Comments

1
Was just thinking last week, with IAMHORNYDAN's letter, that discussions regarding bodyfat engender slightly more impassioned comments than for porn, and slightly less than 'what counts as rape?'
So, I suppose we were due.
2
I assume LW doesn't watch TV shows with female characters in case they feel pressured into wearing clothes they might not want to, doesn't listen to female recording artists in case they were pressured into changing their lyrics, etc.

There's no way to ensure 110% that anyone isn't pressured into anything (porn or otherwise), so either don't watch porn or start your own hipster cage-free porn studio that specializes in "pulling sticks out of your ass."
3
@2, you're an ass. That your porn was made with consent and without pressure is not a big ask.
4
I like the Australian "Girls Out West" website - they all appear to be having a lot of fun!
5
@3: She's asking to prove a negative; you can't prove 110% that nobody was pressured into anything unless you're doing it yourself. This is the kind of person that makes the owner of a restaurant come to the table and assure her that the burger she's eating was slaughtered humanely because she doesn't like the thought of the animal suffering (except for the whole slaughtering part).
6
What if the kind of porn we enjoy is the one that's found on the various "tubes", i.e. homemade by people who don't look like they're made of plastic? I just can't watch professionally produced porn anymore, it's just not messy, sweaty, human enough.
7
The whole James Deen/Stoya story really altered my view. I always thought I had a pretty good bullshit detector when it came to porn, and that I could ferret out the good from the bad. I also thought James Deen was the role model for informed consent, sex positive porn, etc. So I figured anything with JD was pretty safe for consumption. Then everything came crumbling down. Now I can't stomach anything with him in it anymore. But I still use tube sites. I just can't bring myself to pay for porn anymore. That ship has sailed.
8
LW, Make Love Not Porn is pretty nice place to start.
9
The oversized dicks are kind'f a necessity. They're often fucking at a 45° angle, and average won't reach.

If you don't want to see the penetration, look for softcore.
10
I get off to user-submitted porn on reddit.com/r/gonewild

It's super hot, super varied (representing every body type, etc, and there are any number of similar reddit subchannels for specific interests), has measures in place to prevent revenge-porn and ensure that it's all consensual, and I think that the community vibe of it makes it all particularly appealing, since people can engage with one another as much or as little as they'd like. It's got a lot of the same appeals as social media, mixed with porn you can feel good about, and there's a never-ending supply of new content.
11
@3 Huh.
12
Whatever happened to Candida Royalle and Femme Productions?
13
@5 how does an adult in 2017 get off thinking the conclusion from "you can't prove 110%" must be "so you can't give a fuck whether it's 0% or 90%"? Or thinking it would be an interesting idea to profess cynically? Dumb.

This kind of half-assed binary argument is hereby named "tapiring", because of their coloration. Sorry, tapirs.
14
Good stuff. It's a legit concern and Dan offers good advice. But I did think it was strange that she didn't bother to Google "feminist porn." Not attacking LW, just thought her rationale was a bit odd. Maybe she wanted to reach out with her concerns to a wider audience -- and there's nothing wrong with that.
15
I know PORNO was specifically talking about videos to watch, but if she's ok with graphic (heh) novels, I'd like to recommend the various works put out by Iron Circus Comics. I've greatly enjoyed Smut Peddler, My Monster Boyfriend, Yes, Roya (m/f/m femdom!), and Letters for Lucardo.
16
Nyckname @9: I thought that was PORNO's point: she wants more realistic porn than huge dicks OR 45-degree angles, neither of which is particularly comfortable for the woman involved.

PORNO: You know what, you don't have to watch porn in order to be "sex positive." It sounds like you have a happy sex life without it. If you had no interest in modern art, would you force yourself to go to galleries just to paint yourself as cosmopolitan? You've made it this far without porn; perhaps it's just not your thing. And that's ok.

Agree that Banna @2 is an ass; he's pooh-poohing your ethics because he has zero of his own, and wants to convince himself that that's OK.

I recommend the film Shortbus.
17
@5, And you're the kind of person who uses bullshit all-or-nothing rationalizations to avoid making ethical choices.
18
@5: No, you do sound like a total asshat. None of the "compromises" I make at my job are comparable of dignity to what some people in the industry are asked to do.

https://m.mic.com/articles/129866/what-s…

Porn can be done fully consensually as the topic describes but if you're going to claim that you're an equal to sex workers in the risk for exploitation because you can't make personal calls at work you can fuck right off.
19
@9 I don't think oversized cocks at painful angles is about camera work. Women in these movies are described as being ploughed, stuffed, banged, etc. There is an emphasis on female discomfort that is incredibly disturbing. If it seems like hardcore pornography requires that women be in discomfort, then that's more a statement about the nature of what people are overwhelmingly choosing to watch then it is about cinematography. If you're watching porn with those scenarios, it's out of choice, not necessity.
20
Undead @18: It's also a bit disturbing, and revealing, that the analogy Asshat @5 used compared women having sex on camera to cows being slaughtered.

Dude, cows are not supposed to enjoy being slaughtered. Women are supposed to enjoy sex. If the women in your porn are suffering like animals being slaughtered, then you are definitely part of the problem PORNO identifies.
21
@15 - "Letters for Lucardo" absolutely wrecked me! I can't stand where they ended it - I need more!
22
Oh, and I'd rather watch some guy getting plowed rather than a woman any day. Just skip the het porn and watch dudes getting it on. Problem solved!
23
"unless I'm 110% sure"

Okay, leaving aside that there isn't really a reliable way to prove complete lack of coercion, I can't stand when people just arbitrarily up the percentages when they can't, by definition, exceed 100%.
24
Er, eh, um: Dan! Thank you for getting Carlyle Jansen to direct the lw to Erika Lust! I have never seen porn I liked or that turned me on, but her stuff is great!
I guess I have to change my answer about porn now.
(fans self)

@5: Banna, While no one can ever be 110% positive about anything, we can do our due diligence to make sure that our pleasures (in dining, in dressing ourselves, in the cleanliness our homes, and in our sexual aids and wanking material) don't come at the expense or even abuse of someone else.

Yes, cattle are slaughtered, no matter what, so I can enjoy my steak. But that cow could have lived her life on a feedlot or grazing naturally. She could have had antibiotics shoved down her throat, or she could have lived healthily because she could roam. And she could have died in fear and anxiety or without that fear and anxiety, depending on slaughtering methods. And I have it largely in my power, as a consumer, to search out the provenance of my steak and to do research about how she and the other cattle were treated, to know roughly what kind of life they led. I can make the choice not to eat the steak, no matter how delicious I'm sure it will be, and despite the fact that I haven't had a steak in a long time and I'm really hungry.

I do understand the appeal of telling oneself that we can't ever be 110% sure, so we may as well toss out the attempt to distinguish one from the other. That allows us to consume whatever we want without feeling guilty if we suspect or find out, or even knew beforehand, that what we want came to us unethically or came at the expense of something or someone else.

In short, it doesn't cost you anything to try to find out if the porn you want to watch was made non-exploitatively, or to start your search in places where you have a pretty good assurance that no one was abused or exploited to make it. And there's always the possibility that exploitation was going on and being covered up. But it is a start. It's worth devoting the few minutes to, at least.
I mean, it's not like porn is the airlines and can be unethical and abusive and doesn't have to worry that people who want to jerk off or to incorporate some images into their partnered sex will want to stop flying at all and they control all of the air; there's always plenty of porn to be found. You can easliy afford to be a pit choosy.
25
@24: That should have read "a bit choosy."
26
No offense to Dan or his awesome pornographic film festival, but I think he's hopelessly compromised by the moneyed interests that 1) represent porn and 2) advertise or otherwise do business with him.

e.g. Adam and Eve advertise on Dan's podcast, hence Dan's nagging the LW to go *buy* porn. A&E sell tons of porn, and most of it's not the ethical/respectful 110% inclusive stuff Dan features at HUMP. Same deal with Dan's minimizing of how much porn is shitty and violent and misogynistic in this column, or his oft-repeated advice that all men use porn and more women should too. Charitably, Dan's business is the sex industry, and the biggest players in that industry are porn and sex shops, so Savage Love makes money with their buy-in. Also, SL/Dan is more beholden to the sex industry and more likely to parrot their talking points than say, Boll&Branch or stamps.com (other Lovecast ad customers) because their business and his business are in many ways *the same business*. You don't open a custom BDSM rope store if you weren't into tying people up to begin with. And the HUMP prize money's gotta come from somewhere, right?

With that shot across the bow, I am not trying to be hopelessly militant. I don't know if I quite think that porn is definitionally a form of violence against women (a la my namesake), but I do think the industry at present is 100% as bad as LW thinks it is, and I don't think the "feminist" thing to do necessarily is for women to become as avid consumers of porn as men collectively are. That would just double the amount of suffering and profiteering that happens in the porn industry. I'm not sure whether the free-range porn hipsters like Dan are solving the problem or just putting a face-saving gloss on the rest of the industry.

Has the LW considered erotic books? Or doujinshi? Those have plots, and they don't feature real human actors, so the only person who could have been abused there was the one who made the thing. I think self-submitted porn could be an option, maybe. And I don't think LW needs to vote with her wallet, so to speak, if she wasn't buying porn to begin with. That would be like taking up smoking as a protest vote against the politics of tobacco companies.
27
Andrea Dworkin, I'm sure the actual Andrew Dworkin would not take kindly to your using her name (yes, I know it's an homage). And since she's dead, you can't ask her.

Kind of ... unethical, doncha think?
28
I have to wonder why Dan didn't mention that a large percentage of women who watch porn (the majority, according to porn sites' statistics) don't go for the soft core, but rather the dirty stuff. The kind where the plumber says hello and immediately bends the girl over the sink, where the girl strapped for cash "has to" blow her landlord, where orifices get stuffed by faceless gangbanging dudebros, where there's close-ups and sweat and spit and slapping around. A lot of women also seem to go for amateur porn, which comes in all flavours, shapes and sizes. While there certainly is demand for nice and clean porn with stories, she has two rather different from each other concerns - consent and it being so vanilla it's barely porn. There's nothing wrong with that, but ethical porn and dirty porn are not mutually exclusive.
29
I can't be bothered with porn films, but fanfic is fucking brilliant. It can be totally filthy, but isn't harming anything.
30
@27 gatoverde Her first name was actually Andrea, not 'Andrew'. I read her books and I really respect her, and I'm using her name as homage, not a byword. I don't see what's unethical about that.

@28 DasKlaus where are you getting citations for what kinda porn "a large percentage of women" like? And even if that were true (that most women like sanitized rape and coercion scenarios, which I'm not sold is true), how does reminding LW she'd the odd woman out help?

Sounds like you're presenting an argument to the mean: most women like this, so LW should too. But it sounds like she tried it and she doesn't. More importantly, even if a large percentage of women were able to fetishize getting raped by the plumber, it's happening in a context of women getting raped constantly. That's a symptom of being sexually abused, which, as it happens, a lot of women are. And even more porn stars are sexually abused - just check out Jenna Jameson's memoirs. Or Stoya's tales of being raped by James Deen. Or Christy Mack, whos BF beat her within an inch of her life. And with this climate of oppressive violence within porn, I think it's unreasonable to give porn the benefit of the doubt that this particular actress wasn't abused or coerced.
31
@27: That's why I only pretend to be zombified incarnations when I make poor pseudonym decisions, of course.

@26: "I'm not sure whether the free-range porn hipsters like Dan are solving the problem or just putting a face-saving gloss on the rest of the industry. "

What do those indie sex workers have to do with the industry? Are they somehow responsible for the worst of it because they sell their art and performance?

They exist, and they are not what people find loathsome about the industry. Anything more you ascribe to them is misplaced.

@28: "ethical porn and dirty porn are not mutually exclusive."

While totally true, the issue with the LW is that she doesn't want complicity or really to be exposed to the rest, and understandably so.
32
Fake Andrea Dworkin @26: Sorry, but there's nothing self-serving or sinister about Dan's advice to PORNO to buy porn. It would be like anyone who cared about the livelihoods of musicians advising someone to pay for music downloads. Dan's not making a direct kickback; he just knows and wants to make sure his readers know that people in sex work deserve to make a living too. I have no stake in any part of the sex industry and I agree 100% -- or should I say 110%. It's simple ethics.

DasKlaus @28: Why would stating that other women like A help PORNO, who already stated she doesn't like A and is looking for B? If I'm looking to buy a Porsche, it's irrelevant that lots of other women like Audis.
33
@Andrea Dworkin #26: I think you're mistaking an objection to capitalist exploitation for an objection to porn (the point upthread about reception work versus porn is well made, but the suicide rate for porn stars is still below that of, say, electronics assembly workers, and it carries a lower risk of injury and accidental death than countless other professions - from a labor-safety and ethics standpoint, the production of the device on which you're watching the porn may be more problematic than the production of the porn itself) - this is why critiques of racism, sexism, etc. must necessarily integrate critiques of capitalism. Economic justice is not a distraction from other forms of justice, and other forms of justice are not a distraction from economic justice - they're all interrelated in our kyriarchy. In a capitalist patriarchy, porn will follow the logic of capitalism and patriarchy, just like the serving industry (where both financial and sexual abuse of staff by customers and owners/managers is rampant), or the tech industry, or literally everything else (again, to a different degree and in different forms depending on industry). Even in terms of promoting objectifying images, the advertising industry and G-rated media do vastly more to establish objectifying norms (and rape apologetics) in our culture than porn, simply as a matter of volume and extent of exposure (and in terms of direct abuse of workers, my understanding is that rape and other forms of sexual assault are prevalent in G-rated modeling, too). That critique of porn isn't wrong, it's totally valid, but it's not a problem specific to porn nor is it a problem primarily motivated by porn; if one is going to avoid porn becasue of misogyny, one should probably avoid all media because of misogyny. And also never leave the house becasue sexist (and racist, and classist, etc.) advertisements are plastered on nearly every surface these days. I continue to think that the particular objection to porn is due to complications of an unjustified moralistic view of sexuality specifically, in the way noted by this Twitter user - https://twitter.com/thebrainbabe/status/…

And while I realize I've referred to the abstracted totality "porn" here to reference the net effects of a vast collection of extremely varied creative works (the definition of which is nebulous and contentious - I've heard people try to dodge the entire debate by simply defining "porn" to be anything unethical without addressing the questions concerning the specifics of the ethics of sex work in our present society, much like definitions of "cultural appropriation" that define it as the bad kind of borrowing in order to avoid discussions about how cultural borrowing and blending and the spread of memes works or what differentiates the bad from the good besides personal subjective opinion), I also challenge the idea that a homogenizing idea of "porn" as a single type of thing is especially useful. I *think* we would likely agree that, say, a video of an actual rape is worse than a video of actors play-acting sexual coercion (we generally may not agree whether the latter is worse than a video depicting people consensually play-acting consensual sex or amateurs filming the sex they have whether there is a camera around or not; I think it is due to the normalization of coercion); if that's the case, then we clearly can determine differences in how harmful distinct examples of the category "porn" are, which means we really can't consider it to be harmful or not as a category.

@gatoverde #27: It's only unethical if you buy into the idea of ownership of abstractions/ideas i.e. intellectual property. I think that's an atrocious form of neoliberal capitalism that runs contrary to how the spread of culture and ideas actually works; Andrea Dwokin (the one in this thread) clearly isn't the noted feminist scholar and author, since she's dead, so the Andrea Dworkin in this thread isn't impersonating her, either.
34
@31 The performers at HUMP seem to have very little to do with the professional porn industry. They're amateurs by definition (HUMP is an amateur-only festival) and Dan goes to reasonable lengths to ensure that copies of HUMP never leave the theater. And that's all great, I went to HUMP in Brooklyn and I was being sincere when I said it was good. My problem is the professional porn industry is nothing like HUMP. And Dan is generally pro-porn ("all men use it, more women should") and that's gonna necessarily include an endorsement of the violent, misogynistic, bog-standard crap which currently predominates in the porn economy.
35
@29 - are you on AO3? Look me up. ;-p
36
Hey, porn and prostitution is the social safety net for young-ish, HWP-ish women. The alternative is living in 'the jungle' and begging for spare change, it's not like those folks are there by choice.
37
@32 ouch. I maintain the LW doesn't need to buy porn if she's not sold on porn-watching.

@33 stop "abstracting" porn, it's not an intellectual exercise. The power is real, the cruelty is real, the sadism is real, the subordination is real: the political crime against women is real. Women can join your communist revolution when men's social power over women comes to an end. More starkly, I want his boot off my neck.
38
I appreciate the porn recs. I personally really like a lot of stuff on Make Love Not Porn. Also the payments go to the actors themselves, at least part of them. Also since I'm the sort of person who doesn't consume porn A LOT but who likes it enough to want to see it sometimes and who wants to actually pay for what I consume when people aren't doing it for free, I really like the idea of paying a smallish amount per video that goes mostly to the folks fucking in the video. I know people who watch lots of porn need something more wholesale and cheaper, but for myself, I only need a small handful at a time- I can get months out of that.

I also like gay porn, especially the more vanilla and pretty of it like Cocky Boys, and I had not thought too much about why (I like guys, two of them is better) until I started talking about porn here on this forum, and now I'm pretty sure the reason I like it (aside from the fact that I like guys, two of them is better) is exactly what the LW described. Most porn that you find with a quick search is not made in a way that's appealing for women, and a lot of it is even disturbing. I guess going for gay porn is just a way to bypass that problem. But I've talked about that elsewhere.

Also totally agree with BDF and Ricardo here, plus most of what NoCute and Ayn Rand say.
39
@34: "My problem is the professional porn industry is nothing like HUMP. And Dan is generally pro-porn ("all men use it, more women should") and that's gonna necessarily include an endorsement of the violent, misogynistic, bog-standard crap which currently predominates in the porn economy."

Well, isn't this what the whole letter is about?

Sex positive porn exists. She asks for it in direct opposition to the more harmful sex work.

I understand your point, but the hipster porn doesn't support and excuse the rest like some sort of "gateway drug".

She is not being fooled, she doesn't want to support the industry. And supporting independent artists and sex workers doesn't either (though of course one could always ask about financing, look up parent companies etc.)

@37: Isn't that patronizing to the person who asks if it exists?

"You don't need it" is the answer to what she already knows. If erotic fan fiction is what she wanted all along, why would she be asking Dan about erotica?
40
I do agree that for many people what they're looking for may not exist in the proper context, and thanks for the polite back and forth about a rather contentious subject.
41
"Porn that I don't like is scary and BAAAAD! Those women are probably sex slaves!! How could they ever prefer something like that! Must be rape"
42
@39 "Erotica" can be just another word for porn. A feminist definition of erotica would involve reciprocity and mutuality, but "erotica" in the general lexicon and especially the male erotic lexicon is just high-class pornography; the difference between a call girl and a streetwalker. But since the latter and not the former "erotica" is what predominates the market, so much so as to be a nuisance for the LW, I think that definition is closer to the truth of what "erotica" is most of the time.

As for whether or not LW needs porn, I guess she wants to get into it, eh? But the personal is political and we have to interact with the social system porn creates around sex whether you personally choose to watch porn or not. Dan's "watch the kind of porn you like and vote with your feet" option is fine, I guess, but he says it in the context of someone who consumes a lot of porn and trades a lot with the porn and dildo business. Also, I maintain that doujinshi and hentai and erotic comics are still porn, but it spares your conscience about the sex workers.

@41 - What's your deal? A lot of porn performers have been sexually abused. A lot of women have been sexually abused, full stop. And a lot of porn, the mainstream stuff like DasKlaus was talking about, has some pretty insidious themes when you stop to think of it. Being "forced" to give your LL a blowjob? Sounds like sanitized coercion - in this version, the porn star "wants" to do it (she's getting paid to do it), but IRL this does happen and it's sexual assault. Porn is the theory, rape is the practice. So yeah, that's me, you nailed it.
43
@42 My deal is my honest, uneducated opinion. Which seems to be all the rage these days. What's your age? A lot of PEOPLE have been sexually abused PERIOD(.) What does that have to do with porn? Go try and google actual footage of rape. And insidious themes eh? Sounds like %75 of the things that make people hard and wet. Give yourself a few years to admit you're really into all that dirty shit that makes you so conflicted.
44
Andrea:
"Her first name was actually Andrea, not 'Andrew'."

Since that's very clearly a typo, I'm not sure that your comment there is the zinger you seem to think it is.

"I'm using her name as homage, not a byword."

Um. In my comment, I stated that I know you're using it as a homage.

I'm a feminist who watches porn, and who has seem serious deep criticism of the role that it plays in society. And who really wants to see more thoughtful, philosophical engaging of the interplay between the oppression of women and all forms of art (and yes, that's the category porn belongs in. "Art" covers everything from Danielle Steel novels to Charles Burnett films.)

And I'm really over the mechanical, reductionist thinking you display here. It's not even as good as Andrea Dworkin herself, who despite some serious methodological weaknesses was an important scholar whose work needs to be engaged with.

45
Andrea @37: "I maintain the LW doesn't need to buy porn if she's not sold on porn-watching"
I agree; see @16. I thought the point Dan was making was that IF she was going to use porn, she should be an ethical consumer and pay for it. I also didn't see him advocating unethical, violent porn anywhere in his response.
Anyone who thinks "all porn is bad!!!" OR "all porn is fine!!!" is deluded.
46
@ 42 Chud - good to know you pulled the 75% remark out of thin air, though it's telling you feel entitled to guess at my age and make declarations that I'm "really into all that dirty shit that makes [me] so conflicted." Sadly, to women porn isn't an abstraction. Women really do have a 1:5 chance of being raped per lifetime, and porn that teaches men that all women are "secretly turned on" by stuff they vocally despise is part of the problem. Only men have the luxury of treating porn as if it was wholly divorced from the reality of what they do in bed and how they do it. It sounds like you're offering your own rationalizations as if they were objective fact, which, they're not.

@44 gatoverde - my mistake. You would not believe the number of people I've encountered with very strong thoughts on the writings of "Angela Dworkin". I agree - Dworkin's work is worth considering, and while I'm not gonna pretend to be a perfect embodiment of it, I have put forth some of her ideas in this space, which is more than most people engage with it.

I do dispute that porn is "art". I don't think it is art, even the high-class, well-turned-out stuff can be just as shitty and violent as the base stuff and teaches the same rape culture. And I dispute whether you can keep indulging in porn and still have your serious deep criticism about it; that's a bit like having one's cake and eating it too.
47
@46 Anything can be art if it's done artfully, whether or not you choose to see it as such is another thing. Also, being engaged with something and maintaining the ability to think about it objectively, critically, is very possible. People do it all the time. I use a cell phone and drive a car but this doesn't render my opinion on texting while driving null and void, nor does it make me unable to see that it's dangerous to others on the road and therefore unethical.
48
@46 - I disagree. A massacre cannot be "art", nor can a genocide or systematic oppression of one group by another be art. Such things can be dressed up in an aesthetically pleasing way - many white supremacists dress up their oppression of blacks with pseudoscience and euphemism and rationalization - but that doesn't make racism "art". Likewise, if you view mainstream porn as a systematic form of violence against women (and I increasingly do), it isn't art. HUMP might be art (or at least, artistic), but HUMP is about as different from the mainstream, $10bn/yr porn industry as the Seattle farmer's market is from McDonald's.

I don't need to hand pornographers money to engage critically with what they do. You've compare porn-watching to owning a phone and a car while still being against texting and driving; as if one's sexual fantasies and one's sexual reality could be neatly and safely separated like the activities of texting and driving can be. But what people masturbate to, the fantasies they evolve, and what they actually do in bed are intimately connected - a rehearsal of what you want and the practice of getting it. Assuming porn is all fantasy/escapism and that the media people consume never influences how they behave is a pretty big assumption, and since many men (even some in this thread) do indeed seem to think all women are like the women they see in porn, it's not one on which I'm inclined to hang my hat.
49
A question related to the LW's -- I love playing computer games, and someone suggested I try a porn computer game. I hadn't know there WERE porn computer games. I checked out one site and felt rather sick afterwards, since all of the games were about humiliating and/or forcing the woman.

Does anybody know of a sexy computer game that's NOT about rape and/or humiliation?

I worry about what it says about our society that "sexy" somehow equals "humiliate women then rape them!"
50
@42: "What's your deal?"

Just ignore the RedPill troll.
51
@49: There's probably little smutty that's neither Leisure Suit Larrylike bro humor, more chaste dating sims or the creepy hentai games.

I had heard rumblings about http://steamed.kotaku.com/an-uncensored-… but I can't vouch personally.
52
Anyone else? No? Well, it's a slow Wednesday, so...
As previously noted, we go through one of these dialogs about once a year, with one new commenter showing up to educate all the Morlocks on how porn = rape, who then gets mollywhopped by the regulars and goes off in a tiff, fuming that what was a real shoot-down line in Wymmyn's Studies 201 doesn't work here.
“..offering your own rationalizations as though they were objective fact...,” yeah, that sounds familiar.
So, you can't have watched porn, and still have 'serious deep criticism' i.e. an educated opinion, about it, as that's eating your cake too? Andy, what the hell are you doing on this site?
It's like you're trying to posit that drinking beer inevitably leads to becoming a heroin addict – that shit might fly with a company of Amish elders, not with your average group of 30-year olds. I, and most people I know, have drunk beer, and never been inclined towards heroin. And thus it is with porn.
“Assuming porn is all fantasy/escapism and that the media people consume never influences how they behave” is not a pretty big assumption, “(Porn) is a rehearsal of what you want and the practice of getting it” definitely is: “Oh, wow, man, plumbers and pizza boys get laid like crazy, Domino's application, here I come! Oh, and I just watched SpiderMan, and I can't separate fantasy and reality, so after I get that pizza gig, I'm'a find me a mutant spider to bite me!”
Jesus, this is stupid. Do you understand, Andrea, possibly not based on your nom de plume, that pretty much everyone you're addressing has watched porn, and it's incited exactly zero point nada of us to go out and commit sex crimes? Next you'll be comparing watching porn to massacres, or genocide, (why stop there? You're getting so many converts with this line of reasoning! Just like your namesake!)...oh. Wait.

Talking about 'porn' like it's a monopoly like General Electric is even stupider – there are thousands of sites, let alone private individuals, making porn, generalizing about them is like generalizing about shirts, because some are made via slave labor. Andy, are you going to stop wearing shirts for this reason? WELL ARE YOU? What kind of a slaving apologist are you, you upper-body-garment-wearing-genocidist?
And you don't need to hand 'pornographers' a dime to see it; see, there's these things called the intertubes, and it's free, and,...never mind.

The statistics are clear – increased porn availability/ consumption does not lead to increased rape, The bottom line on (experiments that measured porn availabilty vs rape occurrence,) is, "More Net access, less rape." A 10 percent increase in Net access yields about a 7.3 percent decrease in reported rapes. States that adopted the Internet quickly saw the biggest declines. And, according to Clemson professor Todd Kendall, the effects remain even after you control for all of the obvious confounding variables, such as alcohol consumption, police presence, poverty and unemployment rates, population density, and so forth.*
Denmark was one of the first countries to legalize porn, in '67, they have free access to it, and their rate of rape is ¼ of that of the US. So, where are all their degenerate men, programmed to commit violence on women? If 'porn is the theory, rape is the practice,” then why doesn't it work out like that? Why do women watch it, and not want to be raped, and men who watch it aren't compelled to rape. There's a reason that Dworkin died as a punchline, and it wasn't her heft.
Really, Andy, take this act elsewhere, it ain't gonna play well here.

*http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/every…
53
"There's a reason that Dworkin died as a punchline"

Because social conservatives hate her for the twin crimes of being a feminist and someone they didn't want to have sex with?

I'll take a little devils advocacy with some legitimate concerns over shitposters like chud anyday.
54
"Because social conservatives hate her for the twin crimes of being a feminist and someone they didn't want to have sex with?”
No, because she wasn’t a ‘feminist,’ as most people who want to ID themselves as such, see it. She saw ‘men’ as the enemy. She saw ‘pornography’ as encouraging rape, whereas I, and many hundreds of thousands who’ve seen it, have found it to be no such thing.
I’m perfectly happy to engage with her thoughts, separated from her body, but they’re still a bunch of bullshit. Said this about the disappeared Marcelina, will say it about Angie D: if Rush Limbaugh could give mike time to a woman that would progress HIS cause, it would be her.
As William of Baskerville once said, "(s)he is in that group, that is their enemies’ greatest champions.”
55
@54 So because you watch porn and don't rape people you feel safe in concluding that porn watching doesn't have an affect on people's propensity to commit sexual assault? That's the same reasoning as someone who had a physically abusive parent, doesn't hit their kids, and concludes that there is no connection between having abusive parents and being one. I'm not saying you're wrong, just that your reasoning is idiotic. The fact is, you don't actually know, and I wouldn't be surprised if exposure at a young age to the kind of misogynistic rape-porn that permeates the internet increased the likelihood that someone would commit a sexual assault later in life. Also, as a man, you should avoid mansplaining to women how someone who calls themselves a feminist and is believed by many to be one, is actually not. You sound like someone Rush would give mike time to yourself; hard opinions based on faulty logic with a healthy dose of acerbic male condescendence.
56
@54: "if Rush Limbaugh could give mike time to a woman that would progress HIS cause, it would be her. "

And yet you are relying exclusively on Rush Limbaugh's idea of Dworkin to discuss her work.

Of course he's going to portray her as conservatives see all feminists, but parroting Limbaugh's opinions on isn't adding any nuance or context to the discussion here.

Instead of going "aaaaahhhhh second wave feminists think porn is rape!", why not acknowledge that there are criticisms of the industry and consumption worth consciousness of?

By refusing to contextualize what you're getting from Rush et al., you're adopting his message but not benefiting yourself or coming across as anything but kneejerk criticisms gleaned from the cesspool of AM talk radio.

"But UAR, I don't listen to Limbaugh!"

you may say.

Then why uncritically repeat his narratives here?
57
@55 liberal_liberosis. I'm a woman. And a feminist. And not someone who enjoys the usual porn that shows women being stuffed, etc.

Cat Brother's statistics are not bogus. Many studies have shown the correlation between available porn viewing to men and the lowering of rape stats. He didn't mull that idea over after a few beers with his pals and call it science. Dan has discussed stats of that nature in his column and on his podcast many times.
58
I know y'all are retreating into a different conversation, but I just want to point out that for many of us, regardless of our ability to distinguish fantasy from reality, we just don't want to watch porn that is humiliating, violent or uncomfortable for women. I don't care if no one ever gets actually assaulted in real life as a result. I don't see what's sexy about it. And if it were a small percentage of porn, that wouldn't interest me since there is porn about everything and people get off on all sorts of things, and I don't have to be interested in or approve of any of it. But the fact is that it's MOST mainstream porn. Most of it. That does actually concern me as a woman. Not from the point of view that I'm alarmed it is linked to actual assault, but just because it is disturbing to go out in the world engaging with men every day who I know are all frequently jacking off to humiliation, violence and discomfort of women. I'm not trying to make a law restricting this, but I think it's a simplification and a silencing that anytime someone wants to discuss how disturbing this is, they are shouted down or ridiculed. Dworkin and other second wave feminists tried to talk about it, and they are still attacked for coming up with some wrong conclusions. The current sex positive climate means you can't be critical at all or else you are called a prude. Porn does reflect deeper cultural issues in the same way that people get off on incorporating taboos and anxieties and repressions in their sex life. It's just willfully ignorant to handwave away the connection between misogyny in porn and misogyny in real life, and arguments that pit the two against each other about which causes which miss the point.
59
@51: Thanks for that link, Undead Ayn Rand, that sounds well worth checking out!
60
@58: "The current sex positive climate means you can't be critical at all or else you are called a prude"

The same dudes who positioned themselves around "free love" as being expected and obligatory in the 60s, I imagine.

Now there's saying "sex positive" and there's actually being sex positive...
61
And to the "wrong conclusions" I doubt people have read her in context, just see her as a hated figure and bounce off of that, ala Madalyn Murray O'Hair.

I mean, not that one can't disagree with her beliefs and work and move beyond, but she exists as a bugbear, an excuse to dismiss feminist concerns because discussing problematic aspects of the industry means that you personally must hold the beliefs that "all heterosex is rape! all porn is rape!"
62
I haven't watched (or more accurately, tried to watch) porn in decades. I never liked it. Back when I first saw it, it was just too cheesy and kind of gross. I don't want to see just extreme closeups of genitals, or the really hideous men who used to be in porn, or the bad hair, spray tans, fake boobs, fake nails on the women. Or the bad "acting," that took place in the 1.4 minutes before the sex started. All of it. I am actively turned off by all of it. I've tried, now and again, to watch some amateur stuff, but it leaves me cold. I do like HUMP, but I see it for a very different reason than to get turned on.

So I will have to take all y'll's word for it that most commercial or professional porn today is about humiliation of women and has a violent tone. Come to think of it, I have seen some porn in recent years, by Kink.com, that I had been told I would like, based on what I like in my own life, and again, I was disgusted. There is no way that what I see on a screen ever captures what sex feels like or looks like from my point of view when I'm having it.

I think it's a symptom of the misogyny in our culture that so much porn is based on images of violence or degradation of women. It's as if the more progressive our society gets publicly, the more regressive our porn is. Or something. I am not sure how to articulate this thought. But gross as the old 1980s porn I saw was, it wasn't all about degradation and humiliation: it was just the housewife and the pool boy; just the girlfriends and the pizza delivery guy. So there is clearly something else going on now. I do think it has something to do with the sex-positive, third-wave feminism, ggg-ness that is so prevalent today and the fact that everyone's supposed to be cool with it or they're cast as a sex-negative, uptight prude.

While I know that porn consumption correlates to lower rape stats, I wonder if that is true at the often-unreported acquaintance- or date-rape level. If having easy access to porn keeps violent assaults from happening, that's good. But I have definitely experienced a change in the way men I have sex with have sex over the past ten years. There's a lot of porn-y stuff going on in my bedroom that didn't use to happen 30 years ago. It seems pretty clear that people are mimicking what they see onscreen. Unless what is being filmed is purely reflective of how more people are having sex. I guess it's a symbiotic, recursive thing. Fortunately, I happen to like my sex to be a bit rough, but if I didn't, this would be seriously annoying. And if women are being used this way who don't like being used this way, even if they consented to sex initially, that is a problem.

There is a lot to talk about and think about--and counteract--with the porn issue, and I really wish that porn devotees would allow those discussions to get started without feeling the need to shut them down by labeling any woman who wants to take a closer look and who dares to suggest that in fact some women might be having sex the way they don't want to have it or sex that they don't want to have because of porn's influence as uptight and prudish and narrow-minded.
63
#55 - “So because you watch porn and don't rape people you feel safe in concluding that porn watching doesn't have an affect on people's propensity to commit sexual assault? “
No, it's because numerous studies, including the ones I linked to, have shown not only does porn consumption not result in increasing rape, it shows the opposite.
Oh, no, I'm 'manspaining!' Speaking of stuff that worked like voodoo in the classroom, not so good out here – I'm citing hard facts, and yeah, we do actually know the effects, and non-effects of porn. If you have a study that shows the opposite, which you don't, go ahead and provide it, instead of razor sharp observations like 'I wouldn't be surprised...”
Feminism is not one thing, except for the fact that many who call themselves feminists are quite willing to tell others, both women and men, that they're doing it wrong and are excommunicated, and the fact about Dworkin was that she put many women, like this one

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/a…
off from calling themselves feminists, from her views on porn, sex work, and men in general.
Now, I'm not saying you're wrong....well, yeah, I am. Also, your reasoning is bargain-basement entitled Darla who secretly wants to be a Heather, people start drifting away from you when you get on these rants, and you have a voice like a neutered titmouse. Like several before you here on SL, Rush would far rather have you than me on the mike, you'd be better than a recruiting drive for him.

#56 – No, I don't listen to Limbaugh, and I'm not quoting him here, doubt he could put three sentences together about Dworkin. I'm quoting our own pet Dworkin, who said, quoting her idol, that porn is the itheory, rape is the practice. That's not AM talk radio, that's the woman herself. In her 1987 book Intercourse, she argued explicitly that heterosexual intercourse was rape by definition. Not surprisingly, this didn't win her a lot of converts.
So, when up above Andy repeats this trope about porn as fact, it's worth bringing up. If you don't like the fact that Dworkin said it, take it up with her. Limbaugh and people like him have been saying for years, “These feminists think you can't have sex without rape, that all men are rapists,” to which most feminists have replied, that's an inaccurate and reductive view of my position, but with Dworkin over in the corner going, Yeah, well, actually....
Dan's whole point, in replying to LW, which has been echoed and expanded by several other commenters, is that there are indeed alternatives to mainstream porn, especially of the abusive variety, bam. This point has been made before, multiple times on this site, so I figured old news, LR has her answers. I saw no reason to add to this.
But no, Andy Jr has to educate all the cavedwellers that there is, in fact NO moral porn, and that rape is its expression, so like the Marcelinas and Alimenias (sp?) before her, she gets engaged on it, and her defenders issue gouts of squid ink like 'you manspainer!' It's like listening to a bunch of crabby old conservatives whose worst insult is 'You commie!' because it worked way back when it and they never saw a reason to change.

NoCute and EmmaLiz, you both bring up the points of addressing what's problematic in the porn industry, and whether you can do so, or criticize any porn at all without being called 'prudish.' First, talking about the 'porn industry' is like talking about the 'literature industry,' there's tons of content of all types out there, and with the technological barriers to making it having gone down, more all the time. Like literature, most of what is put out, is crap. Some of it is amusing crap, some is disgusting crap, and I'm sure there's some on the DarkNet that would make you heave your Cheerios. But literature is not put out by one Hive Mind, so generalizations about it other than 'you read it' are ridiculous.
So, yeah, you can have a negative opinion about a piece of porn and not be a prude (although someone somewhere will always call you that, in the way that some Dworkin will alwayssay that ALL porn leads to rape.) You just can't generalize about an entire medium and expect to be taken but so seriously. John Ringo's writing sucks! Yeah, but James Lee Burke's doesn't, and Ringo's suckage doesn't mean a damn thing about how well someone else does or doesn't write.

Porn is the same, which is why generalizations about it besides 'people watch it to get turned on' don't work. There's porn made by lesbians, for lesbians, and porn with only gay male actors – where are the women who're getting abused there? I've watched only amateur porn for some time, as I find the commercial stuff mostly unwatchable, where women just show up, have consentual sex, nobody gets smacked around. The window popup that comes up on the corner of P-hub recently features huge Amazonian women ravishing twinky little men – not my scene, but I guess someone's buying it.

Does abusive porn exist? I'm sure, every form of porn exists, as Dan has repeatedly stated. Is 'most porn' abusive? Anyone attempting to quantify the stats on this is making shit up – whoever you are, you are not surfing through the millions of vids out there. Danielle Steele and such can be easily found at your library, but if you say 'It's nothing BUT Danielle Steele here!' your browsing abilities are sorely lacking. Non-abusive porn is very easily found; if all you're seeing is abuse, then that's what you're putting in the search bar.
If it's all make-believe, and the actors know what they're doing, and are willing to do it for a paycheck, I'm inclined to let consenting adults exercise their freedom in the making of porn. BDSM and such is not my bag, and I would bet Dan's next paycheck that it's a minescule part of the porn pie next to, say, MILF porn, but like sex work, at what point do we tell people we know what they should do for a job, better than they do?

And the ways to remove offscreen abuse can also take cues from sex workers, starting with asking the workers what they want and need. Organization, unionization, legalization with the protection that comes with it, and swift prosecution for violating the rules.
64
Cat Bro,

You may not know you are doing it (though I suspect you do) but you are putting up barriers to any real discussion by responses that are motivated to prove others wrong rather than to try to understand. Also you are, in fact, saying things that are dismissive of feminism in general and that intentionally simplify other larger arguments (like the ones Dworkin made), and that reveals a lot about your point of view.

If you can't see this or if you see it but don't think it is a problem or if you are doing it on purpose, then it all has the same result- it makes conversation about this topic impossible.

65
@63 I'm pointing out that you don't know something you claim to know with certainty. 'We' collectively know for a fact that young men watching misogynistic pornography has no effect on their behavior? Social science studies like those aren't worth much, and I never said I thought porn was a bad thing. I'm actually fine with it. I couldn't make any sense of the last bit you wrote, but I attacked your reasoning and it looks like you vomited out some kind of "oh YEAH, well YOU'RE reasoning ..." response. Cute.
66
@62: "I do think it has something to do with the sex-positive, third-wave feminism, ggg-ness that is so prevalent today and the fact that everyone's supposed to be cool with it or they're cast as a sex-negative, uptight prude"

Could you blame the third wave for guys trying to coopt the narrative and redefine "sex positive" to their specific ends (while simultaneously shaming under the guise of "woke"ness) alongside the Sarah Palinesque contrarians like Paglia?

It's still important to pay attention to who's doing the "ugh PRUDES, don't you know you should be okay with this?"
67
@65: I don't know if there's valid social science to that effect, but obviously fixating on the more intangible is less important than him refusing to accept that there's any distasteful aspects of the industry.
68
@63: "I'm quoting our own pet Dworkin, who said, quoting her idol, that porn is the itheory, rape is the practice. That's not AM talk radio, that's the woman herself. In her 1987 book Intercourse, she argued explicitly that heterosexual intercourse was rape by definition"

So again you're going based on nothing but Limbaugh here. You haven't read the book, so you're repeating lines you heard once.

Do you feel this helps your argument?
69
God, even the simplest wiki search would disabuse a person of that right wing/Trumpy narrative-

"Dworkin is often said to argue that "all heterosexual sex is rape", based on the line from the book that says "violation is a synonym for intercourse." However, Dworkin has denied this interpretation, stating, "What I think is that sex must not put women in a subordinate position. It must be reciprocal and not an act of aggression from a man looking only to satisfy himself. That's my point"
70
#64 - I know my motivations just fine, thanks. And our own Dworkin has been admirably clear on her points of view. As shown by empirical study, she happens to be wrong; what this shows about my point of view is that I can read a goddam study.
'Feminism in general,' yeah, who gets to define that? The original Dworkin? The English author I linked to? Gloria Steinem, who rejected Dworkin's work? 'Feminism' isn't some absolute thing, like the boiling point of water, it means whatever the speaker want it to. If you doubt this, please answer the question of who, of those three mentioned, gets to define it. You have ten seconds.
#65 - That's 'YOUR,' but you're right, that part was cute of you! Almost as cute as you hand waving away 'studies like that,' even when they show results for a whole country, such as the US and Denmark.
And I pointed out, among other things, that what you objected to people saying about the original Dworkin was, indeed, said by that Dworkin, then parroted by her acolyte here. Hey, I wouldn't want to tote that bale, either. But don't let Dwork Jr hear that you're fine with porn, she thinks it leads to rape. Like she said.
71
Undead Ayn Rand,

Yes I think you are correct about that. I've never read any of her books cover to cover and just dabbled here and there. I think most people probably only know basic facts.

What I meant was that what I have read from her has been really insightful in raising questions and perceptions, but I think the litigious stance she took was "wrong". And I think this is what she's most remembered for, and therefore people assume after the fact that nothing she said had any value since the conclusions she came to were wrong. Also I think people don't give second wave feminists the benefit of being judged in their time. It's really hard to make the sex positive third wave argument about women's sexual agency when you grew up in a time when you couldn't even control your own body, when birth control and abortion had only recently become available, when sex before marriage was unacceptable, when women's orgasm was a mysterious thing, and when women's property and custody rights were still not guaranteed in many states, etc. Even more nuanced feminists of the time jumped on board the "all porn is bad" train. When an entire generation of very bright radicals come to a similar conclusion that we view (now) to be flawed, it's very obnoxious for someone to respond that that entire movement was wrong instead of imagining that there must be something they are experiencing in their environment that led so many smart thoughtful people to the same solution.

And that's what troubles me about these sorts of discussions. The problems inherent in porn that they pointed out is still inherent in most porn in some forms. What has changed is that the society around us has become better for most women. I think third wave feminists do a good job of talking about this, but I think (along with the sex work legalization movement) they are not talking enough about the aspects of the culture for whom these things have not changed or for whom women's rights are actually going backwards- especially when misogyny and poverty are combined. Since this is now starting to happen on a national scale, it is troubling. It bothers me that it's perfectly fine for a pussy-grabbing misogynist to be in the White House at the same time that women's reproductive rights and health care are rolled back and maternal mortality rates are soaring and MRA guys are getting louder both online and in politics. I'm by no means saying that porn causes any of this at all, don't get me wrong. But if you don't think that there is crossover between resentful men who hate women, vote republican and watch lots and lots of porn, then you have had the fortunate experience of neither spending much time in red pill type websites or hanging out with young conservative white men. Again, I'm not saying that porn is causing this- but it is the representation of sex that most angry young men who aren't getting laid see first of all. I think the vast majority of them grow up to interact with women in real life and don't have any problem. But it's nonsense to claim there isn't an undercurrent of misogyny in our culture that is becoming more overt of late, and yes, it does disgust me to go about thinking about how almost every straight male I meet is jacking off to women getting stuffed etc. It makes me want to retreat away from all dick forever. You can dismiss this as just my own hysterical reaction until you find a generation of women saying the same thing, and then you really do need to start listening to how this affects society as a whole (porn as a PART of societal misogyny). That doesn't mean we start outlawing it of course, and it doesn't mean that porn itself has to all be so horrible, but it does mean we should start talking about why this kind of porn is so appealing and popular to men right now. And even though Cat wants to pretend that there is no way to talk about norms in the mainstream industry, that's just not true- obviously plenty of people have studied this. Besides just a quick search of any of the most popular porn sites will reveal it. It's why I go for amateur or gay porn myself, just so I don't have to wade through all this bullshit.

Mostly I think it is about resentment towards women- it's that old double edge sword of wanting to fuck women and not being able to combined with the desire to punish the women who do fuck. And some bizarre thing about comparing yourself to men who do get to fuck women and being simultaneously in awe of them while also being jealous of them. You know who was good at writing about all this? Dworkin. Even if she was a bit extreme. And if you think, no no you are taking this all too seriously and overthinking everything, I just like what I like, etc. I think that's mostly true, but porn, like a good fairy tale, plays on your deeper anxieties and frustrations- you walk around in daily life as a socialized dude who isnt a misogynist, and that's fine. I'm not shaming people for liking something that plays on a deeper level because we are all products of this society. And if there is evidence that watching this stuff helps release some of those frustrations and desires and reduces assaults- great. I"m all about that. But I don't see any harm in pulling out those deeper feelings and taking a look at them. Why is this stuff so appealing right now? Why do the conservative alt-right men love to call people cucks of all things? Why all this obsession with betas and alphas? All these conservative guys who love Trump partially because he's an alpha guy that gets to upgrade to another supermodel every few years. I don't think porn caused any of this shit, but I sure as hell believe it's popular for a lot of the same reasons.

And one more thing, though this might be more personal. I've spent a lot of time in India, and something happens there where the resentment towards women is so fierce that, as a woman, you retreat and become even more defensive and less openly sexual - not just because there is risk to be otherwise but because of a more nuanced sense of wanting to pull yourself away from something that seems hateful and degrading and offensive. This has the effect of making women more reserved, which then in turn makes the men more aggressive and frustrated and resentful. I never felt that in American culture before because I grew up (like most of you) in post-feminist post-sexual revolution USA. That doesn't mean things were perfect, but it's a huge difference than in a country where those things have not taken place. UNTIL this recent election. If the press and online forums are any indication of trends (and it may not be), then more and more American women are feeling this way after the election. It's not that there is a fear of assault, just that it feels really degrading to know that so much of the population is either openly misogynistic or else is willing to vote for people who are. And this is what I mean when I said it's gross (when I think about it) to walk around meeting perfectly fine and normal men in the world and thinking about the fact that they are all jacking off to disturbing and humiliating pornography. It makes you want to cover yourself up and retreat into yourself away from men. Now I'm taking an extreme stance here and I'm by no means saying this is the norm (nor that porn is even a cause of this rather than a symptom) but I'm sick as fuck of people (mostly men) saying that feminists are being hysterical or that porn is just fantasy completely removed from reality and that misogyny in porn is not an indication of misogyny in real life or any such thing. If you believe any of that, you are not paying attention to what is going on both in the political world among older men and in the online radicalization of younger men, of which porn does in fact play a role.
72
Sorry I didn't mean to address that JUST to undead.
73
@70: "I know my motivations just fine, thanks. And our own Dworkin has been admirably clear on her points of view"

Your motivations are bad and you should feel bad.

74
/zoidberg
75
Cat Bro, again I think you are being disingenuous. The only question is whether or not you are doing so willfully and knowingly, and frankly that question doesn't interest me very much.

And I'll take as much time and space as I like to answer or not answer any question you ask. You are not a moderator.

Feminism is simply the demand that women, who live in a patriarchal society, have human rights. This can range from simply equal rights and access as men in the same system to a demand to dismantle and overturn the current system and build something new. I'm sorry that you'd like a multi-generational discussion involving millions of people to be summed up in a cohesive and simplistic way, but complex ideas don't work that way. The fact that you dismiss it for not being that way and the fact that you asked this question so you could argue and prove and point rather than learn is exactly why I'm saying you are dismissive of feminism and therefore why conversation with you is impossible.
76
He's created an impermeable bubble where facts and nuance can not get through whenever they interfere with his narrative.
77
First of all, thank you, EmmaLiz, for your very thoughtful and thorough post @71. I appreciate the depth of development your comments show. I have not spent any time in India, so I can't speak to that part of the comment, but the rest of it resonates powerfully for me and is what I think and experience, too.

I am a college English instructor and therefore spend a lot of time around people a generation or two (or three?!) younger than me; since most of a literature class is discussion-based, and since people reveal a lot of themselves in their responses to the questions that literature asks or the issues that it raises, I get to know a lot of how many young people think and feel about sex. One of my students is a young man who is, when you get to know him, sweet and sensitive, but who also has a hard time relating socially to people. He can be very alienating, projecting a bitter and cynical persona. He is also a D&D-playing type of nerd who frequently refers to characters and scenarios that I have no familiarity with, but which signal something kind of smirk-and-roll-your-eyes-worthy to the other students. He is 26 or 27, so not so young, though he looks much younger (to old me, anyway). I can tell he is very sexually frustrated: he once tossed off a bitter aside about being a virgin, and he occasionally uses terms like alpha and beta to talk about male characters. He once said something in class that was so misogynistic that I told him, in class, to stay off the MRA websites. He came up to me after class and wanted to apologize and to clarify that he didn't know what MRA sites are (I don't for a moment believe that, but I thought I had probably been out of line in my response to him during the class discussion, so I didn't challenge him on that).

So I think about him and the porn he watches. I know that a generation or so ago, he may have had resentment to women for not showing an interest in him, but now the odds are high that he seeks out porn in which women he hopes to someday be with but fears he never will, get humiliated and are treated with sexual violence. I can't help but think that the attitudes he has towards women that I think this type of porn foster make it harder and harder for him to successfully forge a genuine connection with a woman.
78
#73 - I feel fine, much better than, say, having the seething rage that I suspect you go to bed with and wake up every morning. Now, shhh, go wait for your Dworkin-y spanking for claiming you don't mind porn. Adults are talking. You're (note the spelling) welcome.
#75 - Nothing disingenuous about it - Steinem was not a true feminist, according to Dworkin, and vice versa. There are women making porn, of their own accord, who consider themselves feminist who'd be unacceptable to either of them. So who gets to kick who out of the club? It's similar to discussions of 'patriotism,' where everyone knows they have it, and that they have to right to say who doesn't.
I didn't dismiss it, I said that everyone thinks that they're the true arbiter of it, and has their own definition of it, and as far as learning, learned that one awhile back.
What this thread was originally about, re learning, is 'how can the LW find what we might term 'ethical porn?' which was, largely answered.
This turned into one new (possibly old and renamed) poster's jeremiad about porn in general, using as reference her Spidey-Sense and the writings of a dead loon, who's, sorry, not scary at all, then or now, just largely irrelevant. The fact that porn's been studied in detail, especially since the inception of the Internet, which makes consumption vs location much easier to track, and these studies (not to mention the massively new availability of free porn re the Net, which has not been accompanied by an equally massive rise in sex crimes) directly contradict Dworkin's thesis, apparently makes no matter. So we learn that for some people, it is not the case that data talks and bullshit walks.
79
Hey CatB.. your turn to cop the undead treatment.
Interesting discussion. My concern, as a mother of sons, is that young men( boys) are learning about sexual intimacy from mainstream porn which shows anything but.
Grown and intelligent men may be able to Not take porn moves into the bedroom, to actually interact sexually with the woman they are with in the moment, rather than impose the moves seen on porn. Will boys/ young men be so discerning.
80
Don’t worry, Lava, I’ve weathered Undead and so many like her, they’re what boxing trainers call “momentum fighters,’ they don’t get their momentum, they don’t get backed up, they fold like an old deck chair. Can’t take a drink of water, they’re so used to the roars of the crowd, cheering them on, and then those roars, aren’t there.
She’s not anything special, she’s just really really angry, but the people she’s angry at, leaves us hear at SL.....but those of use who’re regular contributors, don’t lie down, or, doooon, as you might say, so they get increasingly grumpy and fractious, bet she’s worn her way through the last bite-guard, in the last couple hours.
Yes, young boys, now exposed to porn, where beforehand, they had to get it from someone’s elder brotha, or some shite, have different ideas about S-E-X than are practically possible. Fully support that idea. Hopefully all those young fellas will listen to Dan’s podcast, and learn from’t.
81
Thanks to Busy_Quilting @ 4 for a practical suggestion.

I did check “Girls Out West” and it seems to be mostly, if not exclusively, lesbian action. LW seems to be straight though some times porn viewing habits don’t always correspond.
A while ago Philo suggested a Dutch site which I approved back then, but don’t remember the name.

Pity Hunter doesn’t do daily threads… or maybe not…
82
Correction/addition
Some Girls Out West on other sites other than the official one do offer some limited girl-boy action. I didn't check for quality so no endorsements at this stage.
http://www.xvideos.com/tags/girls-out-we…

83
EL @71
And this is what I mean when I said it's gross (when I think about it) to walk around meeting perfectly fine and normal men in the world and thinking about the fact that they are all jacking off to disturbing and humiliating pornography.

But you have no way to know what the men you meet are jacking off to. Maybe they are jacking off to porn with submisslve men being pegged by dominatrices. Maybe they don't jack off to porn at all, but only to their own vanilla-sex fantasies. Who knows?

I do agree that it is troubling that porn seems to function as a "sex manual" for many (younger) people today. So maybe more porn doesn't lead to more rape but it seems to lead to bad sex.

84
@80: I mean, you could try not repeating falsehoods<\i>, but that people don't have anything approaching a working knowledge of Dworkin is irrrelevant.

Stating "alternate facts", making up quotes from whole cloth, and fat jokes makes you a shittier person, but continue bruising yourself backpatting.

Now, if you want to find a point she actually said to disagree with with that'd be different.

Nuance!

But all you're doing here is illustrating how regressive your beliefs trend with this bravado.
85
@35 - AO3 IS my porn source :D

Please wait...

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.