pornography

Clarisse Thorn's picture

[storytime] Sympathy for the Anti-Porn Feminists

Submitted by Clarisse Thorn on 17 August, 2010 - 12:37
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Originally posted at Clarisse Thorn: Pro-Sex Outreach, Open-Minded Feminism

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I really felt uncomfortable with and uneasy about porn.  I believed it was something that “all men watch” and “all men like”. I didn’t yet realize that there are lots of different kinds of porn out there, and so I believed that the mainstream porn I’d seen represented “all men’s desires”.   Given that I didn’t look like women in mainstream porn and I didn’t want to act like women in mainstream porn, this made me suspect that I couldn’t possibly be awesome in bed; so I couldn’t help feeling pressured and threatened by porn’s very existence, because it seemed to be fulfilling “all men’s desires” in a way that I couldn’t. (I felt even more uneasy when I first came across SomethingAwful’s hentai game reviews around age 18. The reviews were so funny that I laughed out loud, but I also literally cried — right in a public computer lab, actually.)

But I accepted that the men in my life watched porn, and I made it clear that although I didn’t want to hear about it, I didn’t mind — that I certainly didn’t expect them to give up porn while dating me.

Except one. I dated one man who insisted that he didn’t use porn, and I believed him. Keep in mind that I had told him I didn’t mind if he used porn, so his insistence that he didn’t came entirely from him, not me. And then one day I was going through our computer’s search history looking for something I’d been reading the day before, and I came upon rape-fantasy porn. And I was heartbroken.

Way beyond the fact that the man I loved had outright lied to me — which, I think, legitimately entitled me to be angry — my reaction went something like this:

A) The only man I’ve ever met who I thought truly didn’t like porn was lying to me, which means I can’t trust men who say they don’t like porn, and probably indicates that men who have told me they don’t like rape porn were lying too.

B) Porn indicates real preferences, right? So what this means is that all men secretly crave to rape women, but that they are either too afraid of the legal consequences or care too much about the women they love to actually do it.

In other words, I thought something like: I can’t trust men to be honest about their sexuality, and their sexuality is scary and predatory.

LiberatingPorn's picture

Pornography and Gail Dines (Ugh)

Submitted by LiberatingPorn on 22 July, 2010 - 17:33
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    • Christina Engela's picture

    Doublethink

    Submitted by Christina Engela on 2 June, 2010 - 15:13
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    I recently learned of the South African government’s pandering to religious fundamentalist groups, and began warning of this threat to civil rights and freedoms as protected by the Constitution. Just this week, I saw a news article announcing further confirmation of this collusion between the Deputy Minister of Home Affairs in particular, and the religious right wing - in the form of the "Justice Alliance of South Africa" (JASA).

    It reminds me of the old National-Party government and the old Apartheid regime, for people to work to introduce censorship - particularly censorship based on the shaky ground of religious objection - into a modern constitutional secular democracy. In fact, to me it bears the same stink of the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany and the old Soviet Union - and in places like Zimbabwe, where it is illegal to even criticize the president.

    The Justice Alliance of SA is a small fringe group of religious fundamentalists masquerading as a bona fide legal interest group - but with clear ulterior motives to further a conservative and theocratic agenda which will deprive the broader public of freedoms and liberties they now take for granted. 

    By hiding behind the all too convenient pretext of “protecting children” - a motive which is just too cute and naïve’ (not to mention too good to be true), but which is also patently deceitful, and is by now a “signature” modus operandi of such groups who push an anti-liberal agenda around the world - they do this by detracting from the real issues we face. In fact, this is nothing more than manipulating the facts to persuade the public to think that things will be better for them if they leave the knotty problems of state to good, moral, Christian leaders - and that all the problems faced by them will go away if they start tightening the screws on people's "morality". Yes, I can see how that will solve everything.
    Christina Cicchelli's picture

    A Porn Slut Speaks... Part One and Part Deux... Me ;)

    Submitted by Christina Cicchelli on 6 April, 2010 - 09:19
    in

     Hello, the following videos were made by me. I'm a porn performer and sex worker. This is in response to Eric Amaranth's article about the porn industry. But, this isn't about what he said; this is about how you can combat negative attitudes about the porn industry (and sex work in general) and become our allies! 

     Sorry in advance for the crazy big screen. Will fix asap!

     

    victorias sketchbook's picture

    Teenager-mom Heart-to-Heart about Pornography

    Submitted by victorias sketchbook on 28 November, 2009 - 12:18
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    from Victoria's Sex Blog



    Until you’ve actually had a baby, you cannot have a CLUE what you’re in for… and it’s the same with sex. I remember my shock (and absolute THRILL!) the first time a male hand slid behind the zipper of my jeans to touch my pelvis, and lower… and although I’d been doing some heavy duty making out until then, I had absolutely no idea how fabulous another person’s touch could feel on my private parts. I guess I am one of the fortunate young girls who truly was a virgin before that happened; from the stories I have heard from girlfriends, it’s not quite the same when you have already been touched way before you were ready or willing.


    After reading about the negative effects of too-accessible pornography on children and youth, I sat down with my two teenage boys and told them we were going to have a talk about just that. They were pretty cool about it… they knew I knew they looked at porn (although I don’t know how much) and they know I know something about it because they know that I’ve drawn it, although I can’t be sure about how much of my work they have actually seen either. My attitude up until now has been to keep this work discreet, but not completely hidden; they know I draw and photograph the nude body and they know I do something about sexuality, but what exactly…?

    Christina Cicchelli's picture

    School of Sex

    Submitted by Christina Cicchelli on 11 November, 2009 - 11:30
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    How I ended up in someone else’s underwear is still a mystery to me.  But, isn’t that a sign of a successful sex party?

    Christina Cicchelli's picture

    What I Learned from Porno - The Italian

    Submitted by Christina Cicchelli on 4 November, 2009 - 09:29
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    As you may know by now, I used to perform in a movies.

    victorias sketchbook's picture

    So You Want to LOOK at SEX?

    Submitted by victorias sketchbook on 27 October, 2009 - 12:11
    in

    posted by Victoria's Sex Blog


    Sex means so many things to so many different people. For some, it's just a game, for others, it's private and sacred. For some it's an obsession, for others, a duty. Unfortunately, for many, good sex is too often just an unfulfillable fantasy and even more often we heavy-duty thinkers come to prefer our fantasies to reality when we feel unable to act on the dreams. My wish has always been that sex be a very real, respectful celebration of intimacy between people who truly care about each other... which does not exclude wild fun! 



    What would happen if we took the focus on sex out of our minds and brought it into our bodies, then what? Would it result in uncontrollable, unmitigated debauchery? That is too often the instant conclusion we come to in “modern” society. Sex is most often equated with corruption, like nudity – especially in children - is automatically connected to exploitation. News flash everyone! WE ARE ALL NAKED UNDER OUR CLOTHES!!! Every single one of us: priest, nurse, clown, prostitute or rocket scientist… so why do we continue to make nudity and sexuality such negatively-connotated “sins”? Because we only focus on the abuse, not the beauty. Of course there are lots of historical reasons, too, but in this media-driven society sex sells, and that’s pretty much the only way that nudity and sexuality are ever treated,  especially visually -  to sell. Something. Anything. Everything.

    Annabelle River's picture

    Filament Magazine: The Thinking Woman's Crumpet

    Submitted by Annabelle River on 17 October, 2009 - 01:07
    in

    To clarify from my celebration of "Dress Like a Whore" Day: I do understand the Feminism 101 concepts of the "male gaze" and its companion objectification, wherein women are reduced to bodies existing only for men's pleasure.  There is already a huge assortment of feminist treatises showing how objectification and unrealistic beauty expectations damage women.  But then, however problematically, none of my Women's Studies courses have stopped me from feeling a great erotic charge from intentional exhibitionism. So for years I've been working to articulate how I, as woman, can occasionally enjoy the role of the flashy slut without being reduced to "only" a slut. (Step one is the deliberate choice.)

    And then a fellow kinky female friend introduced me to the brilliant Filament magazine, subtitled "The Thinking Woman's Crumpet." Instead of fighting the erotic "gaze" as inherently evil, Filament fights for straight women's right to gaze at men.

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