Actually I think feminists threw up their hands on the issue after all the damage that nutjob Andrea Dworkins did for their cause.
I think there’s porn and then there’s porn. Seems to me there’s something called gonzo porn which seems to have some weird emphasis on choking and dehumanising women, which is increasingly mainstream. Different strokes for different folks I guess.
As regulated as the porn industry claims to be in the US, there have been several incidents of HIV infections. That has to leave you wondering about less regulated markets such as Eastern Europe, and the obvious links with organised crime and people trafficking. Or worse still, the by necessity underground porn industries of the likes of India (shudder!), China and Thailand.
Overall, I think women have been somewhat freed of the “God’s police” role through pornography, although unrealistic expectations have no doubt been placed on both genders by representations in porn. I think one example is the reportedly higher incidence of anal sex, for example. This was a sub-category of the porn industry that seems now to have become de rigueur. The same could be said of oral sex many years ago. Is that emancipating or creating unfair demands? I really don’t know.
What’s always floated my boat, and seems to be fairly common and universal across genders is sex with a person that’s genuinely having a good time, whatever that may entail.
As for the sexualisation of kids. Well that’s mainstream more than porn, I would have thought, and is in large part a product of the advertising industry where the average model is about 14 years old.
One would hope so, though they would still have to bear the stigma of being considered ‘old fashioned’ and ‘stuffy’. When 7 year olds wear a thong it’s ‘empowering’, remember? When women portray themselves sexually in a way which gratifies men, it’s ‘empowering’. If the sexual revolution and subsequent feminist movement had been orchestrated entirely by male chauvinists, it couldn’t have achieved their aims better; it has made women more sexually available to men than ever before, both visually and physically, and that’s exactly what most men have wanted ever since they turned 13. Even more, it has encouraged a culture in which women who do not make themselves sexually available in these ways, are considered almost deviant.
HGC, I agree Dworkins and others of her ilk were a trainwreck, but mainstream feminism didn’t help itself in this regard either.
If that’s becoming increasingly mainstream, it’s a sad indictment of what’s considered acceptable in society, and a crushing defeat for feminism.
That’s a very astute observation (made also in the relevant literature actually), which I think many people don’t consider.
When you look at the way some kids dress and act these days, it seems there are exceptions to the exception.
I think this analysis misses on a few counts. The “aims of male chauvinists” would be to keep women at home and sexually subservient. Men naturally have a strong sex drive, chauvinist or not. I think a real chauvinist would be quite happy to go back to 1960, when “free love” was a novel beatnik concept.
If Feminist aims have made women more available to men, well there’s not much you can say. if women are having more sex on their own terms and for their own enjoyment, they’re simply usually going to need a male partner to do so.
We’ve all, at one time or another viewed porn, so let me ask y’all this. When you’re done, are you more prone to think of women as sex objects? Instead of people worthy of love and respect?
I know how I want to think of women, but every time I watch pornography, my view of women goes out of sync with how I want to view them. Women are worthy of respect and friendship as equals. Pornography corrupts that.
For those of us who believe that the bible is the real deal, pornography is just plain wrong, but I understand that this argument doesn’t make sense to many of us. So, I’ll put it another way.
You cannot have a working, functioning society if you do not have respect. No respect? No society.
Viewing pornography damages the respect that we men have for women. I know this, because I’ve seen it in myself. If you are honest with yourself, you will see it too.
Women are not objects. They are people. The very fact that we have to have a women’s forum that men are NOT allowed to view should tell us all how much respect we really have for women. I believe that pornography is a serious moral issue, but you don’t have to share my view to see how bad pornography is for our society.
If you can’t have God, at least have some respect.
I just watched a great one involving a woman with an immense pair of breasts who was squeezing and rubbing her man’s penis between them, with occasional sucking, ending with, well, you get the idea. The couple looked like they were having a lot of fun. The woman was really happy she’d provided some pleasure to her man. He started off by pleasuring her with his tongue for a solid fifteen minutes, and they both seemed pretty happy about that too.
Sex objects? Not in the slightest. They enjoyed each other. Before we broke up, my gf and I enjoyed each other in much the same way. I look forward to that again. Meanwhile, there’s some awesome homemade videos on the net that lots of people enjoy sharing. Maybe if you watch some of them, you’ll begin to understand.
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Yes, I understand why you would think that I’m a religious nutjob. The part of me that is suave, erudite and educated agrees with you. I freely admit to being nuts about something completely irrational. In fact, there are moments in which I enjoy the sheer insanity of it all. (It’s not as if humanity has a lock on sanity, anyway.)
Just do not let your perception of my ‘insanity’ obscure some fundamental truths - truths that don’t require the bible for an explanation.
The choices we make, shape the person that we are. If you want to be a certain kind of person, you need to make sure that what you put into your head conforms to that vision.
Says who? It’s not male chauvinism to view women as sexual objects, as long as you don’t want to keep them at home?
Other than they’re giving men exactly what they want, and doing it a lot more freely, for a lot less in exchange, and encouraging the view that that’s what women are for, such that women who don’t want to be viewed that way are being viewed that way. It’s like second hand smoke.
This doesn’t necessitate publicizing their sexual availability to complete strangers with whom they’re not even in communication, and taking steps to present themselves as sexual objects.
It doesn’t matter how many studies you cite which say this, someone will always come along claiming to be psychologically special such that this just doesn’t apply to them. On the internet, unsubtantiated personal opinion and unsourced anecdoctal claims are always superior to the relevant peer reviewed scholarly literature. It’s how Ken Ham gets away with claiming evolution is wrong.
Says who? It’s not male chauvinism to view women as sexual objects, as long as you don’t want to keep them at home?[/quote]
In your quote that I referred to, you said “it has made women more sexually available to men than ever before” but never used the term “sexual object.” I’m thinking sexual object more or less means “having no value except for sexual purposes,” and thinking of a woman in that way sounds like a form of chauvinism. I don’t think though that a man enjoying the fact that women are more available for sexual purposes these days necessarily makes him a chauvinist, no.
Other than they’re giving men exactly what they want, and doing it a lot more freely, for a lot less in exchange, and encouraging the view that that’s what women are for, such that women who don’t want to be viewed that way are being viewed that way. It’s like second hand smoke.[/quote]
No it’s not. Second-hand smoke directly affects one’s health. Here you have only “being viewed” in a certain way, which is a pretty nebulous concept, unproven as far as I know. In this case, personal freedom should take precedence. My acts wouldn’t be hurting you in any way. You can carry yourself and live your life as you wish.
This doesn’t necessitate publicizing their sexual availability to complete strangers with whom they’re not even in communication, and taking steps to present themselves as sexual objects.[/quote]
Again, it’s a personal freedom question. If someone wants to publicize their sexual availability so as to find a partner more easily, that’s their business. When you say “present themselves as sexual objects” though, I wonder if my definition of the term above squares with yours, and what exactly you mean by it.
‘If the sexual revolution and subsequent feminist movement had been orchestrated entirely by male chauvinists, it couldn’t have achieved their aims better; it has made women more sexually available to men than ever before, both visually and physically, and that’s exactly what most men have wanted ever since they turned 13’
Yes, that was the context of my statement.
Perhaps, though I would find the distinction difficult to identify.
Sexualization of women directly affects the psychological health of women, even if they aren’t the ones consenting to such sexualization.
It isn’t a ‘pretty nebulous concept’. Try looking at the article from the American Psychological Association to which I linked earlier; oh wait, you ‘don’t do links’. Ok forget it, I’ll take your opinion over their research.
When you can prove that, let me know.
I’m afraid all I can do is point you towards the relevant literature for the definition of these terms and the effect on the broader community of the actions they describe. But it is no surprise to hear males denying the negative effects of women giving them what they want.
It’s not a matter of me getting snippy or being offended by your opinion. Your opinion doesn’t affect me one way or another, and you’re welcome to it from my point of view. It’s simply a matter of my (by now well documented on this forum), objection to people making authoritative pronouncements on subjects, when their pronouncements not only lack any evidential support but are flatly contradicted by the relevant scholarly literature.
It’s the same reason why Richard Dawkins gets so irritated when people like Ken Ham try to ‘explain’ evolution, and why Mick gets so irritated when TainanCowboy tries to ‘explain’ Anthropogenic Global Warming. These people literally do not know what they are talking about when it comes to the subject they are trying to ‘explain’ (or more accurately, ‘explain away’), and they are completely heedless not only of their ignorance but also of the fact that there’s a wealth of peer reviewed literature which contradicts virtually everything they say. I try to avoid being one of those people.
not at all… and i cant even begin to understand why you do… but sometimes when i see the way some women act and dress in the city i think of them more like sex objects and not worthy of respect but thats mostly due to the way they act and dress and that in turn is probably a reflection of the fact that they have no respect for themselves… however, that has no impact whatsoever on how much love and respect my gf gets from me.
Funnily enough I was admiring the humour of your post while also thinking much the same after clicking through to the yank psychologists. I would not for a second credit psychology with any ability to determine the impact of something halfway as contentious as pornography. If economics is the dismal science, then I’m not sure how vulgar you have to get to describe psychology. Perhaps just drop the term ‘science’ for a start.
Don’t get me wrong, Fort, I do think you make good points, but I wouldn’t rely on psychologists of any ilk to back my case here. That’s not to say you can’t stumble across a good one that can talk you through some ideas in a beneficial way. Mind you a mate can do that, and usually better.
As a caveat, I will say I was a psychiatric nurse for several years, and have a professional hatred of these dog and monkey torturers. In fairness, they were usually good shags.
See, I take a different approach to you lot. What if I’m glad it’s corrupted me? Back in my single days, I wouldn’t have minded being seen as a sex object a little more frequently.