Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!aero!meridn.enet.dec.com!baranski
From: baranski@meridn.enet.dec.com
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Subject: pornography
Message-ID: <93637@aerospace.AERO.ORG>
Date: 6 Dec 90 16:31:49 GMT
Sender: nadel@aerospace.aero.org
Lines: 55
Approved: nadel@aerospace.aero.org
Status: R


feit@acsu.buffalo.EDU (Elissa Feit) says:

>This is Dworkin's argument: MEN are the victimizers, WOMEN, the
>victims.  "Pornography reveals that male pleasure is inextricably tied
>to victimizing, hurting, exploiting; that sexual fun and sexual
>passion in the privacy of the male imagination are inseparable from
>the brutality of male history""

How sad that her experience was such that it caused her to equate it to the
whole...  It can't be denied that some sexual situations have dominant and
submissive sides, but this does not mean that men want it to be this way any
more then women want it to be this way.  If one side is submissive, the other
will have to be dominant; untill women stop being submissive, men will continue
being dominant.  Both sides need to examine their roles, and find better ones.

The fields of therapy on co-dependant people bears this out.

>Premise 1: People's fantasies tend to be tied to distresses they suffered. If
>someone is abused as a child, that abuse (even if not conciously retrievable)
>finds its way into "what turns them on" - it's just a way of acting out the
>hurt so that it can be healed, though it's as ineffective as marrying a drunk
>because your dad was a drunk."

People tend to stick with what they know, even if it hurts, because they fear
that the unknown will hurt even worse.  They have been taught by the school of
literal hard knocks that exploration is discouraged.
 
>Theorem: (?) If what turns us on is what had once distressed us, then
>pornography CREATES its own market. If as we feel degraded we also feel
>aroused, degradation in itself becomes arousing."

Just as abusive Pronography prepetrates victims, it perpetrates victimizers in
the same way.  Men see men abusing women, and think that that is what they are
supposed to be like, that that's what women want, and in pornography, the women
certainly do want it.
 
>MY proposal is to fill the demand for arousing material with "erotica",
>defined as different than pornography in that it DOES NOT degrade women."

While I agree with you in principle, in the effects of abusive pornography,
there is also 'pornography' which is not abusive.  I don't think changing the
label, and calling it 'erotica' will be helpfull.  There are too many people
who cannot distinguish between the two, and will throw sex out with the
bathwater.  Instead, let's concentrate on the "abuse", which is what the
problem is, and deal with the abuse accordingly.  Let's err on the side of
caution, and go after what is 'clearly' abusive, so that things don't get
sucked into a rathole.  Gradually things will improve.

There are a lot of people out there who are hooked on abusive pornography, both
men and women, both victim and victimizer.  What do you do about a woman who
writes writes stories where the woman (her in some fashion) is abused???  It's
very sad...

Jim Baranski


Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com