(no subject)
Oct. 14th, 2004 01:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pantryslutThere's a really interesting discussion about porn and feminism and stuff roiling around in several people's livejournals, including ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
final_girl's.
Here's a thought or two that wasn't quite fitting into any coherent comment:
On my bad days (and some of my good ones), I consider anti-porn feminism classist.
Most anti-porn feminists -- that I run into, at least -- are middle-class and white. Not all of them. I don't want to erase those who don’t fall neatly into my little snarky paradigm. But still. Think about the faces of anti-porn feminism, and see if you don’t see a trend.
One of the things that people like me keep bringing up whenever porn is attacked it this – why isporn such a more evil, exploitative, horrible to women industry than, say, sweatshops? And I’m not talking about the ones in Indonesia.
But because middle-class women usually don't have to directly face some of the labor conditions that we keep mentioning -- but they do have to face the issues about sex and desire that get tangled up in porn -- porn gets the brunt of these women's ire. Porn becomes a bigger issue than equal pay for equal work.
Because, too, porn is vulnerable in a way that, say, lack of day care isn't. Porn as we know and discuss it has only been legal in *my* lifetime, remember. It emerged at about the same time second-wave feminism did – and I think sometimes that unfortunate historical coincidence fuels this debate as much as any serious theoretical underpinnings about sex, desire, and depictions thereof do.
Also, while I’m here, criticism of porn consumerism is problematic in the exact same way that leftist holier-than-though criticism of all consumerism is.
I also see a "this is what it means to me, therefore this is what it means to him*, too" in regards to the interpretation of porn. And porn, like all texts, has multiple readings, so I find this short-sighted and pernicious.
Finally, I was raised a good free speech activist, and I don’t think you have to like it in order to defend its right to exist.
*gendered language choice quite intentional.
final_girl's.Here's a thought or two that wasn't quite fitting into any coherent comment:
On my bad days (and some of my good ones), I consider anti-porn feminism classist.
Most anti-porn feminists -- that I run into, at least -- are middle-class and white. Not all of them. I don't want to erase those who don’t fall neatly into my little snarky paradigm. But still. Think about the faces of anti-porn feminism, and see if you don’t see a trend.
One of the things that people like me keep bringing up whenever porn is attacked it this – why isporn such a more evil, exploitative, horrible to women industry than, say, sweatshops? And I’m not talking about the ones in Indonesia.
But because middle-class women usually don't have to directly face some of the labor conditions that we keep mentioning -- but they do have to face the issues about sex and desire that get tangled up in porn -- porn gets the brunt of these women's ire. Porn becomes a bigger issue than equal pay for equal work.
Because, too, porn is vulnerable in a way that, say, lack of day care isn't. Porn as we know and discuss it has only been legal in *my* lifetime, remember. It emerged at about the same time second-wave feminism did – and I think sometimes that unfortunate historical coincidence fuels this debate as much as any serious theoretical underpinnings about sex, desire, and depictions thereof do.
Also, while I’m here, criticism of porn consumerism is problematic in the exact same way that leftist holier-than-though criticism of all consumerism is.
I also see a "this is what it means to me, therefore this is what it means to him*, too" in regards to the interpretation of porn. And porn, like all texts, has multiple readings, so I find this short-sighted and pernicious.
Finally, I was raised a good free speech activist, and I don’t think you have to like it in order to defend its right to exist.
*gendered language choice quite intentional.
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no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 01:56 pm (UTC)xoxoxo
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Date: 2004-10-14 02:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 02:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 02:59 pm (UTC)Actually, although I own that book, there's the possibility, believe it or not, that I have never read it.
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Date: 2004-10-14 03:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 01:56 pm (UTC)this is interesting, because most of the pro-sex, pro-porn people i know are middle-class and white -- and college-educated.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 02:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 02:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 02:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 02:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 02:32 pm (UTC)Really, Really pro-abortion.
Now, as far as porn goes... eh, everyone should see goatse... once. ;p
no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 03:11 pm (UTC)but was told he was out of proportion
"You've got the wrong bits,
and you're giving us fits
with your perverse, peculiar contortion."
If a man had the wish to abort,
no problem with the Supreme Court --
"To be free of your plight
is quite simply your right;
Stopping you would be quite a tort."
no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 03:15 pm (UTC)Thanks for making my day.
I really can die happy now.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 01:59 pm (UTC)(also, i think the hatred of porn consumption is also class based as low culture -- viz Kristeva).
no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 02:02 pm (UTC)Porn and Roleplaying Games
Date: 2004-10-14 03:06 pm (UTC)I think, frankly, there's a universalized creep out there; and *something* is going to trigger them. They'll turn into a rapist. Or a tunnel-creeper. Or Ralph Reed. Or someone who does their entire house in green and white and never misses a Michigan State sporting event. Or something, depending on which worldview gets its hooks sunk into them.
These people are going to go off. If the price of channeling them into relatively harmless pursuits (like making the perfect Klingon costume) is eliminating everything edgy that might draw them to misbehave, well, it sure as hell isn't worth it.
also --
Date: 2004-10-14 02:18 pm (UTC)and this is why i'm on the fence -- because sexual harassment's pervasive in other jobs, from waiting tables to office work; because shitty hours and shitty pay abound for women, especially those without many skills or much education; because i believe there's something wrong with telling a woman that making $5.75 an hour with no benefits at walmart is somehow more dignified than stripping.
my mother performed sex work in the 70s while going to school and supporting me. a womanist, she distrusts feminism because it ignores people like her -- black, lesbian, working-class, and a single mother. as in touch with her sexuality as she is, as strong as she is, she never wanted to me to do that kind of work because she felt that she paid psychically for it.
no subject
Date: 2004-10-14 06:24 pm (UTC)I too am baffled by this notion of porn compelling men toward sexual crime. As if to say that men are so weak and unable to control themselves that watching sexual acts pushes them over the edge.
Anti-porn feminism is hypocrisy of the worst kind. You have those feminists stating that women deserve this that and the other, but then want to take away rights from others. Its so totalitarian. Its much like, I don't know, a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage--taking civil liberties away through legislation. Remarkable how much the president and his cronies and anti-porn feminists have in common.