I used to like The F Word pre Jess McCabe (poss. trigger)

[Laura]

Maggie, why exactly does some people trying to make feminist sexual material hold back the fight against violence against women?

This isn't an either/or situation. I know what the key aims are in tackling pornography. All I'm saying is that alongside these, if some people try and make some sexual imagery which provides an alternative to the misogynistic stuff out there, for people who want sexual imagery but reject misogyny, and so that eventually the first thing people find when they look for sexual imagery isnt misogynistic, then I think it is fine for them to go ahead and do so.

According to you that means I don't care about violence against women. I'd appreciate it if you would stop patronising me. I am not defending male sexual violence against women. BDSM isn't inherently male sexual violence against women, no matter how many times you say it is, nor is sexually explicit material. It can be different, and if people want to try and make it different I say go ahead.

[Laura]

I'm sorry I've made you lost, sick and tired, Maggie. It was not my intention. I won't post any more.

[sam]

One at a time. I'm firm in my belief that Laura is a radical feminist despite this difference in opinion on the value of trying to produce sex for consumer consumption that isn't predicated on objectified femininity.

I don't know if you also read the blog at The F Word, but I have repeatedly blogged against prostitution and sex trafficking there.

Yes, I have seen that and think it's good work you're doing.

The F Word does not have an editorial line

I disagree, and though rich's examples are far-fetched the thought behind them isn't, because I've never seen a pro-life, purity ball defending, or anti-third trimester abortion article there. Recently in addition to the Span article and this latest one, there was the pro-Suicide Girls article and the blog comment deriding addressing men's demands for prostitutes that led me to this back and forth with Abby viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2204 There were not this many pro-pimp, pro-pornographer articles at The F Word in 2006.

People don't want sexual images because it makes sex and themselves feel more real or important or free. Some people just like to be turned on. Simple as that. What, at the most basic of levels, is actually wrong about watching something to become sexually aroused? Right now, of course, because of the nature of porn, it means eroticising abuse and misogyny. But watching something that doesn't degrade or abuse anyone? Where is the problem?

Where's the excitement is the question you should be asking. People don't watch others eating food to work up an appetite for food, they eat when they are hungry and stop when they're not. In contrast, misogyny is the point of porn, I can see that was true for me back in my porn using days even if it wasn't the sole or even most prominent emotion (that would be man-pleasing Uncle Tommi egotism). Pornography is the original reality show humilitainment on which the current crop are modeled after in all their guilty, crowd-pleasing, consumer excess.

As delphyne said, "Egalitarian porn is an oxymoron, it's the inequality and exploitation in porn that make it so sexy for its mainly male consumers."

Negative excess is what porn really means in people's connotative lexicons, not "'depictions of sexual activity designed to sexually arouse" though that is the lie pornographers spent billions of dollars putting into people's heads, people who would otherwise feel in their guts the denigration of women in pornography if they didn't believe their heads over their consciences. When people say they went to a store and it was "clothes porn" or subscribe to a magazine as "appliance porn" they are tapping into the common cultural consensus that porn means "indulgent to the point of negative excess". They don't need to know the origins of the word to know it's about gratuitous, guilt-invoking consumption. I heard David Duchovny on Howard Stern when Stern asked him if he liked porn start his answer by saying, as if to render benign what we all instinctively know isn't, "Pictures of people having sex? Sure, I like that."

I agree with Kate on the sex thing-making of women being the problem more than the particulars of how that commodification is executed.

But maybe if a man watches erotica/porn of a woman being whipped - and clearly this, like any egalitarian porn/erotica, would have to be made in an ethical, consenting way - and the woman's pleasure is shown to be of utmost importance, she is treated like and respected as a human being, the whipper is portrayed and the film shot in such a way as to avoid any kind of desire for degradation, it wouldnt have the same result in the viewer.

I don't understand this. Between people who love and trust each other I can maybe understand a little of how this sort of sex play is not inherently abusive to them, but once you commit that to film and have non-participants viewing it I feel it is impossible for such scenes not to promote violence against women as something women really want.

That's something I don't like about feminist blog poster Thomas, who is kinda anti-porn and very pro-Swedish model but insists his right to photos and film documenting sadism and masochism-themed sexuality stops him from adopting a solid anti-pornography politics. No one is saying he can't practice BDSM with his partners because no radfems I know are proposing laws against private sexual behavior, but pornography is not private sexual behavior, it is a commercial multi-billion dollar industry trading in anti-woman propaganda that directly causes enormous grief to the women and girls exploited in its making and millions more who interact with pornosexual men. Despite everything he knows about rampant global sexual slavery and the negative effects of pornography production and consumption, Thomas believes it is more important that he not just be able to engage in BDSM but to make and own photographic trophies of it that capture the moment for his later and eternal gratification. In his arithmetic, his entitlement to pieces of paper with decontextualized violence pictured on them count more than the flesh and blood lives of girls and women he knows suffer and die in the pornstitution industries.

I'm willing to beg, "Can you please just not take photos? Can you just be happy engaging in sex however you like and not making a soul-less thing out of them men around the world utilize in their war against women?" but men don't hear women over the noise that photos of our naked and displayed bodies makes in their heads. Feminists know women are valued for what they look like more than who we are and what we say, and that's why pornography capturing all that women are 'worth' to men speaks louder to them than real women. Linda Boreman wrote books, testified in Congress, took a lie detector tests and stood up to her pimps and rapists publicly but all anyone - including thirdwave feminists - seem to remember is the image of her naked, penetrated, and smiling.

[xochitl]

But I don't think it is feminists' place to be saying what is and isn't an acceptable sex act. Wrt BDSM - yes it can be abusive, especially when taken to the stage where people live as sub/dom - but I have never been comfortable with the out and out condemnation of any act that could fall under this acronym. How do you know what is going on in people's head when they tie each other up or xyz? Why am I not a feminist if I like my sex partner to cause me some pain, because it gets me off, when it is consensual, when s/he is doing it because I want her/him to?

I know you said you wouldn't post anymore, but I also notice that you made that claim before (in a thread in April, defending some anti-rad feminists), so . . .

Why are you antiporn? The arguments you make in favor of BDSM appear to be the exact arguments made in favor of porn--I like it, and whether or not I like something (even if it causes other people pain) is most important. I like getting banged by 100 guys in a row. It's consensual, it gets me off, end of discussion. No need to analyze why it gets me off--Because our desires are conditioned by patriarchy, racism, and capitalism, perhaps? Because getting off on/profiting from pain is what all forms of oppression are really about, whether we're talking about racism, colonialism, imperialism, or patriarchy? Nah, what I like is most important.

[MaggieH]

***Removing repeated posting***

[MaggieH]

According to you that means I don't care about violence against women. I'd appreciate it if you would stop patronising me.

I wasn't patronizing you. I just wanted to make sure that you do know that we have to consider pornography's atrocious harms to the prostituted women inside of that industry and its atrocious harms to the women and children who are harmed because of men's pornography consumption above all else (including thinking about an "egalitarian form of erotica").

As for BDSM, my belief is that we have to resist it.

As Andrea Dworkin once put it:

I believe that freedom for women must begin in the repudiation of our own masochism. I believe that we must destroy in ourselves the drive to masochism at its sexual roots. I believe that we must establish our own authenticity, individually and among ourselves--to experience it, to create from it, and also to deprive men of occasions for reifying the lie of manhood over and against us. I believe that ridding ourselves of our own deeply entrenched masochism, which takes so many tortured forms, is the first priority; it is the first deadly blow that we can strike against systematized male dominance. In effect, when we succeed in excising masochism from our own personalities and constitutions, we will be cutting the male life line to power over and against us, to male worth in contradistinction to female degradation, to male identity posited on brutally enforced female negativity--we will be cutting the male life line to manhood itself.

-- Andrea Dworkin, in The Root Cause.

I believe that we, as women, must repudiate any trace of masochism that comes from millennia of patriarchal training. I once imagined a new healthier vision of sexuality (as a start). In it, I wrote that after having briefly being aroused by some pornography (that one of my ex-boyfriends had shown me) once "I learned how to deconstruct that arousal to the few pornographic images I had seen or read about. I first thought about a vision of a sexuality which included communication, connection, affection, humanity and equality. I then conjured up in my mind again that pornographic drawing that my first boyfriend had shown me years ago and which I had felt embarassed about being aroused by. Then what? That pornographic image didn't even arouse me anymore! It looked stupid, unexciting, uninteresting and meaningless compared with this new vision I had of sex. I pushed that porn image out of my mind... I am free. No patriarchal industry is going to censor my own sexuality. I do not want my sexuality to be controlled or shaped by images. I want to have my own sexuality. Women's sexuality has historically been censored by patriarchy. For centuries and centuries, almost exclusively men have written about and represented sex in this world."

Here is the article I had written: https://www.againstpornography.org/newvision.html in case you want to check it out, Laura (I also wrote about my story at https://www.againstpornography.org/mystory.html ). I hope these can help you (in case you read them).

I'm sorry you took it as an accusation that I was somehow "patronizing" you. I was just so upset, surprised, and shocked. Women, in many radical feminist writings, have been asked to repudiate their "slave behaviors". And I think I totally agree with the radical feminist point here: BDSM is inherently harmful to your mind and body, and that's why I advocate a healthier, egalitarian, and non-patriarchal vision of sexuality. Please Laura, consider this= as I said: "We have everything to win -- men and women alike -- in rejecting pornographic sexuality. We have everything to win in kicking it from the mainstream and pushing it to the margin. We have everything to win in repudiating domination, subordination, sadism, masochism, degradation, violence and cruelty. We have everything to win in regaining our humanity, empathy, equality, and capacity for communication and connection. We have everything to win in rejecting patriarchy..." and all its misogynist institutions. "And we have everything to win in standing up for a healthier vision of sexuality that would fulfill all our intimate lives."

P.S: Great Post, Sam!

[delphyne]

The more I think about this argument for "egalitarian" porn the more irritated I get. Pornography is prostitution by proxy - men pay other men to fuck women for them, or in the case of soft-core porn they pay other men to persuade women to take their clothes off and reveal themselves publicly in a way they would never do if a camera or money weren't involved. Women who think this is normal behaviour have actually been groomed by porn into thinking it's OK - we see it now with all the twenty-somethings who are unable to imagine a world without some kind of porn in it, even though humanity has managed to survive for millennia without the average person having access to this stuff. In most parts of the world people still don't.

The "can't beat 'em so we'll join 'em" stance looks appealing at first glance, but it's capitulation, it's a message to men that we won't fight them or hold them accountable for their sexual abuse of women, instead we'll create arguments that we'll use against the women who are brave enough to stand against it. I think feminists who are taking this position need to have a look at their politics and ask themselves whose side they really are on.

[laurelin]

I've been thinking a lot about this over the last couple days. To me the main problems with talking about 'egalitarian porn' are threefold:

1) Pornography ('writings about the whore') cannot by definition be 'egalitarian';
2) to speak of, say, 'erotic images' being made in an egalitarian environment is so far away from our present reality, and I do not think that we can photograph-naked-ourselves out of oppression any more than we can fuck ourselves out of oppression;
3) while the idea of making such egalitarian materials may come from the best of intentions, it functions as a way of pushing the real issues about the abuse of women in pornography to one side, talking instead about some hypothetical scenario. I'm with Mackinnon on the idea that feminist methodology must be based primarily on women's experiences in the world rather than on hypotheticals; the existence of 'egalitarian' erotica will not do anything towards preventing the abuse that emanates from pornography. It supplies more pictures, more ways of objectifying women, but it will not stop the abuse.

I can understand why the idea of making 'woman-friendly' images is appealing, but I think it is in itself dangerously misguided. It is easy to see the way we 'see' sex as the only way in which sex can be experienced or understood- but we live in a highly artificial environment that comes from the false idea that men are superior to women. As part of the way in which men oppress women is through imagery which sexualises harm to women, it is no surprise that images dominate our view of sexuality and sexual activity. But the point of feminism is to change the world, and to believe it can be changed, and to accept nothing other than complete integrity and self-realisation for women. Producing 'harmless' sexy images because we think that we cannot stop men from wanting pornographic materials is, as far as I can see, a form of capitulation.

Of course there is always the problem of when we ourselves as women find pornography and related activities arousing. As far as I'm concerned, there is no shame in this -it's what these materials are made to do, and in the cultural climate in which we are immersed, it is no surprise that we experience such uncomfortable feelings - but at the same time, we must not lapse into the idea that 'if it feels good, it must be good'. We reject pornography because we know what harm it does; many of us here have experienced that harm in our own bodies, to varying degrees. I think it was Bea who said 'don't accept things on men's terms', which really was a click! moment for me. It is men's terms that say these materials have always been necessary, that nothing is harmful so long as it is enjoyable (and if you're not enjoying it you're a prude).

This is a really good article on examining one's own sexuality, and changing its harmful aspects: http://feminist-reprise. org/docs/hothypo.htm

I hope what I've written makes sense.

Laura, if you're reading, I wanted to let you know that I really appreciate the work you have done on the F Word Blog. This comment is not supposed to be a 'jumping on you' thing, but rather my consideration of the topic (which I have been mulling over for quite some time).

[MaggieH]

Wonderful posts, Delphyne and Laurelin!

I totally agree with both of you! There are so many more urgent things and so many more struggles to overcome before we are able to live in a non-patriarchal society and maybe think about such things as any "egalitarian forms of erotic arts"!!!

Indeed, thinking about such things before the overthrow of the whole patriarchy itself happens, is capitulation! And it is insane!

Considering and confronting the harms of pornography and prostitution to women and children, and working toward the building of a new non-patriarchal world, are paramount causes!!!

Personally, as I said before: I feel A LOT MORE FREE without having images or so-called "art" control my life and/or sexuality!

[Laura]

delphyne, sam, laurelin,

Thanks for your comments, they've given me a lot to think about. I know the way I write makes it seem like I'm asserting an argument I 100% believe in when actually I'm just trying out some ideas and trying to see things from different perspectives, so I appreciate you engaging with the topic rather than jumping on me (I know you weren't, laurelin! hope all is good with your studies, btw).


xochitl,

I believe I suggested not being a part of the forum any more, but mods decided that it was OK. I do tend only to read here, and have avoided discussions on other threads as I know some people are not comfortable with me, but I wanted to respond to the comments about the website I blog for.

I am antiporn because I think the vast majority of the pornography being produced and consumed at the moment supports and encourages the oppression and abuse of women. I also believe that the overt misogyny contained in porn affects people's sexualities and the way they relate to each other: I've experienced this myself. I am also against the abuse and exploitation of women in the industry.

As I have already said, I agree that sexuality needs to be analysed. I agree that things we think we enjoy/need can be a product of socialisation. But I also think that sexual taste is as wide ranging and varied as the human race and that, free of any kind of socialisation, it is likely that I would still like certain things which I have seen labelled 'inherently harmful'. Yeah, I can't know for sure, but having engaged in things in the past that I now know were due to issues I had, linked to growing up in patriarchy, I think I can tell the difference between what I enjoy and what I was warped into engaging in.

As Sam said, there is a difference between engaging in sth yourself and watching others do it: you don't know what their intentions are or how the people onscreen are actually feeling. For me, that's emerging as the biggest problem in the 'egalitarian porn/erotica' argument, so I guess that's the difference between what I said about BDSM and the argument defending porn. Ie - as a participating subject you can say 'this feels good, im being treated like a human being, i am being respected etc etc', as a viewer you have no guarentee that the people you are watching feel that way.


OK, I will actually sign off now. Lots to think about...


Just back to The F Word topic briefly- if anyone on here from the UK wants to write an article in response to the Against Censorship piece it would be welcome on the site.

Completely offtopic: lostclown can't access the forum at the moment, the page won't load - she asked me to let the mods know, don't know if you can help.

[MaggieH]

Completely offtopic: lostclown can't access the forum at the moment, the page won't load - she asked me to let the mods know, don't know if you can help.

I've already posted about that in the "blogging" section. The mods already know about it...

By the way, Laura, it is worth pointing out that you've made only comments about what Delphyne, Sam, Laurelin, and Xochitl have said (in your last post) while completely ignoring or refusing to make any comment(s) about what I have said to you in one of my last posts in this thread! That's not very nice...

[Lost Clown]

Where's the excitement is the question you should be asking. People don't watch others eating food to work up an appetite for food, they eat when they are hungry and stop when they're not.

Not to be an ass, but watching people eat, and not just eat, but really relish and celebrate really good food makes me want to eat. (But I do not *need* it to eat)

[Lost Clown]

No need to analyze why it gets me off--Because our desires are conditioned by patriarchy, racism, and capitalism, perhaps?

This is unfair. Not only has Laura blogged extensively about her analysis of why she finds BDSM enjoyable, she also posted about it in this thread. My belief, and I know I am not alone in this as Twisty has oft said the exact same thing, is that when it comes to things like BDSM (not porn, though, only things that concern your sex life) if it gets you off and you want to do it, that's great, cheers to you; all I ask is that you analyse it and understand why this is (and I think we'll all agree that it's social conditioning). Be aware of why you enjoy the things you do, because none of us are perfect feminists. Well, I ain't anyway.

I also believe, and Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon wrote about it in their civil rights ordinance, that mutual, respectful, and equal erotica *can* be produced (see their distinction btw porn and erotica). (Though I doubt it will be until after patriarchy is destroyed.)

[MaggieH]

all I ask is that you analyse it and understand why this is (and I think we'll all agree that it's social conditioning).

Yeah, I can agree with that... It is because of patriarchal conditioning.

But, personally, I believe that we should reject such conditioning in order to be free, as I do not believe that it fulfills us as women -- I believe it harms our minds and our bodies -- this is what I believe. I wrote about that before...

[xochitl]

This is unfair. [/quote]

What's unfair? I think I made my point clear: Defending something, anything really, based on the fact that "I like it" is a bit shallow. I'm talking about what Laura has said here. I haven't read anything else she's written but the statements she made here.

Funny you mentioned Twisty! I think this post she wrote was hilarious:

"BDSM, like most counterculture “scenes,” is perhaps overly self-congratulatory on its supposed transgressivitude, since its constituents clearly demand the most banal ritual conformity, to a degree that possibly surpasses even that of junior high school. Which school, as you know, wrote the book on banal ritual conformity.

. . . Am I mocking your “lifestyle”? I sure am! Although this should come as no surprise to even the casual reader, since I have made it no secret that the founding principle of I Blame The Patriarchy is opposition to all dominance models in the social order.

Whether or not it is true of your particular sexyclub, there can be no doubt that a lifestyle of ritualized dominance and submission carries with it a high risk of true abuse; few people exist in the world who are capable of finessing such a thing into the art form its proponents believe it to be. I know this because few people exist in the world who are capable of finessing anything into art, and there is little evidence to suggest that a scene based on so inane a pursuit as orgasm should be any different."

http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy. com/
2006/01/26/in-which-the-author-pronounces-on-a-popular-hobby/

[xochitl]

delphyne, sam, laurelin,


I am antiporn because I think the vast majority of the pornography being produced and consumed at the moment supports and encourages the oppression and abuse of women. I also believe that the overt misogyny contained in porn affects people's sexualities and the way they relate to each other: I've experienced this myself. I am also against the abuse and exploitation of women in the industry.

Okay, so then what about the women who say they just really love prostitution and porn, that they are not being abused and exploited, because they like it? This is what worries me about your position. You are saying "you don't know what's going on in someone's head," in other words, even if it looks like the woman is being abused and hurt by men, maybe, in her head, she really enjoys it. Maybe it looks like the man is abusing her, but maybe he is showing "respect" for her by causing her pain, which she likes. You see where I am going with this? I think Rebecca Whisnant offers a different way of thinking about sexuality under the conditions of patriarchy, so that we don't get sucked into the weak "I like it, therefore it is good" position:

"The essential feminist question is not whether some individual women like or choose or benefit in individual ways from "x," but whether the overall effect of "x" is to keep women, as a group, subordinate to men." (from a presentation she gave at an anti-porn conference)

[Lost Clown]

Yes, and in her MANY responses she has made it VERY clear that she's not asking people to give it up in their bedrooms, because it's not up to her what they do, but instead to analyse why they are turned on by it.

Btw, anyone know why she hasn't been blogging recently?

[xochitl]

Yes, and in her MANY responses she has made it VERY clear that she's not asking people to give it up in their bedrooms, because it's not up to her what they do, but instead to analyse why they are turned on by it.

Btw, anyone know why she hasn't been blogging recently?

Yes, she's analyzed it and concluded " that intention and attitude is more important to equality than the sex acts me and my partner engage in."
Which could serve as an equally good defense of prositution and porn. Which was my point.

The other part of her analsis sounded something like, "I can't help it that I like pain, and there is nothing wrong with it, because my boyfriend and I respect each other. My proclivity for sexual pain is probably natural--I can tell the difference btw things I've been conditioned to like by the patriarchy and other things, like S/M, which I just enjoy" (did you read that one, Lost Clown?)"

Now, that is a separate thing from saying that people should do whatever in their personal lives, because their are no spillover effects to anyone else. (BTW I don't agreee with that position, but I do understand it, as it seems to be the prevalent attitude among feminists that I know. It is the reason why I am supposed to keep my mouth shut while feminists talk to other women about this awesome Flogging 101 workshop they went to, and you should try it, but you can't criticize it because it is just my personal kink that doesn't affect anyone but me and my partner.)

[delphyne]

I'd really like to know why so many feminists are BDSMers, or rather why so many BDSMers decide to become feminists, which seems to be the correct version of events.

Feminism is opposed to male dominance and wants to end it in all its forms, BDSMers argue that male dominance and sadism are fine as long as they involve someone getting an orgasm. There's always going to be a huge tension between the two positions, so what's the attraction? And quite a few BDSMers seem to come into feminism and then spend an awful lot of time picking fights with rad fems, a minority within a minority, as if our very small in numbers stance against BDSM represented a real threat to what they do in their bedrooms.

Laura, I'm glad that what I and others said gave you something to think about but it also leaves me somewhat dismayed - has nothing that people have said here before at Genderberg made the same impression? It's not as if these same things haven't been argued many times previously and at length. For someone to have been a member here for two years but still be on the "egalitarian" porn bandwagon, which Maggie has rightly said has nothing to do with the rad fem fight against pornography .... well if we can't convince you who can we convince?

[rich]

And quite a few BDSMers seem to come into feminism

I think that they have a perception that, out of women as a class, feminists are the "tops" vis-a-vis other women. One might enjoy being a "bottom" in one's relationships with men, but even so, one can possess alpha status or superiority over women who are otherwise similary situated in their sexual relationships with men (vanilla women who don't know any better, who aren't enlightened to the fact that they can "choose" subordination).

I think this is why the BDSM crowd has a vested interest in promoting the myth that feminism is an ivory tower institution and that they're the blue collar antidote to it -- not only do they get to play the martyr, even though BDSM is at it's very most popular in the Ivy Leagues, the myth upholds the kind of power they want to tap into: they're the uberfrau and their "natural" peers are patriarchs.