Letters to the Editor
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Yes to feminist porn
I'm a feminist and I like porn. There's a ton of crappy porn but there's good stuff too and the more that women produce the more good stuff there will be!
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The REAL Devil
is in those damned romance novels.
THAT is objectification of men. Another article on here today talks about women not wanting to lower themselves to being in the company of mere mortal males, less than perfect princes, by not settling. Gee, which rags taught these women to be so unrealistic and misandrist towards NORMAL MEN?
Men just want love from women, women just want to parse out the terms of the endearment, monetary terms no matter how you cut it.
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Silly, feminism IS porn. It's all about sex and power.
What I'd like to know, since the Christians are starting to talk about sex: Can fundamentalism and porn coexist?
I mean, besides all that toga-wearing Charleton Heston gay porn in Ten Commandments.
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Can porn and feminism co-exist? IT DOESN'T MATTER...
Participating in porn is a personal choice that people voluntarily make - and get compensated for. Viewing porn is also a personal choice that people voluntarily make. Neither choice has any direct or significant effect on anyone other than those directly involved in the choice itself.
Feminist of all stripes - be they first, second, or third wave, or beyond - can say whatever they want and cast any judgments that they wish, but by and large, neither the participants nor the viewers of porn are going to care. Nor should they. Both came to their position through personal, voluntary choices, and those ain't anyone's business but their own.
If one is to have any respect for the legitimacy of the personal choices of others - and thus, for the legitimacy of your own personal choices - one must recognize this, and recognize that, as The Rock would say, IT DOESN'T MATTER WHAT YOU THINK!
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Feminism and Porn Don't Seem to Go Together?
Guess you'v enever heard of Susie Bright...
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Porn is but a tool and as such is neither feminist nor misogynist
Try "The Virgin Machine" if you can find it still in print. It is a feminist porn film from the late eighties/early nineties.
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the reason the issue is never going to stop being discussed Bob, in spite of the fact that there really is nothing new to say
is that porn is an example of and a representative for all the things about sex that men and women disagree about, (why, when, with who, how often, what ruins it, what doesn't etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.....) obviously this, in some form, is never going to stop being talked about.
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alarm bells: Are you pro-murder, then?
This isn't much of an argument for you because fundie lunatics (of both the Christian and Moslem flavor) aren't against murder, at least of anyone who disagrees with them about anything.
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@genghis
This is why porn for men is graphic. Female porn on the other hand is emotional.
Sounds an awful lot like the, "men are visual, women are not" myth.
Why do all dudes seem to think they can speak for all women?
By the very slim chance you're a lady, why would you think you can speak for all women?
Anyway, I'm another feminist who loves (good) porn. Sure there's a lot of poor quality work, but the ratio of good to bad is the same as mainstream to indie music, TV, film, and pretty much every other medium.
I'm kind of surprised no one has mentioned foreign directors who produce much dirtier work (in context) than you'd ever find in standard, leathery-tan-blond-with-Tupperware-boobs fare. I mean, who doesn't want a nice shower after seeing a film like Ma Mere or The Piano Teacher? Breaillat also raises the bar for what constitutes an awesomely dirty scene.
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Why feminism and porno probably don't belong together
I say probably, because I feel that the main reason that pornography is anti-feminist (regardless of the intent of its makers) is that you can't control who sees it, or how they consume the media, or what they think after they've experienced it.
No-one should be surprised that art changes in the eye of the viewer. A feminist who believes that she (or he) is making a sexually themed video consistent with feminist principles can't guarantee that a misogynist won't watch the video and be titillated by what they perceive to be violence against or degradation of women. If someone watches a sexually themed video (that some people might call pornography) and find themselves getting off on violence/degradation/domination of women, then it doesn't matter if it was written with the most honorable, feminist intentions. The bottom line is that the video will perpetuate that person's belief (with visceral pavlovian training), that a woman's role is to be degraded/dominated/sexualized/objectified.
As a man who grew up in a fairly typical way for American teenagers (that is, learning about sexuality via the pornographic magazines found in a friend's garage), I can assure you from first hand experience that viewing pornography is a pretty great way to train someone to regard women as objects. I suspect that my teenage self wouldn't have flinched to consume pornography written/filmed/directed/acted by feminists in any different way. The experience of viewing sexuality from a 3rd person experience changes how you view women and sex.
I think that Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin's attempts to create a legal construct that gave women a way to redress the effect of viewing pornography on the viewer was a step in the right direction, even if its conflict with free speech principles made it unusable in the US. But its intent addressed the reality of how pornography affects women.
Bottom line: even the most sensitive and thoughtful pornography, created by feminists with the best of intentions, can be consumed by misogynists in a way that ultimately undercuts feminist goals. If you believe that your pornography, by virtue of its intent or inherent qualities, doesn't contribute to the degradation or objectification of women, you're deluding yourself.
Art is in the eye of the beholder, not the maker.
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even the most sensitive and thoughtful pornography, created by feminists with the best of intentions, can be consumed by misogynists in a way that ultimately undercuts feminist goals.
so you are saying then that controlling what men think about when they jerk off is necessary to achieving feminist goals? How do you plan to achieve this, wearable brain scans? or are you going to be moderate and limit your activities to controlling everything that is said, written or viewed? If this isn't what you are referring to please explain specifically what pornography being "consumed in a way which undercuts feminist goals" means and how you would prevent this and what would constitute "consumption of pornography" which would NOT undercut feminist goals.