kim kaos

Last week us BASTARDS had a discussion over a links sent to our organising list. Although that link was not pornographic, it has sparked a discussion on the issue and the interpersonal dynamics associated with porn viewing. Please join in!

Although not pornographic, the website in question (suicide girls) does bring up for me what I have been made to think is essentiallly “my problem with pornography”. I’m hoping we can have a productive discussion about it. I’m hoping we can do this without the men involved in this group getting defensive or thinking I’m accusing them of being sexist.

I see pornography in that uncomfortable space between sexual freedom, and capitalist exploitation - in that it can occupy either and soemtimes both. Certainly it has been defended as such (eg. “An Anarchist Defense of Pornography” ). It has even been promoted as a revolutionary act for the simple fact that puritanical religious nuts want to censor it.

I am women whose been brought up in a society that aims to make me feel inadequate to exploit me for cheap labour and to sell me stuff. So I have hang-ups. All women do. It’s hard to rise above the onslaught of advertising telling you your body is not thin enough, your skin not smooth enough or that you have on of the “seven signs” of bad hair (to quote an ad). Add pornography into the mix and you’ve could have some seriously neurotic women in the world. I’m not saying men aren’t also victims of the impossible standards of beauty and sexiness that advertisng and pornography represent. Of course they are.

Freedom of sexual expression: in the case of pornography, defenders will say that nothing should stand in the way of them and thier sexual satisfaction. In a free world, we should all be free to ogle, desire or sleep with whomever we wish (and as anarchists that would mean the free association consenting partners). When we view porn are we not just enjoying one of the mutlitude of sexual titillation we might engage in? In one sense yes, in another, we are just cogs in the market that reduces all human interaction to financial transaction.

When we view porn, we are viewing the bodies of women (predominately) who have willingly (yes), for money, performed sexual acts for filming. As anarchists we might also say that, because the sexual act was financial transaction, it was not necessarily an act of free choice/free association (it was market driven, by the actors need to live). Certainly the partners in pornography are not given the choice of whom they are having sex with, just as we cannot choose who we work with. And, typically (but not exclusively), the partners in pornography are largely dictated by their appearances, as young big boobed barbies and well endowed kens (age not so important here) are more likely to get the jobs, except in the case of fetish porn. I guess it is possible that some of the women in porn film/photography are genuinely enjoying themselves, not just acting. Just as we might enjoy a job that has the added advantage of fulfilling some personal need outside money. As a woman who is intimately aware of her own body, I can tell you that of the porn I have seen, very few if any of the women I have seen are genuinely sexually aroused.

There is an aspect of porn that in my opinion is pure domination and not about mutual satisfaction as we would expect a sex act to be for ourselves. the ‘action’ is always over when the man comes. Female orgasms in porn are not common or expected. The womens purpose in conventional porn is the service the needs of the often anoymous penis. This is perhaps a necessity in the cinematography of a finacial transaction between people with no emotional connections. The focus on genitalia over whole body sex (such as that expressed by erotica) reduces sex is a mere biological function. After looking at a lot of porn, although intially interesting and even amusing, I eventually began to feel like a scientist objectively studying body parts, without a view to the whole person. some say that porn is also violent and degrading to women, but this hasn’t been my experience, even though i am aware it does exist.

So in indulging our sexual freedom to view porn, we are also teaching ourselves to prefer a certain type of body and view our own bodies as inadequate insofar as they don’t match those we see in porn. Women, already obsessed with their looks and weight, can now add to that probems with the look of their pussies and how they perform in bed, men certainly will feel (if even just subconciously) that their penises are not big enough and that may not be able to satisfy the sexual voracity of women like that.

I have been in relationships where my partners viewed porn surreptitiously. My feelings on discovering the fact have always been the same: inadequacy in both appearance and sexual performance that leads to increased self-hatred and depression, and a deep feeling of betrayal. I often wonder if the effect of viewing porn WITH a partner would lessen this ill effect and I’m sure it would. However, the existence of non-exploitative pornography would be the only case in which I could feel I was not exploiting another person and betraying women-kind by doing so. I know for a fact that in at least one of those relationships, the effect on my partner was for him to be constantly comparing me to the clean-shaven wafer-thin young things he liked to watch, to my detriment: he told me in so. This was from a left-leaning social justice activist and vegan extremist who should have known better.

I’m keen to hear others views on this issue. originally published at brisbaneanarchy.org

Some reading you might be interested in:

“Pornography: Liberation or Enslavement?” “Where Are The Revolutionary Men?”

From the SMH

Sydney Morning Herald reports on porn research by La Trobe University:

“An increasing number of men appear to be hooked, and the women in their lives are flailing about in unhappiness, self-doubt and self-blame.

Michael Flood, a research fellow in gender studies at La Trobe University and co-author of the 2003 report Youth and Pornography in Australia, says: “This is not about couples going to the porn store to spice up their sex lives. Men in growing numbers are using porn in ways that are that are secret, shameful and damaging. It is having a damaging impact on intimacy and sexuality.

The same themes emerged over and over. The men spent hours online, searching for progressively more hard core images. Family time or couple time was the first casualty. Then sex lives floundered and withered away as men lost interest.

Men became, in the words of Dr Margaret Redelman, the president of the Australian Society of Sex Educators, Researchers and Therapists, “lazy lovers”. In the end they could not be bothered with real-life sex. In other cases, sex lives became porn-like, male-focused, extreme and lacking in intimacy.

Women’s self-esteem nose-dived. They felt they could not compete with the nymphs on screen. They did not measure up to the bodies or sexual performance of the women their men were watching. Connie, a 50-year-old graphics designer, whose former partner looked at pornography constantly, says: “After a while I started to feel worthless.” Karen 44, whose eight-year marriage broke up over her husband’s porn obsession, agonised over “why he preferred that to me”.
(SMH May 26, 2007).
http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/how-porn-is-wrecking-relationships/2007/05/25/1180205083232.html