? she’s usually a physically attractive woman, usually with an hour-glass figure, possibly a little larger (rarely any much different than what Jayne Mansfield or Anita Ekberg may have looked like - and well, they’re sex symbols) and with the overall visualization of a suicide girl.
See when you talk of performance and knowing that it is ‘not real’, I would agree with you about femdom. Femdom is seemingly a ‘performance’. Subs and dommes “know” and “agree” upon the way they act. It’s a contract with certain expectations. Having said that, female dommes (especially in pornography) are expected to be dommes in ‘high heels’ and ‘leather corsets/bustiers’… is that really any different when you are dictating a way women ought to dress?
It is the rare porno that depicts an ugly, masculine woman having sex with a man/whipping his butt/pissing on him/choking him whatever….
Aside from the visualization of it, who’s really in charge of who in domme? The underlying joke of femdom is that men mutually consent to being ‘victims’ of dommes. Everyone agrees to what level or ‘play-torture’ the domme will exert on the male victim, therefore it isn’t the free choice of the domme to exert her dominance over the man. He knows what is coming to him, and he has pre-established boundaries of what he likes/doesn’t like.
Bringing in the fetish angle again, is foot fetishsizing/midget porn/disbaled women porn/fat porn - is all the same. At the end of the day it is a ‘complement’ to the malestream view of women, it is not the norm. At the end of the day you are the consumer, some guy with a wet dream is the producer. Nothing really changes, women essentially are the ones who are being ‘bought’ the way men want them, not necessarily the way women want to be themselves. The way women ‘act’ in porn depends on how pornographers want to ’sort’ them on the basis of their looks. So if you look like Rose Mcgowan - you’d be a suicide girl, if you look like Britney spears - you’d be suited for mainstream porn. etc…
It all boils down to male demand/male viewing/male pleasure…
This comment was written by AradhanaDevindra.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 12:02 pm
Jimmy wrote:
If you want. You would, however, be welcome to stay, if you can abide by the “Alas” moderation goals.
I didn’t give any name or reference because I didn’t think anyone would disagree that some radical feminists have said that porn is a significant cause of rape (please note that I said “some,” not “all”). For instance, I think that’s a fair reading of Robin Morgan’s famous comment that “pornography is the theory and rape is the practice.” A more recent example is Diana Russell’s book Dangerous Relationships: Pornography, Misogyny, and Rape.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 12:17 pm
AradhanaDevindra, I agree with you that porn as a whole has added to the pressure on women and girls to conform to a very narrow ideal of beauty. However, except in fairly specific areas (like pubic hair styles), I think that the mainstream media is at least as blameworthy as porn is. The vogue for extreme thinness for female TV stars is, it seems to me, much more extreme now than it was in the 1960s, for instance.
I also agree with you that the “fetish” areas of pornography shouldn’t be focused on to the exclusion of “mainstream” pornography, or to invalidate judgements made about mainstream pornography, when discussing porn.
* * *
I’m wondering what porn means to the other posters here. By my definition, pornography is any work created with the expectation that viewers (or listeners) will masturbate while reading/viewing/listening to it. So “Playboy” is porn, what a lot of people call “erotica” is porn, and so on.
But I don’t expect that everyone here agrees with me. So…?
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 1:19 pm
Ampersand, you put a lot of faith in “rape prevalence studies”. Can you link to those studies so I can check out their methods, please? Because I don’t believe that there has not been an increase in rape due to the increase in porn, and further, (Josh’s experience in one non-hetero and non-gay porn flick notwithstanding) I don’t believe that porn doesn’t rely on widespread coercion. Channel 6 in the UK did an eye-opening documentary called Hardcore, which reveals the standard methods used, including rape, to compel women to submit to acts they expressly refused to do. One of the porn cretors called it “exploring”, or helping the women “discover what they thought they couldn’t do”. The woman they were about to rape said very clearly she thought that was abuse, but after they raped and asphyxiated her, she was about to “consent” . At long last, the producers of the documentary stepped in and removed her from the house.
This comment was written by saltyC.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 3:02 pm
Yes, Josh, it is evident. That’s why most visual sexually graphic material is porn, where erotica is more often written. Erotica requires a story line, and full or relatively full characterization. If the plot is “Hi Jane, I’m Bob, wanna fuck”, and Jane says “Oh, yes, Bob”, that’s porn. That’s the woman (or possibly even man) as object that has no humanity. However, if you know from the setup that Jane and Bob have been planning this for weeks, and are both looking forward to it eagerly, for any of a myriad of reasons, it can be erotica, so long as it continues to be mutual throughout.
Erotica is harder to create, because it requires that all players have agency. Unless a film explicitly shifts pov from character to character, exploring what each is feeling with regard to what is going on, or it is told from the pov of the person with the least power in the situation, (again, with full characterization) it is porn.
For illustration purposes (and it’s been years since I’ve seen either of these, so all mistakes are in my faulty memory) The Story of O is not porn, as the person who is acted upon (she who has the least power, both institutionally, and in the specifics of the movie) is the pov character, and her feelings and reality are what drives the storyline. Now, it’s not particularly honest, and not particularly feminist erotica, but it is erotica. Debbie does Dallas? Porn. Though Debbie is the POV character, every word out of her mouth, every thought assumed to be in her head, is some (not very creative) man’s fantasy of what a woman would say if he were able to operate her mouth. She does not grow, she does not change, and she never acts for herself with any character motivation other than “the guy on the screen wants me to…”
Porn is essentially boring to anyone looking for anything other than the objectification of a human being for sexual gratification.
This comment was written by odanu.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 3:54 pm
This seems to assume that all porn and all erotica has to include two people having a sexual encounter. How about images of a single person - are they erotica, or porn, or does it depend on presentation?
Does this apply to something like a comic book, where only fictional humans are involved (not counting the cartoonist)?
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 4:07 pm
I’m out too. But since this thread has been hijacked by a male and his agency my perspective, as a former *whore, would not be heard anyway.
I’d be happy to listen to whatever you have to say about your personal experiences, observations, and ideas with respect. I had presumed that I’d be offered the same courtesy.
One of the things that drew me to Amp’s blog was that it wasn’t 100% feminist issues. There was some good space for tlaking about queer issues here as well, especially bi issues. where I was *trying* to come from was from my personal perspective about the work that I did, the people I worked with, and what they (and I) have to say.
I really didn’t feel like taking over the thread, and I’m sorry what I had to say in response to some insulting responses ended up doing so. I mean that honstly.
Hell if I know how to respond to stuff like that. If you’ve got anything to say, I’ll be happy to shut up and listen for a while, as long as I can ask respectful questions. Fair?
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 4:10 pm
Yes, Josh, it is evident. That’s why most visual sexually graphic material is porn, where erotica is more often written. Erotica requires a story line, and full or relatively full characterization. If the plot is “Hi Jane, I’m Bob, wanna fuck”, and Jane says “Oh, yes, Bob”, that’s porn. That’s the woman (or possibly even man) as object that has no humanity. However, if you know from the setup that Jane and Bob have been planning this for weeks, and are both looking forward to it eagerly, for any of a myriad of reasons, it can be erotica, so long as it continues to be mutual throughout.
What I’m saying is that the definition is far from universally accepted, especially among those who produce it what you would call erotica. Plenty of us are happy to call what you’d call erotica by the name “porn”.
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 4:18 pm
You can find three rape prevalence studies I think are reasonably good by scrolling to the bottom of this post . I don’t think these are perfect by any means, but I think they’re the best studies of rape prevalence in the US that have been done to date.
In addition, there have been dozens of local-sample studies using Mary Koss’ methodology (Koss’ survey is discussed in the link above). Although of course with that many studies the results have varied, most find that between 8% and 16% of women experience rape at some point in their lifetime - and I’m not aware of any general pattern of more recent studies finding higher prevalence of rape.
Of course, none of these are perfect. What’s needed is a nationwide study using good methodology repeated every three or four years, so that we could get a real idea of what’s going on over time. Unfortunately, I don’t think that can get funded in the current political climate.
As I said in post #60, I certainly acknowledge that it’s possible that there’s been an increase in rape over the last 10-20 years.
If porn does rely on widespread rape of women who appear in porn, that would be important because that’s disgusting and evil. However, I doubt it would make much difference to the nationwide prevalence of rape - which is the statistic D’Amato was talking about - because women who appear in porn are a tiny minority of all Americans.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 5:24 pm
Amp…I guess the point is that everyone in the medium must be portrayed as human. I didn’t intend to put a numerical limit on the number of humans that can be portrayed :-)
This comment was written by odanu.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 5:46 pm
Odanu, when people make distinctions between porn and erotica, it often feels to me like subjective value judgments that boil down to “what I like is erotica, what I disapprove of is porn.” I’m not saying you intend to do this, it’s just that I’ve seen too many definitions, most of which draw the line based on personal preferences.
Given that men are (supposedly) more visually oriented and women (supposedly) more turned on by porn, I find the separation of prose vs. visuals to play along gender stereotypes in an unhelpful manner.
Even by your definitions, I’ve read plenty of prose porn written by and for women with minimal characterization. The subgenre is even known as PWP for “Porn without plot” or “Plot? What plot?”
Generally, I’m willing to say that a work of art created with an intent of sexually arousing the audience is porn, whether it’s a classical work, professional or amateur. And I’m more than willing to concede that I read porn, mostly fanfic (het and slash).
This comment was written by Lis Riba.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 5:59 pm
Lis:
If there’s such a thing as an impartial, objective definition, I have yet to see it. I wish there were a definition for each person who has ever seen products with sexual content. That would show that people are thinking critically about what they consume and enjoy, rather than just throwing up their hands and making sex the sole human behavior that should be exempted from critical thought.
I generally don’t give a damn about the regulation of porn that doesn’t directly involve physical harm to real human beings. Phone sex, for instance, is extremely distasteful to me, and if I found out my husband was using it, I’d kick his ass down the block. Then divorce him. However, I don’t regard it as dangerous in the same way that pornographic films are. I’ll still razz it until the end of time, though. Also, if I find out somebody close to me loves tentacle porn and the like, I’ll definitely be more than a little grossed out.
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 7:36 pm
[Flame-baiting comment deleted by Amp.]
This comment was written by Rob.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 10:12 pm
I asked for studies in relation to the assertion that there has not been a change in the prevalence of rape correlating with the increase of porn. None of the studies you refer to discuss rape statistics over time.
I do know that towns that have a lot of porn have a lot of rape, Las Vegas for instance.
This comment was written by saltyC.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 10:45 pm
Lis. I wasn’t dividing along prose vs visual, but human vs inhuman. It is often easier to depict erotica in prose than in pictures, but it has been done, and done well, in pictures as well. That said, of course people can differ about what does, and does not, depict humans as objects, but it has nothing to do with any kind of genetic “essentialism” regarding what men and women supposedly prefer. I’ve suspected that “men are visual” is code for “sit pretty and keep your mouth shut like a good little object” for a long time.
This comment was written by odanu.Report this comment to the moderators
September 2nd, 2006 at 11:47 pm
My opinion is one based on an article in a local paper. It said that according to police that on evenings followning strip shows in the area the levels of rape and sexual assault increased dramatically. This is directly from the police and they should know.
We have been told its harmless and yeh consensual sex is great. But so that men can have their strip shows means I can not go to many places alone. Can’t walk down a deserted beach alone. Can’t live in the country alone. I am in a prison in part because of lenient sentencing by male judges who have the freedom to roam the hills alone. They consider another chance for offenders more important than my freedom. According to some people I should not be in these places alone. Yes my life is a prison in part because of pornography.
This comment was written by Sarah.Report this comment to the moderators
September 3rd, 2006 at 5:51 am
Odanu, I just came across a review of Lost Girls. I mention it because the review, written by Neil Gaiman, takes a similar view to yours on the porn vs. erotica question, but focuses on the question of consequences rather than on characterization:
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
September 3rd, 2006 at 6:02 am
SaltyC wrote:
I don’t think I asserted that “there has not been a change in the prevalence of rape correlating with the increase of porn”; I asserted that there is no evidence of such a change (that I’m aware of). The one nationwide, year-after-year survey we have - the NVCS - shows a decline in rape, but since the NCVS sucks that doesn’t prove anything for sure.
The book I cited in my post, Seven Theories of Rape, did a state-by-state analysis comparing rape prevalence to porn magazine sales in each state, and found a very weak connection, or no connection at all, between porn sales and rape prevalence. A much stronger connection was between women’s status (how many women held political office, how small the wage gap, etc) and rape prevalence - the higher women’s status, the less rape.
How do you know that Las Vegas has more rape than other, demographically similar cities do?
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
September 3rd, 2006 at 7:36 am
Yes, Amp, exactly. Character has consequences, so that fits. Stereotypes just “are” without context. Sex is an important part of life, and its depiction is also important in art for that reason… but when sex is divorced from life and from humanity, it stops being important and starts being harmful pornography.
This comment was written by odanu.Report this comment to the moderators
September 3rd, 2006 at 9:31 am
Alright the stats i have are for Nevada, and they show a steady per capita increase in rape from the year 1960, reaching triple the 1960 rate in the year 1994, and after that all crime fell, though rape did not fall as precipitously as any other crime.
The prevalence of porn has been increasing since the first issue of the male supremacist Playboy in 1955
In 2000, Nevada ranked 21st in total crime index for all states, but ranked 8th for rape.
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/nvcrime.htm
This comment was written by saltyC.Report this comment to the moderators
September 3rd, 2006 at 10:52 am
From the Amazon review of Lost Girls:
…One of my favorite moments: a husband and wife trapped in a frozen, loveless, sexless relationship, conduct a stiff conversation, laced with unconscious puns and wordplay, moving into positions that cause their shadows to appear to copulate wildly, finding the physical passion that the people are denied…
I read that in the original comic, and rolled my eyes. I thought that it was forced and self-conscious. But maybe the story and art went uphill from there. Too bad I don’t have 75 bucks. :/
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
September 3rd, 2006 at 2:25 pm
I agree on Amps general definition of porn (i.e. media aimed at arousal for masturbation). For the sake of this discussion I’d separate live pornography (which requires actors and actresses to accomplish sexual acts) from written/drawn porn (erotica/hentai). Both affect the general attitudes towards sexuality (e.g. rising expectations) but only the former can be personally degrading (e.g. traumatic). These are two very separate things.
As to AradhanaDevindra’s post,
Technically, you’re making the same mistake as the people the original post is criticizing, i.e. confusing correlation with causation. There may be alternative explanations as to why women invest more on their looks these days. I believe that media exposure (which includes pornography as a special case) is a significant factor, though.
I think a good analogy for rising expectations through media is candy: if you have never tasted it, you can perfectly well enjoy your daily vegetables. But once you have experienced the sweeter tastes, it’s hard to go back since you are now conscious of the alternatives. But deep down inside, the desire for candy has always been in your brain, hard-wired - it was only the experience of tasting it that made you conscious of its existence. Or as you epitomized it
I believe that deep down inside, porn producers really only bring outside the inner desires of men, i.e. unrealistically beautiful and sexually willing women. The tragedy is that unlike candy, women are conscious beings and thus the rising expectations hurt them (e.g. require investment and cause depression).
But in our information age, the only real alternative is information scarcity through control, i.e. criminalization of pornography.
This comment was written by Mikko.Report this comment to the moderators
September 4th, 2006 at 4:11 am
Just looking at the graphics suggest this is unlikely on two grounds:
(1) Violent crime started falling in 1994. Rape started falling in 1979. That makes any common cause very unlikely, about half the reduction in rape incidence occured before violent crime started to fall. If the falls are caused by the same thing then why was rape falling while violent crime was stable?
(2) Since 1994 (when violent crime started falling) rape has fallen faster than violent crime. So even the post-1994 fall can’t just be explained by a common cause, presumably you need some additional factor on top of this to explain why rape fell more than violent crime.
This comment was written by nik.Report this comment to the moderators
September 4th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
Mikko I believe that deep down inside, porn producers really only bring outside the inner desires of men, i.e. unrealistically beautiful and sexually willing women. The tragedy is that unlike candy, women are conscious beings and thus the rising expectations hurt them (e.g. require investment and cause depression).
Do you think it’s impossible for anyone to make pornography designed to appeal to the inner desires of women? I get the sense that people actually do belive that. That consider all pornography, even if it’s designed by women with the intent of arousing women’s inner desires, to be somehow still defaulting to men’s desires.
This comment was written by Josh Jasper.Report this comment to the moderators
September 4th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
Mikko:
This analogy is not working for me. Many fruits are sweeter than many candies. Pineapple, for instance, is sweeter than many varieties of chocolate. I don’t think this parallel is useful, unless your point is that a little porn usage is not so bad as compulsive porn usage.
Men who justify rape as entertainment in porn films may be under the impression that they can only orgasm if they see a woman being violated, or at least undergoing a pretend violation. But that sounds like a cheap cop-out to me. First of all, they weren’t watching porn in their mothers’ wombs, so what did they do to orgasm before they found porn ? Also, if it’s the violation/depiction of violation that is so important to reaching orgasm, why do men and the industry require more and more new women to degrade or rape every year ? More women get transformed into “product” than any man could possibly need even if it could be said that he acutally needs it. Why wouldn’t a man just be content with watching the same tape or looking at the same stills over and over again ? Why wouldn’t he be content to just picture scenarios in his head without actually needing live women to perform them ? Obviously just an image of a woman’s degradation is not enough. Somehow, an important part of the man’s arousal is that degradation didn’t just happen in the past;It’s happening now. And tomorrow. And the next day, all for his pleasure. The degradation must feel like it’s happening at this moment and into the future for it to be truly useful to him.
If I really believed that women have to be treated this way because men just can’t fend for themselves with their own imaginations, I really would be as much of a “man-hater” as the trolls love to make feminists out to be.
But I don’t think that. I think that men should behave like grownups and stop thinking that a) Their getting to come is the most important thing in the universe and b) Without porn, they just won’t be able to come. What bullshit.
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
September 4th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
I assume in the following that you were suggesting that the porn models are not the ideal standard of beauty for everyone.
I disagree on the basis that if there was some alternative standard of beauty which would appeal more to the aimed viewers than the current standard of beauty, the porn moguls would immediately switch to the new standard since it would generate more revenue. (Of course, in this analysis “everyone” is reduced to “aimed viewers”.)
I agree on the basis that people have different tastes. Porn has to appeal to large masses, and as such the standards of beauty have to be somewhat conservative.
I don’t believe that alternating between the words rape, violation and degradation, without any further definitions and explanations of what you mean by them in this context, serves discussion.
This comment was written by Mikko.Report this comment to the moderators
September 4th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
Mikko:
No, I don’t think that mainstream porn actresses are –or should be– the ideal of beauty. But that wasn’t my point. My point was that I can’t follow your analogy because I don’t think that candy, and lots of it, is the only avenue to experience the sensation of eating something sweet. Just like I don’t think that porn, and lots of it, is the only avenue to experience sexual pleasure.
Defenders of pornographic film are quick to point out that there are films with alternative standards of beauty, outside the mainstream, but that only addresses some of the issues skeptics have with pornographic film as a vehicle of sexual liberation or satisfaction. Beyond just the images and situations in mainstream porn films, the values expressed in the notion that women’s naked bodies equal sex– that women exist to embody sexuality and to supply sex while men are there to partake of what women embody– doesn’t change if suddenly the woman is fat or over fifty or wearing an unusual costume.
I’d really prefer not to discuss same-sex porn and the like, since we’re talking about male rapists of women and whether or not porn contributes to their existence.
Other posters have already explained their POV that men and the male-determined standards of the industry coerce or force women into sexual acts that they otherwise would not do. If you don’t approve of this belief, I can’t help you. I agree with those people that either real rape of faux rape, and possibly both, are an integral part of the pornographic film industry. Frankly, if you can’t go with this concept, you don’t have to discuss anything with me. I don’t mind.
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
September 5th, 2006 at 6:15 am
Are people talking about two radically differnt kinds of porn?
ms_xeno seems (?) to be discussing RAPE porn, i.e.
But much (most?) porn is not rape porn. Usually, porn involves a fantasy world of “too much love”: People are shown wanting sex, and getting off on it, and getting off on pleasuring others.
It doesn’t make any sense to conflate the two. I am certainly familiar with the feminist perspective that all porn is essentially rape (I do not adhere to that belief). But irrespective of my personal views, I think it’s very fair to say that most male viewers do not think–subconsciously or otherwise–that all porn is rape. So I think we need to differentiate between porn which is designed to appeal to those who like violence, and porn which is not.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
September 5th, 2006 at 8:32 am
Sailorman:
Yes, I had exactly the same problem analyzing ms_xeno’s message: was she talking about what is classically understood as rape porn, or was she implying that all porn is rape? (I’ve the the believe for some time that most public discourse arises from misunderstandings in the meaning of words.)
I believe it boils down to the definition of consent. There are roughly three ways in which a person can have sex: out of desire, willingly but paid, or non-willingly (forced). (No matter how one twists and defines the vocabulary, the ideas behind these categorizations remain.)
It’s pretty universally agreed that forced sex is considered rape, and it’s mostly agreed that desired sex is not rape. Paid sex seems to be the gray area.
Personally, I believe that if the woman chose paid sex as an alternative to any other profession, then that at least implies it can’t be considered rape. I can’t really formalize why I believe so, though.
(Sorry for totally sidestepping the original topic.)
This comment was written by Mikko.Report this comment to the moderators
September 5th, 2006 at 9:52 am
ms_xeno, I could kiss you for writing this:
I’ve been musing about this on and off all weekend, but in my mind the question has been posed as why I could watch Star Wars a thousand times over but as a porn user I was always looking forward to the next trip to Times Square.
It’s the question in my head as I remember that when my partner and I went to Amsterdam in December 1999 we considered buying a prostitute for a threesome, because the filmed fantasy wasn’t enough and we felt entitled to what we desired. Why wasn’t the fantasy enough, and did we really back out just because the city was a buzzing madhouse for Y2K new years or was that a convenient excuse for what was niggling our consciences? What was niggling our consciences?
I’ve tried to find the words for my feelings about that, and I’m good with words but there are still holes needing verbal markers before I can dissect them properly. I do feel like using pornography told me in a louder voice than other misogynist media that it was sexy to accept polyamory and bi-sexee threesomes and that it’s okay to bend a woman’s sexuality to my will and use her body for my purposes so long as I compensate her with money.
My favorite short argument for pornography being an important cause of rape, a cause of rape beyond what other media instigate, is news about Norwegian hotel staff asking for a ban on pay-per-porn because women were getting assaulted by men using porn in hotel rooms.
There’s also gobs of evidence and even a porn-supporting Supreme Court ruling that where strip clubs, pornography stores, and other sexually oriented businesses (SOBs) locate, rape increases. Many studies by realtors and property owners who don’t give a crap about women reveal that sex crimes increase around clusters of strip clubs and other places “real time” pornography is made and the U.S. Supreme Court, in decisions Young v. American Mini Theaters, Inc. and Renton v. Playtime Inc. Theater, Inc., concluded “…that municipalities have a substantial interest in protecting and preserving the quality of life for its community against the adverse secondary effects of SOBs….”
Some facts cited in the Land Use Studies used by the Supreme Court in their rulings:
1. In Indianapolis, Indiana crime increased 23% in the study areas containing SOBs versus areas containing no SOBs. Sex related crimes were 4 times more common in residential study areas with SOBs than commercial study areas with SOBs.
2. In Cleveland, Ohio, of the three study tracts with the highest incidence of rape, two had SOBs and the third bordered a tract with such businesses. In these three, there were 41 rapes, nearly 7 times the city average of 2.4 rapes per census tract.
3. In Phoenix, Arizona, sex offenses were 506% greater and property crimes were 43% greater in neighborhoods where SOBs were located as opposed to neighborhoods containing no SOBs.
You could believe Norwegian hotel staff and American real estate agents are making up allegations of pornography seeming to increase rapes and sexual assaults, but what motivation for lying could they have other than the meekly lobbed “sex negative” insult that’s supposed to shut feminists up when they try to point out such information?
This comment was written by Sam.Report this comment to the moderators
September 5th, 2006 at 9:52 am
Well, in the context that we are discussing, the actual characterization doesn’t seem relevant, only the apparent characterization does. If you’re looking that the effect of porn on viewers of porn, the only thing that matters is the perspective of the viewers. There is only confusion to be gained in breaking the fourth wall.
Which is to say: If I have a fantasy of being raped, and act out my fantasy with a willing accomplice, on camera, that is “rape porn” for the purposes of this discussion though it clearly is NOT rape. People who seek “rape” will find it in my film.
If, OTOH, I have an off-camera person forcing me at gunpoint to act out what APPEARS IN THE FILM to be happy consensual sex, that is not “rape porn” for these purposes though it clearly IS rape in fact. People who are seeking violence will not find it in my film.
Although I am certain that SOME viewers of porn out there are fully cognizant of the porn industry, and would watch “non-rape porn” while simultaneously getting off on the underlying aspects of the industry, these are a small minority of folks.
Lumping “porn” together doesn’t make much sense: There’s a big difference between Deep Throat and rape porn, in terms of the effect they are likely to have on their viewers. So for me, an interesting question is whether violent porn or “rape porn” in particular are linked to rape in any meaningful way. Though this is probably much harder to research it seems more relevant.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
September 5th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
Do you mean regardless of any rape that may happen in the making of porn and regardless of any rape that might result because a man utilizes porn to harbor his fantasies?
Who benefits from splitting these hairs? Whose sexuality is left intact and unquestioned?
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
September 5th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
>> (increase chances you will later rape someone)
I am not so sure of this link, myself. At least as applied to “generic” porn involving what appears to be consensual sex.
But without any evidence (this is pure speculation on my part) I might be inclined to think a subtheory might be true:
(watch porn which involves rape or other violence to women) >>> (increase chances you will later rape someone)
The reason I am “splitting hairs” is that we are trying to talk about the link between porn and rape (if there is one). And the link is NOT the rape which may occur in the making of a porn movie. No, we’re talking about the rape which may occur because someone watched a porn movie. (It’s not that porn-filming-related rape is unimportant per se. It’s just that it is such a small proportion of ALL rape that I am not talking about it here.)
Since the porn only “acts” on the watcher through the screen (he’s not standing thee when it’s filmed) then the important thing is what the watcher sees. And what the watcher wants to see. And what the watcher’s reaction to the porn is: Does it, or does it not, increase his tendency to rape women?
Oddly enough, for this particular question, what actually happened on screen is irrelevant.
The only way it could be relevant is if someone has “full knowledge” of the porn film they were watching. So it is (theoretically) possible that soemone might rent a film, thinking “hey, wow! That looks totally consensual but I happen to know it was really rape! ” That person could be enjoying “rape porn” so to speak. But it’s such a tiny subset of porn users, it’s irrelevant in the large picture.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
September 5th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
The first part of my post (now gone, for some reason) basically said
The current theory is (watch porn) >> (rape someone)
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
September 5th, 2006 at 6:27 pm
Sailorman, I’ve linked to this before, but you weren’t on the blog at the time. I urge you to read it and to reconsider, at least for the time it takes to read the article, that your view of porn films and the clear line you make between a faked rape and a real one isn’t there for a lot of critics. Even some male critics.
Just A John ? Pornography and Men’s Choices
I submit that porn films, yes, even mainstream ones, even the “softcore” ones that were on cable when I was a teen back in the 1980s, deliberately make the line between consent and force blurry. Much of our culture does that, but the deliberate blurring is much more obvious in porn films than it often is elsewhere– once you know how to look for it. The author of the article I linked to goes into considerable detail as to why the difference between supposedly “nice” and “nasty” porn films is largely academic if the point is to examine it for negative impact on relations between men and women. I’m not quoting those paragraphs here because some folks may find them triggering. I’ll leave it up to Amp to decide whether quoting anything that graphic is good manners in this context or not. Personally, I’d rather not quote it here.
I don’t want to use you, a male, as a hypothetical in this equation any more than I want to use Josh as a real example in this equation. You are both men, and the dynamics at work for men in porn isn’t the same as it is for women. No way. Furthermore, I don’t know why I should give a rat’s ass about whether or not I can prove that somebody was literally raped at gunpoint to produce a film or not. First of all, rape is extremely difficult to prove in this culture even in “ideal” circumstances. Anyone who thinks that in a world where women in all walks of life have miserable odds of achieving justice, it’s going to be any easier for a woman who fucks on film for money to get justice– well, I think that person is lying to themselves, big time.
Second of all, I am not diminished in any way by simply avoiding a film like Deep Throat. Avoiding it for the simple reason that I cannot be sure if Damaino arranged for actors to rape Linda Boreman. I can open a book, look at a painting, listen to a piece of music, use my imagination– the options are more or less limitless if I want something that produces arousal in me.
It depresses me that you and others like you devote so much energy to defending the existence of these films and your own subjective definition of what constitues “real” rape, instead of devoting energy to Qgrrl’s question: What male privileges are you defending, at the cost of women’s quality of life and human dignity ? When you are ready to think about that, get back to me. The rest is tapdancing on your part, and I’m not interested.
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
September 5th, 2006 at 6:37 pm
Sam, no problem. I get speechless a lot, too. Even when the b.s. is predictable, there’s so damn much of it that it’s good to have others around with the mop and bucket. And actually, I think your writing has improved a lot in the last few years.
Sadly, the issues you mention in Norway didn’t even occur to me;Even though I just got back from a trip where I stayed in a regular chain hotel that had porn films available in the room along with all the other films you’d expect. Even though I saw the cleaning staff in the halls every day. I can’t even begin to imagine what would go through my head in a job where everyone tells me that the customer is king, I need my income and so on– and there in the hotel room I’m paid to clean stands some shitheel who thinks I should join him to watch some shitty film– or worse. Grrrr…
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
September 5th, 2006 at 8:21 pm
“Just a John” was pretty interesting. Mostly it made me understand more clearly why watching pornography isn’t that different from paid sex: the reason is completely analogous as to why watching child porn isn’t that different from child rape. Watching porn boosts the industry, and at the end of the line, some female actors will be involved. It’s just a question of how indirect the payment is.
The second important point seems to be that porn-watching men should feel guilty since porn, statistically speaking, affects male-female relationships in a way considered negative, e.g. the affinity for sexual criminality in the vinicity of SOBs, and the increased staff harrassment at porn-supplying hotels.
Well, methodologically, it makes sense. I only object at the writer’s way of using vague terminology such as feminism, patriarchy and male supremacy.
But still, we’re facing the age-old question: should policies be derived from statistics, or should policies be based on principles? This is a huge methodological question. For example, if non-selective immigration (”open borders”) can be shown to increase crime, should it be limited? In our world, the methodology seems to be chosen rather arbitrarily, best-fitting to one’s current needs.
This comment was written by Mikko.Report this comment to the moderators
September 6th, 2006 at 7:53 am
Ms_xeno: thanks for the link. I found it interesting, though I had some problems with it. Might be easy for us to get side tracked here tho. I have created a thread on my own blog which quotes your post, links here, and replies. I thought Amp would appreciate us taking the conversartion elsewhere.
http://moderatelyinsane.blogspot.com/2006/09/on-porn-causes-rape-thing.html
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
September 6th, 2006 at 8:25 am
Sailorman: it’s interesting to see how you have managed to be the final twist in the conversation, turning us to a theoretical examination of the causal link between porn and rape. You’re steering quite heavily towards no link; yet the premise of D’Amato’s research (for Northwestern’s School of Law no less) is that there is a direct linkage between men’s use of porn and a decreased propensity of the same population towards rape. Why aren’t you addressing *that* theory?
Most feminists will not take D’Amato’s weak research as proof of anything. What feminists address, which D’Amato quite blatently dodges, is the effect of porn on the continuum of heterosexual sex. As far as I could see, he never addresses the effect of porn on how female viewers of porn define rape. If in any given couple the male and female view porn together, it is highly likely that the practices in porn become incorporated into the normative sexual practices that the couple engages in. From the majority of word of mouth experiences that women have with their porn-viewing male partners, this much is obvious: the couple’s sexual practices become blurred with the male’s expectations borne from his porn viewing. He expects anal sex or other physically uncomfortable practices; he expects her to “normally” resist his new practices; he is encouraged to think that his initiation is tacit consent on her part. The latter being an important sexual paradigm to address.
What happens socially, if you go ahead a drop your love affair with “theory”, is that rape becomes something defined by that population most likely to rape. Porn, whether in the making of it or the viewing of it, firmly places women in the recepticle role: she is the one upon which the male porn actor or the male masturbator is releasing his sexuality. His sexuality is played out **on** her, whether by the porn actor or the man ejaculating onto her picture. At some point, either in the creation or consumption of porn, every man blurs her sexuality, her body, and *her* into his sexuality.
So then we get to the tricky linkage between porn and rape. Maybe we can argue for fifty years about the finely split hairs. But what is obvious to me, in just looking at the words “porn” and “rape” is that both promote an in-common sexuality. The *only* difference, from my theoretical stand-point, between porn and rape is the female’s consent to the sex act. And, as I outlined above, porn serves as the social wedge that continually wears down the boundary and definition of female consent. And what a place this is for heterosexual male sexuality: that the only defining difference between porn and rape is consent. The acts don’t change, the male doesn’t alter his sexuality, and the male reaches the same sexual release in both porn and rape.
All that is different is female consent.
And that’s really fucking sad.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
September 6th, 2006 at 9:03 am
Q,
Yes, the only difference between rape and non-rape is consent. Whether that sex occurs in porn or not, that’s still the definition. That is pretty pointless though, seeing as the DEFINITION of rape is, in essence, “sex without consent.” What’s sad about that?
And this is just silly:
The acts don’t change, the male doesn’t alter his sexuality, and the male reaches the same sexual release in both porn and rape.
well, the acts are different: One is rape, and one is not. The sexuality of the parties isn’t really relevant; the fenale doesn’t alter her sexuality either. And though the male orgasms in both, it’s for different reasons: One is sexual, and the other is about power.
If I read between the lines, it seems you’re promoting the viewpoint that there is some sort of “objective line” beyond which it is automatically rape even with consent. Otherwise, i’m not sure what your protests regarding “moving consent” are apposite to.
I’m familiar with that viewpoint, which I think of as along the lines of “no woman can really enjoy a blowjob” and so on. But again, I don’t see how that is relevant to the question…?
I can see you feel strongly about porn BEING RAPE. But I think that you are missing the issue. Just because something IS rape doesn’t mean that WATCHING IT will either make men more or less likely to rape on their own.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
September 6th, 2006 at 10:23 am
“Just because something IS rape doesn’t mean that WATCHING IT will either make men more or less likely to rape on their own. ”
Enjoying something that one knows or thinks is likely to be rape is definitely a part of the mix in the calloused views of men towards women and rape. How many men have enjoyed Deep Throat knowing that it is rape? How many men defend porn and prostitution knowing how often women are abused and raped in these industries? When these men consume porn, do they stop to think what was very likely to have happened in the production of what they are consuming? Does the idea that the actions they are observing could very well be rape interfere at all with their enjoyment of those very actions.
Regarding consent, there is no clear line between consent and non-consent. Just like there are varying degrees of force, there are varying degrees of consent. Porn just pushes the border of what is generally regarded as consent towards an acceptance of greater force - away from “eagerly willing” and towards “unwilling submission”. It also adds to greater disbelief of a rape allegation even when there are physical injuries, so that just a little blood or just a little discoloration is seen as being indicative of not a rape.
This comment was written by Kali.Report this comment to the moderators
September 6th, 2006 at 10:57 am
I believe I said that rape and porn are part of a continuum of sexuality, with the defining marker being women’s consent, and not with any inherent difference between the physical acts of male sexuality as it pertains to porn and rape.
How do you know that the female hasn’t altered her sexuality, especially when her sexuality is almost entirely formed from the reference point of male heterosexual fantasy?
As for the different reasons for male orgasm, why would that make a difference from the female perspective in regards to rape and porn? In both instance a woman is *used* to produce that orgasm, so therefore it’s her *use* which is relevant to her, not the reason or the hidden meaning behind male orgasm.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
September 6th, 2006 at 11:01 am
I’m not talking about qualifications for rape. I’m talking about a continuum of male heteroseuxal sex that make female consent the defining difference between porn and rape. One would think that men might want to be the ones whose acts and sexual choices defined that, but it is hard to objectify women and maintain a wide a varied sexuality. Therefore, because woman is objectified to meet male demands, her consent becomes the defining line between porn use and rape. It isn’t her body that makes the difference, or her availability, or her desire, or her sexual satisfaction: it is her consent.
That much is obvious in the majority of rape trials and every time that porn is bandied as “free speech” without regard to the making of that “speech.”
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
September 6th, 2006 at 11:22 am
Well, that’s what we’re debating, isn’t it? Where do you get the “definitely” part? And how much of a “part of the mix”?
I’ll ignore “prostitution” here as that’s not this thread topic. I think most consumers of porn DO NOT KNOW (or seek out knowledge) of what occurs backstage. The most they are likely to find out is through “interviews” and “articles” in which the stars espouse their love of the porn industry, sex, and acting.
90% of the time: nope. That may be a Bad Thing, but you cannot ignore that reality when you’re talking about the “porn causes rape” claim. Porn is a fiction. The porn industry tries very hard to make the public face be that of pure voluntary sex on camera for money (and is quite successful at it.)
I think it WOULD. If they had that idea, which they don’t, as discussed above.
What are you trying to say here? I’m not sure if you’re talking about porn causing rape, or whether you’re trying to change the subject to it somehow afffecting the potential jurors’ attitudes towards an accuser. those are pretty different things.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
September 6th, 2006 at 11:34 am
Q, you’re reciting a neutral legal standard as some sort of tautology and suggesting it supports a certain viewpoint.
But it doesn’t.
So when you say
it makes no sense.
Sure, you’re right… IF the rapist is a male with a female victim. And if the victim is male, then it’s HIS consent that is the “defining difference”. And if both are female…
I mean, come on: You can try and spin this any way you want. But the statement “nonconsensual sex is rape; consensual sex is not rape” is not inherently patriarchal or biased no matter how you parse it. There is no magic code which will show that “consensual sex is rape” is set up to screw women for the advantage of men, or porn, or rapists.
I have no idea what you are saying here with respect to ‘varied sexuality’, or at least I can’t place it in context.
um, yeah. I mean, the LEGAL definition of rape is petty important in a LEGAL trial. Again: that is a good thing, right? DO you have an alternate suggestion?
I certainly haven’t raised that argument in this thread. You brought it up yourself a while back though.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
September 6th, 2006 at 11:47 am
I think we’re talking two different things here Sailorman. You’re talking about definintions of rape per se. I’m talking about the continuum of porn and rape that is otherwise known as male heterosexual sex.
I am specifically talking about male on female rape and heterosexual male consumption of porn. I am specifically talking about the objectification of women and the use of female bodies to gratify male sexual release — even if that sexual release is masked as anger or power — and how the single most important definer between rape and porn, AS PER MALE DEFININTIONS OF SUCH, is the consent of women.
How many men say “oh, but she consented to the porn! It was her choice!” as the litmus test for their consumption of porn and the perpetuation of a sexuality based on the objectification of women? It’s a pretty standard argument, and not one I came up with myself. I’m simply turning that lens back around onto male sexuality and saying it’s a pretty weak thing if consent is what use hinges upon.
I could think of quite a long list myself of things men might do or believe that would prevent them from consuming porn or raping, so I think it’s telling that consent is about the only damn one that men trot out.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
September 6th, 2006 at 11:52 am
But, yes it does. If all men have to worry about is female consent, then they don’t really have to give two figs and a rat’s ass about what women might desire, no? You’re setting up a pretty clear picture of exactly the male sexuality that I’m talking about, where male desire is played out per definition by men, and women’s desire’s don’t need to be considered or entertained as long as consent is given.
Women consenting to male desire is NOT female desire. Women consenting to male sex acts is not female sexuality. It only becomes so in patriarchy and in a gendered hierarcy of power, when consent is stripped down to utilitarian “yes’s” and “no’s”.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
September 6th, 2006 at 12:47 pm
Q, while I’m happy to have a theoretical or specific discussion of porn, rape, porn-caused-rape, or what have you, I read this:
and it doesn’t seem likely. If you are stuck on the position that all sex between men and women is porn, rape, or both, let’s just agree to stop here. It seems a waste of time otherwise.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
September 6th, 2006 at 12:50 pm
Well, that’s unfortunate. When I say “continuum”, what do you interpret that to mean? And why do you come to the conclusion that I mean all sex = porn/rape?
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
September 6th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
Sailorman: you seem to really want to divorce porn and rape from male sexuality; to create some sort of safe space where those things exist theoretically, but with little to no impact on sexuality overall.
Comparatively, young girls and women are taught that porn and rape *will be* a part of their normative sexual and social lives. I mean, all you have to do is look at the My Space brouhaha from last spring to see how porn and rape are *normative* for young women seeking outlets for their sexuality. Even if they aren’t raped or exposed to porn, they know they are vulnerable to both because, get this, porn and rape are more important to men then young women’s healthy sexuality. It’s pretty obvious.
Porn and rape go hand in hand with male heterosexuality. Women know this. Why would you deny that?
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
September 6th, 2006 at 2:25 pm
The consent talk reminds me of the radical feminist analysis that, according to men’s standards for consent, a corpse can consent to sex because it doesn’t say no. Men have framed the consent issue such that the default position for females is an eternal yes with silence meeting men’s standards for ‘consenting to sex’.
No, it really doesn’t. Cans of tuna come with “dolphin free” labels because tuna-eaters care about dolphins. Movies come with disclaimers that no animals were hurt in the making of the films. Pornography comes with advertising playing up the violence, lack of women’s consent, and vulnerability of youthful “girls girls girls!” (never “women women women!”) Pornographers BRAG about how they fucked that teen virgin bitch’s ass so hard she couldn’t sit for days. The most popular pornography is teen porn with its barely legal porn, lolita porn, twinkie porn, etc.
These porn ads came unsolicited to my Hotmail account. Notice how pornographers have picked up on the most effective ways to sell pornography to average porn-users:
My mom sucked my penis and i liked it
nude pictures of my little sis jenny
young & doing it for the 1st time
Bloody first times
Crazy Girls MAKE it fit..
why get a pro, get a first timer
Hidden shower cams
Tight hot teens
Riding n blowing big Dicks for the first time
bathroom cameras
Blonde…Hardcore models get Slammed..
Check Out These Amateur Teen Sl-uts Begging F…
Sleeping Teen Girls Being Screwed
Seduced….Blondes get Abused
wild lolitas
Check Out These Amateur Teen Sluts Begging F…
Watch These Hidden Shower Cams Of Hot College…
Drunk..College girls get taken Advange of.
Hot Teen Lesbian Threesomes After Mom Leaves
Dirty,Amateurs,
Shocking hole stretching
Watch These Sloppy Teen Girls Get It All Over
DEsperate..Mature Blondes..do anything..
MutantDicks—SheIsScared
This one came from “Pussy Stretchers” into my Hotmail inbox on Aug 19: BigDicksRipSmallChicks. It’s as if cans of tuna came with labels saying, “Now with more slaughtered dolphins than ever!”
And that’s just the words used to sell pornography. I’m sure the smart feminist women who see the submissiveness of a model’s tilted head and the passivity implied by elipses could do some great analysis on the subtle somatic connotations of gag factor, bukkake, double-anal, and gang bang pornography if they wanted to. Most won’t even try.
Frankly, I can’t blame them for wanting to avoid having such pornographic images burned into their head forever. One picture from a gay male porn magazine especially haunts me: two male figures, one baby figure, no hands. You cannot imagine what pornography is unless you look at it, and too many feministes are okay with their boyfriends using pornography because they’re unwilling to look for themselves at the images their boyfriends use to masturbate.
This comment was written by Samantha.Report this comment to the moderators
September 6th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
“I think most consumers of porn DO NOT KNOW (or seek out knowledge) of what occurs backstage.”
I have myself told men about the prevalence of abuse and rape in the sex industry. I have witnessed others telling men the same thing, citing studies, statistics and individual cases. Yet these men wilfully ignore all that and continue to defend their use of sex workers. Just look at yourself, man. I don’t know if you use porn or not but you are definitely defending it and its consumers. So don’t try to pretend that your typical/average man is just so innocent, he really doesn’t have any idea about the abusiveness of the sex industry. More like, HE DOESN’T CARE. He wants to get off no matter what the cost to women and girls is. That is what objectification is - when the willingness and desire of the sexually objectified person is not considered to be important. Where one only needs to trot out a legal definition of consent as justification for sexually using unwilling women, safe in the knowledge that lack of consent is extremely difficult to prove in court (and made increasingly so by the beloved porn).
“Q, while I’m happy to have a theoretical or specific discussion of porn, rape, porn-caused-rape”
You have been told of cases where porn availability has led to increases in sexual assault and harrassment. You have been cited studies that shows a connection between SOBs and rape. You have been cited studies that show how exposure to porn leads to increased callousness towards women and rape. Yet you ingore all that, deny all the evidence, and then claim that you want to seriously discuss whether porn causes rape. Looks like you just want to insulate porn from criticism.
This comment was written by Kali.Report this comment to the moderators
September 7th, 2006 at 6:06 am
My response to Sailerman’s comments about consensual and nonconsensual being the only determining factor in defining rape turned out to be so long that I put it in it’s own post on my blog.
Abyss2hope: Consent In Porn Teaches Dangerous Lesson
This comment was written by Abyss2hope.Report this comment to the moderators
September 8th, 2006 at 11:27 am
available to teenagers and adults. The Nixon and Reagan Commissions tried to show that exposure to pornographic materials produced social violence. The reverse may be true: that pornography has reduced social violence. I’m skeptical; I’ve not read it. Ampersand apparently has: Three problems with D’Amato’s theory: 1) During recent years, the NCVS has found a steep decline in all violent crime, not just rape. It seems likely that whatever’s causing the decline in all violent crime measured by the NCVS, is also causing
This comment was written by aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South.Report this comment to the moderators
September 10th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
Over on his own blog, Sailorman wrote:
Not to me, it’s not. I didn’t waste any time reading any of your response after that. Furthermore, I won’t be reading any more of your comments on this issue, Sailorman. I don’t see any point in pursuing a debate that’s based upon an equality that doesn’t actually exist.
Qgrrl wrote:
Pretty much. I found Abyss’ post in her own space very encouraging, too. Particularly this part:
Perhaps a few men will let that sink in for awhile, before they continue to argue in only a detached manner about something that obviously affects them so personally.
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
September 10th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
Well damn, ms: If you’re not even going to do me the courtesy of reading my entire response and understanding what I said in context: why respond at all? And why respond to my blog HERE? That is an oddly fucked-up tactic of argumentation.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
September 10th, 2006 at 5:45 pm
Because I wanted you to understand why I wouldn’t respond further.
Because an adult male of reasonable intelligence –who yet insists that men and women in this culture are “equal” when it comes to discussing rape and where it comes from– needs to understand that his insistence on a dishonest tactic is why I don’t feel comfortable posting in his space.
Ask yourself: In the myths of our culture that teach us how men and women should properly relate to one another –and porn is a huge part of that mythology– do you honestly think that men and women equal hours playing the role of aggressors ? That a woman who plays the role of aggressor is depicted in the same positive light that a man is ? If your answer is “yes,” I don’t know what culture you grew up in;But I do know that it’s not the one that I grew up in.
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
September 10th, 2006 at 5:47 pm
That sentence should have been:
do you honestly think that men and women SPEND equal hours playing the role of aggressors ?
Sorry.
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
September 11th, 2006 at 10:35 am
Of course not. I have never–and would never–say such a thing.
In the example you attacked, I was talking about the distinction between what happens during filming (rape/not rape) and what a viewer sees (looks like rape/doesn’t look like rape). I was discussing that I thought one could have any of the four possible options in the 2×2 matrix. I was explaining why I thought only the “looks like rape/doesn’t look like rape” options were relevant in the context of discussing VIEWERS’ reactions to porn, and why rape is NOT equivalent to “looks like rape” in that context
My “it doesn’t matter what sex the actor is” statement that got you so flippin’ pissed was said in that context, as I made excruciatingly clear (and you ignored). And it’s true: The same filming/viewing matrix exists irrespective of the sexuality of sex of the actors. I can even write it down with blank spaces if you don’t believe me.
You would have perhaps known that, if you’d read the fucking post. And if you’d read what I wrote, instead of setting up some ridiculous strawman.
Keeerist. “Dishonest” my ass. Look in the friggin’ mirror before you start slinging that shit next time.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
September 11th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
I think yours are the strawmen, Sailorman. What you ignore, but what feminists point out here in this thread, is that any given viewer can decide they aren’t viewing rape, that it’s just porn, and then make the very inadequte translation to their sex lives where they *think* they are just acting out porn, when in reality they are raping.
Porn desensitizes and blurs the boundaries of what is rape to the viewing audience — that much is so; you’ve said so yourself. Which is, of course, all irrelevant to the women who get raped, no?
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
September 11th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
“any given viewer can decide they aren’t viewing rape, that it’s just porn”
I remember watching the movie “Clan of the Cave Bear” in high school. When I saw the movie I saw Ayla getting raped by a man who hated her and who relished raping her into silenced obedience, but the boys saw a male role model, a man gettin’ some recalcitrant pussy from an uppity blonde bitch.
For months afterwards a group of boys kept making the hand symbol Ayla’s rapist Broud used to command her to submit to his rapes and laughing over how sweet life would be if we bitch classmates would go as easily ass-up when the hand command was issued to us. There was no ambiguity in the plot; it was quite clearly rape. But to those boys it was just pornography, just sex as most men would have sex with women be, on demand and without any backtalk, like the sex of prostitution.
Prostitution, sex whenever men demand it done as men command it, is the core model of sexual relations between men and women, something the genius feminist writer DeAnander pointed out on another blog last week.
Some feminists truncate this into a form of “All women are whores in patriarchy”, but I’m grateful to clear, intelligent thinkers like DeAnander for digging into the basic building blocks of culture to explain why even many non-feminists say some form of “Being a housewife is like being a whore” even if that doesn’t play out in reality nearly as they imagine it. Conceptually they’re right. As has been said, you cannot separate rape, sexual abuse, and prostitution from the man-made dominant model of sexuality sold in pornography.
This comment was written by Sam.Report this comment to the moderators
September 11th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
In the comments of Alas, a blog: No Porn Doesn’t Prevent Rape Sailerman writes: I mean, come on: You can try and spin this any way you want. But the statement “nonconsensual sex is rape; consensual sex is not rape” is not inherently patriarchal or biased no matter how you parse it. There is no magic code which
This comment was written by abyss2hope: A rape survivor's zigzag journey into the open.Report this comment to the moderators
September 11th, 2006 at 5:19 pm
Sailorman:
I really don’t see why I should care about this distinction as much as you aparently do. The fact is, it’s possible that Linda Boreman and other women like her had men raping them either on film, or had men coercing them off-camera to the degree where the claim that the women clearly consented is meaningless.
It’s possible –simultaneously– that men who have acted in these films and watched them got reinforcement of cultural norms that say it’s perfectly okay to force a woman to have sex with you.
You can talk about context and “matrixes” and what not until you’re blue in the face, for all I care. But your hypotheticals about how it could be a man on-screen looking as if a woman is forcing him to have sex with her are basically useless in this discussion. The majority of rapes in this culture are men raping women. The majority of rapes depicted in a positive light in this culture –in entertainment– are men raping women.
You claim that my repeated mention of your insistence that we consider a hypothetical symmetry that does not exist in the real world is some kind of diversion. Bullshit. If you didn’t want it remarked upon, you shouldn’t have included it in the first place. You claim it’s not important to the main discussion, but I don’t agree. If it wasn’t important to you, you would have left it out.
Oh, and when I contrast your last little snipe at me here with your brave stance against personal attacks in your own space, I can only laugh.
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
September 11th, 2006 at 6:52 pm
I remember Clan of the Cave Bear too. (Mostly I remember our female classmates enthusiatically making the handsign to us boys).
If we accept that porn (in all it’s forms) increases violence against women, what is the solution? Every kind of media harnesses sexuality in some form or another, it’s pervasive. Shall we restrict television to news, weather and sports? Clamp down on the internet North Korea-style (i.e. none) and prevent foreign satellite reception?
I *think* that the solution is to keep sexuality legitimate. I would like us to have common cultural standards that encourage healthy, positive methods for men and women to satisfy their natural instincts for sex, in ways that protect their rights without undermining their responsibilities to themselves, their partners or society. Education about the legitimate side of sex, and the availability of healthy means of sexual gratification is the only way to counter a ‘rape culture’, unless you want to talk about becoming a celibate culture.
This comment was written by CJ.Report this comment to the moderators
September 12th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
CJ, you use pronouns peculiarly. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something about the way you wrote, “our female classmates enthusiastically making the handsign to us boys” feels a bit awry.
Then there’s, “If we accept that porn (in all it’s forms) increases violence against women, what is the solution?”, using an unqualified ‘we’. What we were talking about was media affirming violence against women as sexual excitement, rape, and the way mainstream sexuality plays out with a disturbing number of themes in common with rape myth promoting pornography. Also, pornography is not the same as sex so defenses of pornography should not speak in terms of sexual liberation. It’s commerce and pornographic product liberation being sought; pornographers are in the business of making money, not sexual liberation.
I wanted to come back to something Sailorman had said earlier about it not mattering if prostituted women are raped to make pornography.
The topic was not what proportion of ALL rapes pornography is responsible for, it was the role violent pornography plays in magnifying sexism and fusing violence to an erotic charge such that men are more likely to rape and the male-dominated culture is less likely to take women’s claims of rape seriously. Now if the topic to debate is “rapes caused by pornography”, and all sides of that and all rapes of all women involved with pornography are examined, the number of those women’s rapes caused by pornography would certainly have to be included in the discussion as a not-insignificant number.
Along the lines of not taking claims of rape seriously, it concerns me that you would brush off the large numbers of women who have said they were raped, drugged, and otherwise forced into making an insanely profitable pornographic product for some dudes with cameras to cash in on. Linda Boreman said she was sometimes forced at gunpoint to submit to her rapes, and thanks to a well-funded pr campaign calling her a lying whore fronted by women on the porn biz payroll she isn’t believed, but there are still many women, like these for instance, who are raped to make pornographic products men sell to other men to accumulate gobs of money.
These are not unusual, isolated rape events in the making of pornography but the understandable outcome of capitalism applied to sex as men demand it and are willing to pay for it. Men’s demand for 50 man gangbangs is far greater than the number of women willing to consent to it. The rapes of some number of pornstituted women and girls are necessary to sustain the multi-billion dollar pornography industries as they have exponentially expanded the past few years and subsequently evolved to include more grotesquely vicious woman-hating content.
But there’s a damnable wall of silence surrounding what it takes to make the pornography being consumed so greedily, a silence especially infuriating among liberals who I’d like to think would apply
criticisms of racism, sexism and capitalism to pornography if they were people of integrity. We don’t hear in liberal media about the anal and vaginal reconstructive surgeries common among Southern California pornstitutes who don’t quit after their first porn experience like most, it’s all about the supposedly empowered women who are never so femininely self-assured as when they’re having two dicks stuffed into their anus at once for a porn film to be titled with the women’s libby, “A Cum Sucking Whore Named Jenny.”
Liberal media makes it so easy to forget about the pornography-making sexual assaults of the Linda Boremans, Traci Lords, Carol Smiths, and Natel Kings, lets them quietly slip out of public consciousness as pornography increasingly funds their projects. It’s all interviews with Candida Royalle and Nina Hartley in liberal media, as if they matter one hundreth to pornography what Max Hardcore, Ron Jeremy, and Seymour Butts do, while Traci Lords tells CNN’s Larry King “And when people come up to me just completely with nothing on it, they don’t get where it gets me, and they say, ‘Wow, I have all your old movies, and I love it’, it’s like being…stabbed.” No one talks about Savannah anymore.
Sometimes I want to shout à la Charlton Heston at pornography users, “Pornography is people! It’s people”
This comment was written by Sam.Report this comment to the moderators
September 12th, 2006 at 12:25 pm
I don’t think porn should be banned; freedom of speech includes freedom to convey despicable messages.
But porn sends - indeed, IS - a despicable message about sex, sexuality, and male-female relationships. Porn consumers ought to be made aware that the making of what they are consuming is very likely to have hurt someone, and it would be appropriate for government to make that educational message broadly available.
The fact that porn consumption hurts the consumer too is probably something that can be left to experience, and private advocacy, to disseminate.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
September 12th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
“I don’t think porn should be banned; freedom of speech includes freedom to convey despicable messages.”
I think a constitutional argument can be made for criminalizing the production of porn under certain conditions without jeopardizing freedom of speech. These conditions could be:
1. Porn made using people. Prostitution is criminal. So, how is adding a camera to the mix suddenly making it OK? Porn made through computer simulation without using people can be exempt. So, it is not the speech that is criminalized, but using people while making the speech that is criminalized.
2. Porn made for sale. Porn made for free need not be criminalized. The constitution does not say that people have a right to make a profit from free speech.
This comment was written by Kali.Report this comment to the moderators
September 13th, 2006 at 8:24 am
[Comment removed by Amp.]
This comment was written by removed.Report this comment to the moderators
September 13th, 2006 at 10:50 am
:headdesk: :headdesk: :wanders away clutching forehead:
No, okay, first: you know what, ironically enough, it’s “porn” (depending on how you define it of course) that has enabled many a frightened queer person to take a step or two out of the closet, as i have been reminded recently (no, i will not go into details about “how”). Among other things. And no, it doesn’t CATEGORICALLY have to be about male-female relations or anything any more than any other art (yes goddamit) form; the fact that we live in a deeply sexist society… but what the fuck, i promised myself i wasn’t going down this particular rabbit hole again.
This comment was written by belledame222.Report this comment to the moderators
September 13th, 2006 at 11:29 am
Kali - Your first point seems entirely on target to me. It looks like prostitution to me, too. Bust ‘em!
Your second point, alas, is covered by freedom of the press. You do indeed have a constitutional right to charge for your content - whether its news or porn or whatever. Cost of freedom, etc.
Belledame - Sorry about the heterocentric assumption, but we are talking about male-female rape. Gay porn’s connection to that seemed pretty tenuous so I ignored it. Red Guardism is probably inextricably entwined with lefty politics; you’ll have to switch teams or (start/keep) disregarding the guard’s opinions on goodthought/badthought. I found it wearying too, and went with option one. ;)
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
September 13th, 2006 at 11:56 am
I’m rereading this again, trying to parse out the misinterpretations.
Rape=bad? Yup, duh. Whether it happens in porn or not, rape is bad.
Actress rape while filming= “real” rape? Yup, duh: if someone was raped, they were raped. Putting it on film doesn’t make it “not rape”.
ALL porn = rape? Well, no. Not all actresses are raped when filming porn. Though some would claim it’s all rape for a variety of reasons I don’t want to get into. Let’s agree to disagree on whether porn is inherently rape and whether anyone can consent to acting in porn films.
MOST porn = actresses who get raped? I said “no” but then again I haven’t watched a porn movie in, hmmm, about 15 years or more, and haven’t purchased a porn mag in about the same time. (sorry, folks, to burst your bubble on this assumption). Perhaps I’m wrong on this; I have no particular vested interest in being right. I’m suspicious of statistics supplied by the “all porn is rape” folks as they seem biased, but I’m beginning to think this assumption was wrong.
ACTUAL rape during filming = DEPICTIONS of rape during filming? Nope, don’t agree. They are both bad, for different reasons.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Depictions of rape are bad because the viewer sees rape; rape is “sold” to the viewer. Selling rape is bad because showing fake rape may be more likely to increase actual rape. Or, as Sam notes, “…the role violent pornography plays in magnifying sexism and fusing violence to an erotic charge such that men are more likely to rape and the male-dominated culture is less likely to take women’s claims of rape seriously.”
Actual rape is bad, too, because, someone got raped, which is bad. But it’s not bad for the same reasons as depicted rape, if the film does not also DEPICT rape. If the film itself does not show violence, then the film cannot play that role described above. So a film where someone was raped–but the viewer can’t tell–affects “only” the woman who was raped. It is not inherently more likely to cause MORE rapes unless there is something in the film that “promotes” those actions.
Unless, that is, the viewer knows all about the actual occurrence of the rape. I believe this is very rare. As many have noted, the porn industry is expert at promoting the veneer of “I love to film porn!” and it’s not clear who, other than anti-porn crusaders and perhaps the occasional odd porn consumer, would really know the “truth” behind porn filming.
damn. gtg but don’t want to lose this; will complete it later.
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September 13th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
Sailorman, what’s the point of saying, “Not all actresses are raped when filming porn” (besides calling prostitutes ‘actresses’) when no one has made this claim so far as I can see?
You’re quite fixated on this point you’ve invented, which you repeat for the umpteenth time, “I’m suspicious of statistics supplied by the “all porn is rape” folks”
Who are you talking about? What statistics have been supplied that you’re suspicious of?
This comment was written by Sam.Report this comment to the moderators
September 13th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
I just want to see if I’m understanding this.
Amp posts an article about a Northwestern University study claiming that more porn = less rape.
Amp disagrees with this study, but says that according to the best information we have, more porn probably doesn’t = more rape either.
Sailorman says “Well okay, but what about porn that specifically depicts rape as erotic? That may lead to more rape, right? Let’s look at that.”
The sort of general response is “Even porn that pretends to be consentual often involves rape and coercion, and shouldn’t be ignored.”
Sailorman responds with “Well, yeah, but that’s what we already talked about in the first place, and then we’re back to porn’s effect on the incidence of rape being questionable in either direction. I’m trying to specifically think about whether different sorts of porn have different effects on sexual assault rates.”
I guess I don’t see where that’s out of line.
This comment was written by Myca.Report this comment to the moderators
September 13th, 2006 at 4:48 pm
Me neither. Nor with the notion that people who act in porn flicks can be allowed (as they tend to prefer) the designation “actresses” (or “actors.”) It IS acting. It may not be acting you approve of; certainly it often isn’t acting that you tend to find in the Julliard School; but, yes, it is a performance. The physical act of fucking or whatnot may be “real;” certain stunts in mainstream Hollywood flicks, as well as, you know, kissing (which at one point was considered entirely scandalous, you may be aware: real! live! KISSING! on the mouth, even! on the silver screen!), as well as much much heavier stuff is all “real;” the emotions being summoned forth for the sake of the script may or may not be genuinely heartfelt a la Method acting;
and at the end of the day, yup, it’s STILL “acting.”
This comment was written by belledame222.Report this comment to the moderators
September 13th, 2006 at 4:49 pm
…oh. if “out of line” is referring to something i had said (since excised from my comment, at Amp’s behest, which i am cool with), that’s, well, not what i meant, any of it; ignore that bit. Something else.
This comment was written by belledame222.Report this comment to the moderators
September 13th, 2006 at 4:52 pm
The problem here is that there are two assumptions that are more or less being taken for granted by, well, a number of people, I think; and further, that these assumptions are being conflated.
1) That the actual act of sex in porn flicks is “coerced;” iow that the performers are in fact being abused, raped
2) That the depictions of sex as seen in (most? all? a lot of?) mainstream het porn is highly suggestive of rape being o.k. and is thus pernicious.
Which, well, first of all, these are two different claims, even assuming either or both is actually the case.
This comment was written by belledame222.Report this comment to the moderators
September 13th, 2006 at 6:54 pm
belledame:
I don’t presume to speak for the queer community. However, I somehow doubt that Qgrrl, for instance, would consider this statement a justification for the regressive view of human sexuality that is the norm in mainstream porn films. I also think it’s a pretty sorry commentary on the way sexuality is marketed in this society that so many people, regardless of orientation, get their one of their first big windows on human sexuality from consuming porn. I did. Frankly, it still ticks me off that such neanderthal bullshit was the best the culture had for me as a sexually confused kid. And I had an easier time of it than many others.
I’m not interested in a sidetrack to the porn-vs-.erotica-vs.-art question. I freely admit that my definitions of art with sexual content is subjective. But so is everyone else’s, so I’m not going to get bogged down today in defending my definition. It’s true that there is sexual violence in communities that don’t fit the monogamous/heteronormative lifestyle. But homophobia and the other attendant phobias probably make acurate statistics on the subject even more of an uphill climb than they are in the mainstream. Does it follow that a lot of the folks who grew up to experience or perpetrate sexual violence in alternative situations or relationships feel the impact of mainstream porn differently ? Or did they absorb the same destructive bullshit the rest of us did and then unwittingly bring it into the new world they wanted to create ? I don’t know.
At the end of the day, it’s still sex exchanged for money. It’s still sex in a vacuum, mostly bereft of any emotional or spiritual context. It’s still eroticized force and rape or pseudo-rape, marketed to us as an ideal of human relations between men and women. It’s still the collision of a money-obsessed and male-dominant society that places women –the “actresses” and female consumers and bystanders alike– into a narrow box in which whatever power we have is granted us by men and their standards of what we should be.
Oh, and at the end of the day, I think it’s pretty vile that champions of mainstream porn trumpet the fact that “actresses” make more money in the films than do actors. What a sorry-ass commentary that is on what we’re valued for in this culture. To say nothing of the fact that all the money in the world still can’t seem to give “actresses” even the minimal protection of a mandatory condom policy.
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
September 13th, 2006 at 7:15 pm
Well, you know: I’m not particularly a fan of mainstream porn myself, if it’s not clear by now; it’s just, well, where do you draw the line?
And yes, okay, we don’t have to get into the whole “porn/erotica/education/I know it when I see it” business right now, but: there is still a question, isn’t there, of what is to be done about the general awfulness of mainstream porn, of WHY it is so very awful.
because i think that a lot of us seem to have very very different answers to that.
which are based on rather radically different fundamental assumptions, one or two anyway.
Anyway, that has been my impression, and no, not speaking to/for anyone in particular here.
This comment was written by belledame222.Report this comment to the moderators
September 13th, 2006 at 7:23 pm
>Does it follow that a lot of the folks who grew up to experience or perpetrate sexual violence in alternative situations or relationships feel the impact of mainstream porn differently ? Or did they absorb the same destructive bullshit the rest of us did and then unwittingly bring it into the new world they wanted to create ? I don’t know.>
I don’t either, but there is an assumption there, or reads like it, that kind of draws me up short: why assume that such folks ever saw any porn at all?
I mean, okay, I get it: a lot of people feel really really strongly about porn; it’s just, we DO all get that horrific abuse predates widely-available commerical porn by, well, quite a lot, right? Sometimes, you know, I read some people and maybe it’s just my impression based on the, well, passion, but i almost get the impression that people see “porn” as the CAUSE of all such stuff, or, well, a really really big one.
If nothing else, and maybe this is something people agree with already, I don’t know, but I do believe this: You could get rid of every single scrap of sexually explicit material in the world (well, hypothetically; i ALSO believe that that never ever is gonna happen; but assuming it did somehow happen), and -of itself-, that would not even make a shadow of a millimeters’ worth of a dent in the actual rape, abuse, and other expressions of misogyny and/or relational violence in this world.
and that people put -far- too much stock in the power of the thing itself, the porn, to influence peoples’ behavior, for good or for ill.
Sure, some annoying tropes may catch the popular attention, same as they do from more widely-viewed “mainstream” media–silicone tits, orange tans, deep-throating, the charming “hawk a loogie” thing–but. It’s not as though people aren’t more than capable of being abusive -and- of developing, well, particular sexual tastes, let’s say, all on their very own.
if the latter weren’t true, there’d be no such thing as a fetish. or rather: the (more obscure, i am talking about here) fetish porn came out of the people who already had the fetishes, not the other way around.
This comment was written by belledame222.Report this comment to the moderators
September 13th, 2006 at 7:30 pm
>At the end of the day, it’s still sex exchanged for money. It’s still sex in a vacuum, mostly bereft of any emotional or spiritual context.>
That’s pretty much most of modern life, though, is the thing. It’s not the sex that’s the problem here; it’s the vacuum. And I think that there are better or at least more ways to go about looking at the causes of that vacuum than the “patriarchal” one.
Besides which, I’ve found some of the most profoundly emotional and, yes, spiritual experiences of my life in, if not porn, certainly among people and experiences whom I rather suspect would be looked on by many here as, well, beyond the pale in any number of ways.
It could be an art. It could be a frigging spiritual calling. Sex, that is. Even for money, sure; even making pictures and videos and doin’ it with strangers and in public and in all kinds of strange ways. Hell, I know people who DO see it that way, who LIVE it; I’ve seen it. It’s bloody rare, sure, but the fact that it exists at all makes me very disinclined to single out “sex for money” as a particular problem -categorically.-
The problem is the system; nu, so, let’s REALLY look at the system. All of it.
This comment was written by belledame222.Report this comment to the moderators
September 13th, 2006 at 8:07 pm
I thought we were looking at the whole system. Never mind. I appreciate the measured response. However, I just got some really lousy personal news, so I’m going to have to bail out for now.
If you haven’t read Abyss’ response in her space in full, I recommend it. I think she gives a valid take on how sexism in every day life and the intensified, hyperbolic form of sexism in mainstream porn feed on and reinforce one another.
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
September 13th, 2006 at 8:26 pm
Thought map time.
How do we all think sexual behavior is learned?
What are the effects of society on sexual behavior?
How does observational learning pass from person to person?
This comment was written by shannon.Report this comment to the moderators
September 14th, 2006 at 8:57 am
To be honest, I’ve seen more gay males with damaged sexuality due to porn than I have straight women (which is an issue of exposure to different communities, I suppose). If the errant gay male is helped out of the closet by gay porn, it is a given that a corresponding handful more of gay men have their sexuality and sexual choice warped by the widespread use of porn in the gay male community. The majority of the young gay males I knew in college did *not* want to engage in anal sex, either receiving or giving. Yet there was no way for them to express this (other than to their close lesbian compatriots) and there was no way for them to explore alternative sexual outlets due to the heavy pornified expectations that anal sex if fulfilling, only uncomfortable the first time, and is the definitive act that defines one’s status in the gay community (i.e., top or bottom).
Porn works equally for gay male sexuality and female heterosexual sex to force sex into a game of dominance and power. Both types of porn reify acts that are uncomfortable, demeaning, and subserviant — unless one is the dominant actor, in which case porn reifies a quite blatent hedonistic dominance.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
September 14th, 2006 at 9:04 am
belledame, have you ever seen the 1980 movie Fame? There’s a scene where student actress Coco thinks she’s going to a screen test for a movie but the man turns the camera on and tells her to take off her shirt. When she resists he questions her professionalism so she relents, then he tells her to put thumb in her mouth like a little girl and she starts crying. For readers who haven’t the movie, here’s the clip.
I know why Coco started crying, and I believe no one who saw the movie or read the transcript above did so with a bufuddled look on their face because they had no clue why a young actress in that position might cry. How would you finish the statement, “Coco started crying because…”?
This comment was written by Sam.Report this comment to the moderators
September 14th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
Since the normally prolific belledame hasn’t replied, I thought I’d offer this vomitous quote for discussion on how “feminists” who consume and defend pornography can become as desensitized to the rape and torture of women as men who consume and defend pornography.
This is what Avedon Carol of “Feminists Against Censorship” had to say about the UKs proposed criminalisation of possession of violent pornography instigated because a woman was raped and strangled to death by a man who consumed lots of violent pornography (kudos to Nieves and post 149 for this):
There’s a vile trend in popular liberal media calling young women who say they were raped liars, a trend that has appeared recently in such as liberal media as The Nation, Counterpunch, and Clamor Magazine. What I see in this is the burning need to defend men’s rights to unlimited sexual access to women’s bodies in pornography and prostitution taking precedence over women’s human rights, and it makes me angry.
It makes me angry that belledame can repeat the whopper of a lie, recently promoted in Alternet, that being prostituted isn’t very different from being an actress when the flourishing slave trade in prostitutes, early teen age of entry into prostitution, gender of most prostitutes, STDs, drug addictions, pimps, and only about a thousand other glaring differences are evident to anyone over the age of 10 who isn’t choosing to ignore the obvious staring them in the face.
But ignore it they do. They’re not willing to search themselves for the words to answer why Coco cried anymore than belledame is. We women are just supposed to accept that being a whore is the new, progressive, feminist path to female empowerment and equality, and I am frightened for the girls and women being told this lie.
This comment was written by Sam.Report this comment to the moderators
September 29th, 2006 at 2:24 am
While there’s been a direct correlation researched between people being more tolerant to violence against women after watching violent porn it may also serve as a healthy outlet for those who live with such fantasies on a daily basis. None of this, however, is black n’ white. Why one person can view (sim.) rape films and never commit the offense while another seems incapable of controlling his/her impulses has less to do with what material he/she was viewing and more with how he or she interprets such images. Keep in mind rape satisfies psychological, not physical, needs.
No doubt porn may be the last drop to the bucket for some offenders but banning it would be like banning guns and hoping the problem of violence and murder suddenly vanish. I don’t disagree that easy access to firearms is playing with fire but thinking that it’s the root of violence is absurd. Need I remind anyone that our ancestors had spears in their skulls?
For those interested I suggest taking a look at Japan’s porn industry vs their number of reported rapes. A society that sells soiled underwear in vending machines, Japan is notorious for it’s variety of bizarre porn - one of which is simulated rape. Remarkably, however, Japan has the lowest number of reported rapes of any industrialized country. The reason for that is subject to interpretation but interesting nonetheless.
This comment was written by Laughing@UAll.Report this comment to the moderators
September 29th, 2006 at 8:21 am
Remarkably, however, Japan has the lowest number of reported rapes of any industrialized country
“Reported rapes” is accurately stated… but of course even in the western hemisphere, most rapes go unreported.
Do any of us know wether or not that heavy cultural influence is preventing the report of what we in the Western world would consider rape? I don’t have any 1st generation friends from Japan who are willing to talk about this with me so I can’t even gather antectodal evidence. I (with many others reading this) read Memoirs of a Geishia and was very morally confused at the end. Was it systemic rape of thousands of women or was it prostitution or was it something “better” or “worse”?
This comment was written by wookie.Report this comment to the moderators
September 29th, 2006 at 9:03 am
In response to Wookie:
In a personal opinion, I think Japan has a low number of reported rapes due to it’s emphasis on women being honorable to their man. My ex-girlfriend (tear) would describe how the mother of the house she was staying at wouldn’t join the family for dinner and this was a normal custom. I always wondered if (the mother) snacked or really did wait till the meal was done to begin hers. A sort of silent protest… anywho… It’s quite possible that this has contributed to a passive female population. In criminology we might be able to equate this with what is formally known as “learned helplessness”. Much like everything, however, there’s usually more than once contributing factor.
The most common reason why rapes are not reported in the western world is due to it being a “personal problem”. The most common reason why the rape was reported is to “prevent further attacks on the victim”. When we look at the facts and see that most rapes occur between two people known to each other it’s not hard to believe. I’m willing to bet not many people know that even though people are a couple a person can still be raped. Many of us have this idea that rape is always violent. Simply not true. Rape can consist of cunnilingus. No consent to ANY sexual touching is sexual assault - period.
This comment was written by Laughing@UALL.Report this comment to the moderators
September 29th, 2006 at 9:44 am
Were you able to write this with a straight face?
See, this is what I think porn does vis-a-vis violence against women: it allows someone to write, without any sense of irony or even social dis-ease, about “healthy” outlets for male violence against women.
Hah. Hah. hah hah hah ha.
hah
like omg hah
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
September 29th, 2006 at 9:45 am
you know…
’cause it’s all about what’s good for men.
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
September 29th, 2006 at 10:16 am
Very straight actually. I tend to have a somber tone to my face at all times. Comes from being in the field of criminology I suppose.
What I think you forget is that women consent to being in simulated rape films. You also forget that some women fantasize about rape and don’t mind being in that position because a fantasy is A CONTROLLED ENVIRONMENT. Unlike actual sexual assault.
In criminology we have a saying, “in every rapist’s home you’re likely to find rape-type porn. But in every home with rape-type porn you’re not necessarily going to find a rapist.” When you combine recent studies that show virtually 60% of men would rape if they could, without a doubt, get away with it, and then add the reality that not nearly 60% of men have ever raped, it’s clear that there are plenty of individuals who can maintain a healthy normal life without feeling the need to cross that line despite having such fantasies.
An outlet that doesn’t hurt anyone in society and permits the person with fantasies with a form of release is perfect normal and safe. I see this as being no different than female domination videos. One might even say martial arts and ring-boxing are similar ways for violent people to burn a little steam. But I suppose that when one matrial artsist flips out and beats a guy it’s time to go Jack Thompon on the Shoalin Temple, right?
Fantasies exist and are a normal part of human nature.
Just an assumption but I’m pretty sure men are the ones mainly fueling the porn industry. In that case, yes, it’s all about what the man wants. Supply and demand are facinating things…
This comment was written by Laughing@UALL.Report this comment to the moderators
September 29th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
What you forget, son, is that even if a woman consents to it, the man/men is still willing, on his little part alone, to inflict pain and harm. Doesn’t say much for men, does it?
And you still didn’t debunk the “healthy” part of your quip.
Furthermore, just in case you’re not following the bouncing ball very well, just because one woman in one particular “simulated” rape scene consented to male violence DOESN’T MEAN JACK SHIT ABOUT MEN’S PROPENSITY TO FANTASIZE BRUTALITY and PLAY THAT FANTASY OUT ON get this OTHER WOMEN.
Do you care to really delve into “healthy” outlets for violence?
Is that kinda like video games, disgruntled male youth, and the current war in Iraq, with Iraqi civilians just being a “healthy” outlet for America’s youth so the rest of us quaint civvies can rest comfortably at night?
Ah, shite. In a nutshell son, have you read the thread?
This comment was written by Q Grrl.Report this comment to the moderators
September 29th, 2006 at 12:56 pm
Regarding the low reported rape figures from Japan, a study by John Dussich says this in the study’s abstract:
A 1994 study by Mieko Yoshihama (Yoshihama M, Sorenson SB. Physical, sexual, and emotional abuse by male intimates: experiences of women in Japan. Violence & Victims 1994;9:63–77.) found that 43% of Japanese women surveyed indicated that they had been forced to have sex, and 15% said that they had been forced to have sex by the use of physical violence. (The sample was not representative, however).
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
September 29th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
A bit OT, but as a martial artist, I had to respond to this:
‘One might even say martial arts and ring-boxing are similar ways for violent people to burn a little steam. But I suppose that when one matrial artsist flips out and beats a guy it’s time to go Jack Thompon on the Shoalin Temple, right?”
First, ring boxing and martial arts are quite different in that ring boxing, as currently ruled, allows levels of physical damage and danger that no legitimate martial arts school or competition would allow. (”Kick boxing” in Vegas does not count as “legitimate.”) When boxers start wearing head gear and when head shots are taken out of competition, then they’ll belong in the same discussion. Meanwhile, professional boxing is far more akin to a public execution, i.e. not something sane people can watch or condone. (Yes, that’s a value judgment. I think grown ups get to make those.)
Second, martial arts is, literally anti-violence. It’s certainly tied in a strange waltz with violence, but only as a 180 turn away from it. And, to extend the metaphors, martials arts is to violence as loving, consentual sex is to rape. That martial arts is an honorable pursuit in no way excuses or condones the indulgence in violence, either as fantasy or in other realities. Yes, the “Shaolin Temple” should be censured if it were teaching people how to beat up each other, under any circumstances, using only “might makes right” as a criterion. Just as loving sex, consentual sex, marriage and all the other sexual arrangements between willing parties are legitimate and ethical, so is martial arts. And, just as beating up someone for reasons other than self defense is immoral and unacceptable, so is rape. And, just as a fantasy about beating people up for no reason other than to be a “tough” guy is pretty damn sick, so is fantasizing about rape.
I need a bath. (I’m quite grateful most schools are on the lookout for people who think martials arts is about violence. My school also does background checks to weed out potential weirdos. Potential students, pay no attention to “laughing’s” misunderstandings. Trush your instincts. The overwhelming majority of martial artists are sane, peaceful people.
This comment was written by kbrigan.Report this comment to the moderators
September 29th, 2006 at 4:18 pm
Q Grrl:
Laughing@UALL:
A somber, serious criminologist writes to a discussion about rape and porn and the nic he chooses is — get this– Laughing at you all in leetspeak.
Something doesn’t quite add up, methinks.
This comment was written by Tuomas.Report this comment to the moderators
September 29th, 2006 at 4:20 pm
Why would you remove a post defending martial arts. I don’t understand in the least what your criteria are. You’ve left “laughing’s” posts up, even though they’re far more incendiary.
What’s going on?
This comment was written by kbrigan.Report this comment to the moderators
October 26th, 2006 at 5:39 am
of beauty and when men are used just as often for sexual explotation. Sex is great - if its in an egalitarian context. For a few much more interesting and much better written posts on rape, sex, selling sex and violence go to punkass, smackdog, Noli, Ampersand and B|L.
This comment was written by Liberal Debutante.Report this comment to the moderators
October 31st, 2006 at 12:26 pm
[...] Anyway, what I didn’t comment on was, actually, Josh Jaspers’ comments at the thread. My heartfelt thanks for the bravery Josh. I know it’s difficult to face that kind of abuse. Josh Jaspers writes: September 2nd, 2006 at 7:54 am [...]
This comment was written by Bitch | Lab » No comment.Report this comment to the moderators
October 31st, 2006 at 4:43 pm
[throws flowers to Josh the brave. Oops. They're plastic. I'm on a budget. ]
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
November 1st, 2006 at 9:40 am
For those interested I suggest taking a look at Japan’s porn industry vs their number of reported rapes. A society that sells soiled underwear in vending machines, Japan is notorious for it’s variety of bizarre porn - one of which is simulated rape. Remarkably, however, Japan has the lowest number of reported rapes of any industrialized country. The reason for that is subject to interpretation but interesting nonetheless.
I lived in Japan. I can tell you that women who report rape–or even being harassed on the train–are blamed for what happened, and are often dragged through the mud. Rape isn’t reported, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Though I do find the “put up with the misogyny so that you won’t get raped” fallacy oh-so-charming.
This comment was written by Sheelzebub.Report this comment to the moderators
November 1st, 2006 at 11:30 am
And human trafficking is a huge problem in Japan. But I suppose it would be rude to say that any of the women and girls being tricked into selling their bodies count as victims of rape.
Also, maybe when Bitch/Lab is done playing “There there” with poor old Josh, Josh would like to come back and answer my question as to why he’s still shuffling papers for a living when he proudly proclaims that his pron stint was not at all degrading compared to it. Oh, and maybe if I live to be a thousand, Bitch/Lab herself will come back and explain to me, at long last, how a proudly Socialist woman like Nina Hartley reconciles her supposedly humane political beliefs with her cold-hearted public tesitmony against a mandatory condom policy in the mainstream pron industry.
I think I’ll take up knitting. I could become the Christo of knitting and hit every park in Portland with huge dense layers of delicate yarnwork before either of them ever comes up with a straight answer, I’ll wager. :/
This comment was written by ms_xeno.Report this comment to the moderators
February 19th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
porn more/less likely to cause a viewer to rape women. Evryone is welcome to say anything they want, of course. But hopefully there will be some logical relevancy to the thread topic (at least in a perfet world…) Anyway. Over at Alas, we were discussing the link between porn and rape. ms_xeno gave a link to Just A John ? Pornography and Men’s Choices and said I submit that porn films, yes, even mainstream ones, even the “softcore” ones that were on cable when I was a teen back in the 1980s, deliberately make the line between
This comment was written by Moderately Insane.Report this comment to the moderators
May 27th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
NoPornNorthampton.org provides a variety of rebuttals to arguments such as Professor D’Amato’s:
How Spread of Porn Could Give the Illusion that Rape is in Decline (explicit language)
Indications from books like Unhooked or Female Chauvinist Pigs suggest that many women in our present age, understandably, prefer to conceive of themselves as powerful and in control, not as victims. Female members of the porn industry like Lizzy Borden fuel this image of woman as dominator, as opposed to the dominated. A woman acknowledging she was made to have sex against her will, whether to police or to a survey-taker, would not be compatible with this self-image. We observe that sexual assault is both widespread and a substantially underreported crime…
We can hypothesize that as women adopt the promiscuous, callous lifestyle advocated by porn, they will be less likely to report instances of rape. This might be in part because porn trains people to expect discourteous behavior in sex, and in part because of widespread beliefs that ‘loose’ women have little credibility when it comes to accusations of rape. A raped woman has every reason to fear that her sexual history might be mercilessly worked over in court (and/or public opinion) during a trial, especially if that history is long and messy. For reasons like these, one cannot conclude from mere correlation that porn truly reduces the incidence of sexual assault. There is no unambiguous logical connection between the two…
It is easy to see how the propagation of rape myths would decrease reporting of rape. The victim might not be sure that an actual crime occurred, or even if they did, might not feel that our legal system will recognize their injury.
United Kingdom: A Glaring Counter-Example to the Theory that Internet Porn is Cathartic
Law professor Anthony D’Amato, and more recently Todd Kendall of Clemson University, have attempted to correlate increased Internet penetration with decreasing rates of rape. Since the Internet is a major vector for porn, they suggest that more porn in the home means fewer people will rape. In short, they claim that porn is cathartic.
We have already discussed some of the flaws in this argument, the origins of which go back over 30 years. A new counter-example has recently come to our attention. Between 2000-2005, the number of Internet users in the United Kingdom increased from 15.4 million to 35.8 million (InternetWorldStats). During this time, the overall population only grew from 58.8 million to 59.9 million, so the proportion of Internet users in the population grew from 26% to 60%.
If the D’Amato/Kendall theory was correct, you would expect a measurable decrease in the number of reported rapes. However, the opposite trend was seen. In the period 1999-2000, just under 8,000 rapes of a female were reported in England and Wales. This level then increased every year until by the 2005-2006 period, over 13,000 rapes of a female were reported (Home Office Crime Statistics). This was during a time when the overall population increased by just 2%.
In Scotland, the trend of recorded rapes is similar. After dipping slightly between the 1999-2000 and 2000-2001 reporting periods, rapes recorded by police increased every year through the 2005-2006 reporting period (Scottish Executive). Overall, recorded rapes increased from just under 600 in 1999-2000 to just under 1,000 in 2005-2006.
Government officials in the United Kingdom believe that some of the increases in recorded rapes are due to improved reporting of crimes. Factors like these underscore the risks of drawing simple conclusions from apparent correlations between changes in reported crime rates and changes in other phenomena. The challenges are especially great when discussing heavily underreported crimes such as rape and domestic assault.
When combined with personal testimony and scientific experiments, the balance of the data suggests that porn stimulates rape and confuses people about what’s acceptable behavior (such as whether to take no for an answer during sex). It certainly cannot be concluded that porn reduces rape.
Porn and Sex Crimes in Other Countries: The Historical Experience
This comment was written by NoPornNorthampton.Porn advocates are usually quieter about the results of studies of Sweden, Great Britain, New Zealand and Australia, where ”as the constraints on the availability of pornography were lifted…the rates of rape in those countries increased.”[35] For example, in two Australian states between 1964 and 1977, when South Australia liberalized its laws on pornography and Queensland maintained its conservative policy…over the thirteen-year period, the number of rapes in Queensland remained at the same low level while South Australia’s showed a sixfold increase.”[36]
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