Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!usc!ucsd!orion.oac.uci.edu!ucivax!gateway From: csluder@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (KirK) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: Who's Exploiting Who? Message-ID: <65655@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> Date: 19 Oct 90 03:01:07 GMT References: <16098@s.ms.uky.edu> <65210@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington IN. Lines: 84 Approved: tittle@ics.uci.edu Nntp-Posting-Host: zola.ics.uci.edu In article kaveh@ms.uky.edu (Kaveh Baharestan) writes: >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 Yes I did, thank you. >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. In certain situtations begging can be fun ;-) >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.) Now do you see why I find bad pornography degrading to men? If women are offended by being steriotyped as bitches in movies and blacks offended by being stereotyped as inner city criminals, can't I be offended by rape stereotypes in porn movies? [I think the distinction is between being offended at degradation and being offended at a stereotype. They are both valid reasons for being offended, but different ones. --CLT] [Excess requoting deleted. --CLT] ... >>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. That IS my definition of pornography, a work that deals exclusively with sex for the sake of sex. The only reason why pornography is offensive is that the porn industry has been historicly dominiated on the supply and demand side by sexists. Things are changing though. With an increasing demand for pornography by women has come pornography with a focus on "couples." This genera of pornography is basicly the same thing, a series of sex scenes separated by very little plot, but it discards rape scenes and other sexist cleches common in old style porn. For example, it is no longer a cardinal rule that the man MUST ejaculate outside of the woman's body. Lesbian scenes are no longer manditory. Also discarded are the "ramrod" fetallio scenes where the woman takes the man's penis into her mouth and bobs her head as fast as possible. In "couple's porn" the woman has control a lot of the time. Take a look at Penthouse Forum or Letters some time. While you will see stories where the man is in charge you will also find a lot, maybe even a majority, of stories where the woman is using men. (I believe that the editor in chief of these mags is female, anybody know anything about this?) Also the statement "there is no porn that..." must take into acount homoerotic pornography. Is gay or lesbian porn sexist? My point is that pornography is a genera, not a homogenous description. It's like saying that science-fiction is sexist because the vast majority of science-fiction writers are sexist. What we need is not to fight pornography to advance the cause of equality, but to advance the cause of equality within pornography. Then again we might just be picking nits and spliting hairs. To me the only difference between pornography and erotica is that pornography makes no pretence at being art. KirK