Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ora!daemon From: kaveh@ms.uky.edu (Kaveh Baharestan) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: Who's Exploiting Who? Message-ID: Date: 17 Oct 90 20:46:15 GMT References: <16098@s.ms.uky.edu> <65210@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz) Organization: U of Ky, Math. Sciences, Lexington KY Lines: 60 Approved: ambar@ora.com csluder@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (KirK) writes: >In article kaveh@ms.uky.edu (Kaveh Baharestan) writes: vvvvv -- do you mean subjective? >Isn't this an objective thing? I feel that men are downgraded just as >much in bad pornography as women. Look at how men are portrayed. Men >in pornography are usualy jaded, insensitive piledrivers. I find this >to be almost as insulting as its portrayal of women. No, that's stereotyping. With very few exceptions it is the men in the porn flicks that degrade the women, or the women doing or saying self-degredant(is that a word - should be ;->) actions and lines. Men, generally are not degraded. They do not beg, usually. And they are almost always in control of any situation. Then, of course, there is the rape aspect of pornography. Most pornographic material has elements of rape, or down right, out-and-out forcible (most times without an actual beating) rape. 90% of the porn that I have ever seen involved a woman, who at one point, says "no" or has an erotic scene that involves a woman and a stranger in a situation that would normally be construed as rape (eg. burgler with knife breaks into home of woman--they proceed to do whatever...) Point being, do you know anyone who would be excited (sexually) by a burgler, a guy in an alley....? Porn promotes rape. (Well, that's for another group. there's a few great papers by Griffin(sp?) of rape and pornography, i recommend them highly.) >>There is no pornography that does not promote one >>or more of these ideas in its viewer-readers. So the fight agianst >>Porn is the fight for equality. (this does not mean that I believe the >>church fanatics are correct - as one article i read said, the church >>and pornographers are codependent.) >I have a problem with the idea that porn is exclusively women >exploitive. Who is exploiting whom? Recently I've met a >semi-professional drag queen, and a topless dancer who both say that >what they love about performing is the control they have over their >audience. Is pornography a case of male consumers exploiting female >porn stars? Or is the female porn star exploiting the men who chose >to buy into her image of a wanton uninhibited "slut"? 8-O i feel so exploited when I watch M. Chambers!!!! Give me a break! >I'm not opposed to the idea of pornography. IMHO there can be >pornography (there is but it doesn't sell well) that caters to both >men and women and refuses to buy into sexist steriotypes. What you have just described here is impossible, or your definition of porn is not the same as mine. If you are referring to something like Lady Chatterley's Lover (THE BOOK! ;-)) then you are not referring to pornograph, but of a work that has sexually explict scenes that are within the context of the plot and not sex for the sake of sex. >On another note how do feminists feel about performers like Madonna >who are subtlely twisting our ideas of gender by taking sexual >"femininity" to an extreme? Twisting? I would say stretching not twisting. Madonna is not pornographic, just incredibly smart!