well I’m confused about your examples as support of your premise. Playboy is viewed as a publication that sells sex with the implication that it subjugates women. But on the other end of the spectrum is Islamic culture that subjugates women by requiring they hide behind excessive clothing (compared to men).
Clearly the calendar differs from a playboy in it’s intent. It’s produced by women as a protest against sexual dominance versus sexual exploitation.
Thank you for that example of “Calendar Girls” (I refer to the movie about the middle-aged British women who posed nude for cancer research). I love the way these “wool ladies” in one fell swoop challenged the young-and-slim ethos, raised money for breast cancer research, for Ireland etc. They are a wonderful example and I applaud them.
But they are not what I was referring to in my original statement when I said, “What if a group of attractive American women decided to get together and produce a nudie calendar JUST TO MAKE MONEY? And the operation is 100% female.”
When I made this comment, I was challenging the doctrinaire concepts of certain anti-porn feminists who base their opposition on a stereotypical image of greedy sexist men ordering poor helpless women to take their clothes off so they can exploit them and turn them into sex objects for the pleasure of other men, yadda yadda.
It is my contention that this stereotype is as idiotic, simplistic and unrealistic as the old-style Communist propaganda showing the bloated capitalist in a silk top hat holding a whip over skinny workers in rags.
The other argument I find hard to swallow is that porn is bad because it “objectifies” women even if they are well-payed for their acting. As I write this I have before me a flyer for Wal-Mart with plenty of attractive male and female models chosen purely for their outward appearance, modeling clothes. Are they being “objectified”? My answer is “yes” and “so what?”. I want to see what the clothes look like and attractive people wearing them makes it more interesting. I have no doubt that those models have feelings, talents and opinions. If so, they can join my book club or my therapy group and tell me what they are. In the Wal-Mart flyer, they are just meat manequins and that is all they are supposed to be in that particular context.
When I work as a simultaneous interpreter, I am just a hooked-up machine sitting at a microphone in a dark booth, that hears stuff in one language and spits it out in another. I am happy to do it, because I am well paid. I frankly do not give a rat’s ass if the people who hear me realize that I am a person with feelings and ideas.
So the question I was asking was really this. Suppose a dozen of the most conventionally attractive (big breasts, etc.) strippers and lap dancers in New York got together, hired a female photographer, dealt with a female publishing firm, and turned out a nudie calendar NOT for cancer research or any other cause, but purely to make some profits for themselves? What would an anti-porn feminist say about that?
I am assuming that Magiver is speaking to me in his comment, above. This is such a vast subject, and is sufficiently distinct from the debate over feminism and porn, that I have chosen to start another thread.
I have to classify this argument as rather silly. In our society there’s a significant problem with women and girls suffering because the media relentlessy drives home a message that women are valuable only for their bodies and willingness to have sex, while paying not attention to their intellect, spirituality, or any other aspect of their selves. Mailmen do not suffer in any such way. That’s why many feminists oppose pornography.
How could I falsify the claim that “the media relentlessly drives home a message that women are valuable only for their bodies and willingness to have sex, while paying no attention to their intellect, spirituality or any other aspect of their selves”?
The charge of objectification is derived from Kantian (i.e.:deontological) morality. There is no such thing as deontologically acceptable objectification. If one person objectifies another, it is always immoral according to the moral point of view from which the concept of objectification comes from. I think FinnAgain is using a reductio ad absurdum by showing that if we go by the very loose definition of “objectification” commonly used by feminists, then we objectify people nearly everyday in ways that we do not consider immoral. Yet if it is truly objectification, it is always immoral, because objectification is deontologically wrong.
You say that feminists oppose pornography because it results in suffering. How do you mix Kantian opposition to objectification with utilitarian avoidance of suffering into the very same argument?
I am all for pornography. I enjoy sex, and I don’t see anything wrong with celebrating it or making money off it.
But I do see how “objectification” can happen. I think the problem comes from people not making the distinction between the fantasy and the reality.
If you’ve ever been anywhere where sex tourism happens, you can see it pretty vividly illustrated. Men (and I’m using men for this example, but I’m sure it works the other way as well) who are used to being able to walk into a bar full of young available women can sometimes get it into their heads that every woman there is available for their sexual pleasure, and that any woman they are having sex is wiling to do whatever sexual things they want.
I had a friend in the Philippines who would sometimes do “girlfriend experience” type outings with tourists. Basically, if you are going off to some nice island somewhere, she’ll come along with you, provide you with some good company, get romantic with you at night, and get a nice vacation and maybe a tip out of it. It’s not her first choice of line of work, but it helps support her kids, it can sometimes be kind of fun, and she still half-hopes she’ll eventually get swept away by Mr. Right.
Imagine her shock one night when she woke up with a guy’s dick being shoved in her mouth. She said she would rather sleep than give him a blowjob, and he got abusive with her, telling her that it wasn’t her choice, she was a whore, that’s not the service he got from his Chinese girlfriend who was always willing to give blow jobs on command, etc. She said that he was welcome to go back to his Chinese girlfriend, but she was planning to get a good night’s sleep.
What happened there is that she got objectified. She went from being a full-bodied human being who happened to trade sex for favors into being basically a human fleshlight, interchangeable with any other human fleshlight and not entitled to any desires of her own.
Anyway, read some of the sex tourist message boards one day. The level of misogyny is stunning. While it’s a self-selecting crowd that probably started out pretty misogynist, I think sometime sex commerce can contribute to that.
Are you white knighting, or just describing (in detail) the experiences of some other guy, who is really involved with sex tourism ? A guy who behaves in a way that you do not approve of, but basically know all about-as if you were in the same room.:dubious:
Sort of the obverse of Hemingway’s “That which is good is what feels good afterwards.” Hence, for those whoe feel disgust about viewing porn, porn is bad because it feels bad after.
You know I’m female, right?
Instead of giving in to the knee jerk impulse to falsify that claim, consider it with an open mind first.
Heres a thought experiment. Who has the easiest chance getting hired in lead roles in Hollywood? Men or women? Which sex who is usually cast as the one-dimensional love interest or parent figure, and which sex is cast as heros, villains, tortured artists, comedic best friends, assassins, spies, and everything else? Which sex is forced more often to wear bikinis and other scanty clothing to be relevant on screen? Which sex is usually put out to pasture once they hit the ripe age of 41 and which sex is still getting lead parts in their 60s and 70s?
Now turn on the TV and see the same thing. Commercials and TV shows use the same tropes as movies, although less blatantly. Art imitates culture; the sexism that exists against women is so obvious that it actually becomes easy to ignore it due to desensitization and complacency.
Here is cite just in case you want to falsify any of my claims. Study: On-Screen Gender Inequality Persists in Hollywood
No, they can’t, and some of their choices are limited by their gender too. That’s what feminism means by free choices - choices not limited by gender, not ‘tomorrow I’m going to wake up and be President.’ And modern feminism (as well as lot of older feminism) tends to support the rights of men to not be restricted by their gender too.
It has. Really. I’m sure you could find some feminists who think all porn is bad, but they’d mostly be over 60. It’s not a mainstream idea in any of the feminist groups I know of.
The “porn is an instrument of male oppression” idea is still around though, yes, in that it can be such an instrument sometimes - not that all porn is. You know, just like a hammer can be used to kill people but that’s not its main purpose.
Some varieties of porn are definitely about male oppression of women (and that’s kinda their whole schtick; I don’t necessarily mean BDSM porn but the really extreme stuff) and the prevalence of female porn in non-sexual situations probably isn’t the greatest thing when it comes to women being viewed as equals. There is room for disagreement on the latter point, but none of the really rather large number of feminists I know would argue on the basis that all porn is bad.
Hell, I know several lesbian feminists who actually work professionally in promoting women’s rights; if even they, who you’d expect to be more ‘extreme,’ aren’t saying all porn is bad - and I know this because it has come up for discussion - then it’s highly unlikely to be a common view.
And the Iranian women are rebelling against the idea that women’s bodies are somehow wrong or will always tempt men to go against God. That is feminist. And it totally coherent with the mainstream modern feminist opinion that women’s bodies are beautiful and enjoying looking at them is not a bad thing in and of itself.
I was channeling Karl Popper. I remember reading from him that when dealing with someone who has confirmation bias, it’s useful to first determine what it would take to falsify that person’s hypothesis, since otherwise, it’s useless to talk with that person. When I hear about what the media is supposed to say about women or men I usually think it’s a case of confirmation bias.
As for what you mention in your second paragraph, it’s all true. But it still doesn’t amount to the message that women are valuable only for their bodies and willingness to have sex while paying no attention to their intellect, spirituality of any other aspect of their selves. Making that claim is hyperbolic at best.
Some of my favorite shows are The Wire, Oz and My Little Pony. Can you explain how female characters are portrayed as being valuable only for their bodies and willingness to have sex while paying no attention to their intellect, spirituality or any other aspect of their selves in those shows?
Valteron, I’m not sure if there’d be any realistic statistics for what you’re seeking.
Really? I assume you mean the US as well as Ireland? That’s hugely different to my experience in the UK. It is a divisive issue, but it tends to be a couple of vociferous anti-porn people vs. lots of other who are pro-porn and a large majority who have a middling view, and the discussion tends to change to being about now exploitative different types of porn are, rather than all porn, because that’s where the area of disagreement lies.
Being anti-porn altogether is something that I’ve seen in literally one single feminist out of the 100+ I’ve talked about it with, and she was a slightly odd person in many ways (and is now c.50 years old). The majority of the women in those discussions were involved in feminist activism in some obvious way too, like organising women’s day events or Ladyfests or working for equality charities.
I think if you changed ‘only’ to ‘primarily’ then it’d be hard to really argue against. There just are not that many female characters in mainstream shows even when the character could be female - and even when the character really should be female to be realistic (so many single Dads as guest-of-the-week!)
I’ve never seen the shows you mention, though I keep meaning to get around to The Wire. But my impression is that The Wire and Oz don’t have many female characters at all (the Wire has some, but not many compared to male characters), and is Oz’s case, being set in a male prison, the few depictions of women aren’t exactly going to all be lovely and equal. You’re not holding Oz up as a standard-bearer for women being shown as equals, are you?
See? You’ve never seen Oz yet you presume that it doesn’t show women as equals. And you if watched it, just like you watch everything, you would interpret each and every depiction of women in the least generous way possible and disproportionately remember the negative portrayals while minimizing the positive ones. That is confirmation bias.
It is true that, being crime shows, they have more male characters than female characters since violent criminals are overwhelming male and most people working as prison guards or cops are male. The main female characters they have are in no way primarily valued for their bodies and willingness to have sex while paying next to no attention to their intellect, spirituality or any other aspect of their selves.
So you’re saying you’re not a sex tourist/rapist? Seriously, florez, that implication was more than a little rude.
OK, I apologize.
If all the women in Oz are shown as lovely and equal then that would be weird, because I’ve heard that it’s a rather good and hard-hitting show set set in a men’s prison where the men are pretty brutalised by their situation. It’s not a show where I’d expect sunshine and rainbows and everything is equal la-di-da.
I would have expected, with the exception of a doctor or pyschiatrist (who would get regularly cat-called and the like), that the female characters are there as partners and sometimes mothers of the men and most of their characterisation is about their relationship with the men. Am I wrong? Are there lots of women who are… what, accidental inmates too?
I’d also expect a lot of off-hand defamation of women from the characters because that would be realistic in a men’s prison.
Basically, it’s just not a good example. Also, it’s not helpful to name three shows, two of which are very niche, and expect someone to know everything about them in order to defend their general point.
You are also making very big assumptions about the way I watch TV.
WRT to British feminism I can only speak of what I see in the media and online, but there is certainly no shortage of anti-porn feminism: Object, UK Feminista and the Julie Bindel types. It’s quite possible they’re a minority, but then again, I do hear from frustrated feminists on the other side who say they feel alienated from mainstream British feminism because of the obsession with these issues. Anyway, the main point I was making is that it’s totally premature to declare this debate over within modern feminism.
In the US the feminists had what were called The Sex Wars (total Rule of Cool title here) over issues of what’s OK to see in media. The outcome was that most feminists agreed there were more important issues for feminists to be concerned about than porn. Like real life rape, abuse, etc. And in the mainstream generally the feminist movement lost traction generally, because the feminist concern over porn just reinforced the image of feminists as a bunch of harridans who quite simply disliked men and anything that made men happy.
(I’m not saying that was an ACCURATE image mind you … there are plenty of sex-positive feminists out there, but they are not so well represented in mainstream culture.)