I think you may be wielding a double edge sword there. Not all things are as black and white as the theory of gravity, many have grey areas or merits on both sides. I certainly hear what you are saying .
One doesn’t need look to far to see how moral codes enforced on a population lead to honor killings, or even just repressed feelings and emotions to meet societies norms out of fear their actions would ostracize them from everyone they know.
My view is people as long as its consensual, of an adult age, and everyone knows whats going on, fine. None of my business. I understand there are a million and 1 things that wont float my boat will rock another’s world, go for it. Want to watch something saucy, thats their choice, who would I be to say you can’t make choices of freewill for yourself, watching people who made choices of freewill all doing something they enjoy.
As a wealth of [strike]feminist[/strike] literature will tell you, many of the alleged ‘choices’ apparently available to [strike]women[/strike]people are in fact Hobson’s choices in which the independence of their decision making process is challenged significantly by socio-cultural factors. The APA literature on this is extensive, especially with regard to the formation of [strike]female[/strike] self-esteem and self-image during the vulnerable teen years. [strike]Girls[/strike]teenagers grow up making ‘choices’ based on the images to which they believe they must conform.
fixed that for you
We all go through life pretty much doing what we’re told to do by others - consciously or unconsciously.
[quote=“finley”]
We all go through life pretty much doing what we’re told to do by others - consciously or unconsciously.[/quote]
Indeed we do finley, and how exactly does a society define what is and is not acceptable. Porn is a very wide category, if someone were to argue the merits of marijuana use, medicinal or otherwise and suggest it should be legal. Would it make sense to present a study from psychiatrists about “drugs” which covered everything from crack cocaine, heroine, LSD and Ecstasy?
We have movie after movie, with people being blown up, shot, hacked to pieces, blood gore zombies. Yet Sharon Stone uncrosses her legs for a brief instant revealing a fuzzy shot of a body part half the population have and there is a furor. Please. The porn industry exists and is so popular in part precisely because of a puritanical line of morality imposed on society. IMO.
I’ll tell you what is bizarre in terms of porn: Japan. I mean the whole place and the culture and so on. How did that place go from being a really traditional society three generations ago to having an abundance of tentacle rape porn and all sorts of really way out stuff today? I’d be really curious to know how they actually got to where they are today. Also, just the sheer volume of porn that comes out of that place makes me think that the percentage of women in that country under the age of 35 who have done porn must be far greater than a fraction of a percent, and perhaps even over 10%. A lot of the mainstream “amateur” porn in the U.S. and Europe is anything but amateur and in fact involves a fairly small pool of actors, but there’s an absolute shitload of porn featuring amateurs being released from the mainstream Japanese market. I don’t think I could walk across a Japanese university campus without thinking that a significant percentage of the female students were familiar with ropes and/or the term bukkake.
I tried to get that as my username here. I don’t see what the big deal is about it. It’s just a particular style of noodles. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udon
Claiming otherwise is like saying “facial” means “guy spewing splooge all over a slut’s face after a blowjob” rather than “common home or beauty salon exfoliation treatment”.
Yeah, I think I said that … ugh. You have to feel sorry for Japanese women - firstly for having boyfriends who think stuff like that is normal behaviour, and secondly for having boyfriends hung like Japanese pornstars
Yeah, I think I said that … ugh. You have to feel sorry for Japanese women - firstly for having boyfriends who think stuff like that is normal behaviour, and secondly for having boyfriends hung like Japanese pornstars [/quote]
Could be worse, they could be hung like a cocker spaniel.
Yeah, I think I said that … ugh. You have to feel sorry for Japanese women - firstly for having boyfriends who think stuff like that is normal behaviour, and secondly for having boyfriends hung like Japanese pornstars [/quote]
:roflmao: I’ll tell you what’s even worse. Maria Ozawa (who is half Japanese and half Canadian) supposedly prefers Japanese lovers. What does that say about Canadian men? :eh:
I'll tell you what is bizarre in terms of porn: Japan. I mean the whole place and the culture and so on. How did that place go from being a really traditional society three generations ago to having an abundance of tentacle rape porn and all sorts of really way out stuff today?
When I see Japanese porn, I just want to immediately call the police.
But I like her.
Anyway, interesting to see that the person who started this thread is in to [color=#4000BF]1 cup, 2 women[/color]
Speaking of fetishes, well, I have one. I’m not going to tell you what it is, but it is a niche fetish and as such I have become a contributor (or, should I say, I was a contributor in the past) to this particular genre. This also led to other things - I was a semi-professional photographer - and I shot quite a bit of amateur porn.
Contrary to what some people will lead you to believe, the women involved were not lead in front of my lenses in shackles and then put back into a cage after the shoot, but in fact, were perhaps the largest creative part in the process. Behind the scenes, women not involved in the shoot were present, usually giving directional advice. 2 websites I shot for were operated and owned by women and all of the actors were swingers, which is a personal lifestyle choice - the fact that they decided to “enhance” their lifestyle choice by performing in front of a camera and in the meantime making a bit of money on the side does not make them in any way sex objects, except possibly in the minds of some select viewers. But so what? They don’t care. To willingly go out and engage in dogging is not conforming to some social expectation. You do it because you like to engage in this kind of thing.
Of course, what i have said above does not dismiss the fact that there are organisations and gangs out there that exploit women against their will, and this of course is not acceptable in anyone’s book.
I’m just a normal guy. I have a high responsibility job and if you knew me you probably wouldn’t associate me with the above. But for the most part, aside from professional porn stars, in my personal experience, actors in most amateur and semi-professional porn are normal people with day jobs, a husband or wife and possibly children who just have a bit of a side interest.
I’m not too interested in slippery slope arguments. When there’s evidence that reducing the sexualization of children actually harms them, I’ll take notice; meanwhile I don’t believe 8 year olds will be damaged by not wearing a thong, and I don’t believe teens will suffer psychologically by being kept away from donkey porn (if you have evidence to suggest otherwise, let me know). This doesn’t have anything to do with enforcing moral codes or removing people’s right to free choice, it has to do with ubiquitous unsolicited exposure of people to images regardless of their choices and preferences, and the harm that results.
Please do quote me some of that literature. Tthe APA doesn’t have a list of issues harm to which all people are exposed, which cause the same harm as the sexualization of girls and women.
This is not about simply doing what we’re told to do; it’s about people being harmed by what they’re told to do, and people harming others as a result of doing what they’re told to do.
The APA uses the harm principle; if it’s demonstrably harmful to members of society, especially those who are most vulnerable, then it’s something which needs to be regulated.
And the APA, and many other advocacy groups, have spoken out repeatedly on this. There’s no double standard here.
Actually the paper quoted previously by someone else cited numerous studies demonstrating that the porn industry exists and flourishes in more liberal societies, and a range of studies have demonstrated that the more liberal a society is, and the longer the porn industry is legitimized, the more extreme and violent the porn becomes, and the greater its exposure.
Apparently it already had a lengthy tradition of explicit porn, including a range of animals (some of them tentacled and aquatic).
Please do quote me some of that literature. Tthe APA doesn’t have a list of issues harm to which all people are exposed, which cause the same harm as the sexualization of girls and women.[/quote]
Well, the only one that immediately springs to mind would be Milgram (1963). I’m afraid I spent a lot more time sleeping in my psychology lectures than you did I wasn’t arguing about whether or not pornography (or the making of it) harms women; I was simply debating your assertion that it is specifically a feminist issue, and was trying to point out that we are all ‘harmed’ by subtle manipulation of our behaviour in ways that we are (often) not aware of, don’t complain about, and can’t control, usually by authority figures, and usually deliberately. Think about public attitudes in PRC, where ‘harmful’ material such as porn is tightly controlled.
To get back on-topic, don’t you think perhaps that the male actors and directors are damaged in some way by their involvement in porn? Yeah, men have a good laugh about what a great career that must be, but it would be way down on the bottom of my list. So why’s that? Secondly, I think talking about ‘harm’ is disingenuous. Life is full of harms, small and large. In our coddled, ass-wiping society, we have people complaining about exposure to pornography as a ‘harm’; and then there’s the DRC or South Africa, where most women can expect to be raped or gang-raped at least once in their lives. Using the word ‘harm’ for both of those diminishes the severity of the latter.
We actually have a lot of control over our so-called harms. I was reading in The Economist the other day about cyber-stalking and the damage that a stalker can wreak on a victim using email, txt, facebook, and instant messaging. At first I thought ‘how awful’, and then I thought ‘WTF?’. Switch the fucking thing off, people. Drop off the grid for a bit. Switch off that mobile surgically attached to your hand, and don’t sit in front of the shit pipe every evening. Don’t chat on MSN. Don’t read your email. Nobody’s forcing you to write your bio on tossbook. This kind of harm is ultimately by acquiescence of the victim, and I suggest porn (acting in it, or exposure to it) is in much the same category. Don’t want your kids seeing porn sites? How about throwing the PC off the roof? Problem solved.
Wow … TMI! Now every time we see your posts we’re going to wonder what ‘speciality’ Super Hans is into
Seriously though … I think this illustrates why there is no binary choice here: harmful or not harmful? There are all sorts of shades of grey (and other colours). You probably wouldn’t want your kid watching Super Hans’ productions, but I think quite a few parents have had some ‘home movies’ or polaroids stashed at the back of the wardrobe, and I’m sure quite a few kids have found them and merely thought ‘eeewwww’. Scarred for life? I doubt it.
That’s a situation specific harm, not a ubiquitous harm.
Nor have I actually.
I haven’t said it is specifically a feminist issue. I simply noted feminist commentary and contribution to the issue (which I consider contradictory). I need to know what ‘harmed’ means in your statement here; if you don’t mean ‘harmed’ in a manner equivalent to the harm described by the APA when identifying the harm caused by sexualization, then I don’t see what there is to argue about.
Yes it’s entirely possible.
There are degrees of harm, but if you look at the kind of harm identified by the APA (and note again their comments related to sexualization, not exposure to porn), I don’t believe it diminishes the severity of other kinds of harm.
Indeed we do. The APA objects rightly, however, that the girls and women harmed by sexualization have virtually no control over the source of their harm. The sources of their harm are ubiquitous and unsolicited, and even if they were able to remove themselves from all exposure to these sources, they are still harmed by the exposure of others to these sources. This is not equivalent to dropping out of Facebook (I agree with that paragraph of yours).
