SuperWeed

6 Responses to “The Pornography of Violence”

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   Gary:
   June 8th, 2007 at 11:53 pm

   Very enligtening connection in this post.

   >>>The only other topic about which I am consistently disbelieved is the rehabilitation of fighting roosters at our sanctuary. I regularly get email messages from men calling me a liar or a silly, deluded female for reporting accurately on what I have learned about roosters from my direct work with them and my reading of the scholarly literature on cockfighting.>>>

   What, do you think, is their motivation for doing this? Are they threatened by the reality that the roosters are actually quite peaceful unless callously exploited and forced to act in unnatural ways, as is done in cockfighting? Are they too vested in the (self-protective) position that roosters are naturally violent? Are they threatened by the possibility of self-incrimination - it amazes me the lengths people will go to, and the degree to which passions arise, when people try to avoid confronting their ethical transgressions.

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   Paul Wolfe:
   June 9th, 2007 at 1:34 am

   I did some research to supplement my empirical knowledge of porn. You had written earlier that tens of thousand of women are trafficked into the US for porn. The most recent figure seems to be about 20,000, but this is not for porn alone, but the “sex trade.” A majority of these will be for prostitution, not porn. The reason why I questioned the statistic in the first place is that we know that most U.S. porn comes from the San Fernando Valley, from above ground companies (of course we can only estimate underground porn, like illegal aliens). In your entry above, you start off talking about these tens of thousands of women being in *prostitution*, but then you conclude that if you watch *porn*, you are likely watching rape. Even had your argument not shifted, even if these 20,000 or so women were working in porn not prostitution, you still cannot conclude that most porn consists of these women without knowing how many women overall are involved in porn, and the number of movies each of the two groups (voluntary vs. involuntary) make.

   Also, I haven’t seen a compelling argument why, because a percentage of porn might be rape, that means all porn should be banned. We could try to prosecute the enslavement of women for porn, or domestic work, or mail-order marriage, and leave voluntary porn actresses, maids, and wives alone. Though I’m not really sure if we are talking about making porn and prostitution illegal, or simply advocating that it is harmful to society and should not be purchased. In addition to arguments I made previously, such as the fact that criminalization makes prostitutes more vulnerable to violence and rape (they go to secluded places to not be caught, are reluctant to report rape, etc.), I found other consequences in a Mother Jones article.
   http://www.motherjones.com/news/dailymojo/2005/05/sex_trafficking.html
   According to a study cited in that article, when Sweden banned prostituion in 1999, it simply pushed the trade underground, reduced the clientele, and forced prostitutes to become less selective and see men they otherwise would not, such as men who want unprotected sex.

   You claim that most porn is likely rape because most of the women formerly in porn who have spoken out against it claim that rape is often involved. Yet, the majority of women formerly and currently in porn who do not speak against porn will say the opposite. (A lot of these women end up being interviewed on the Howard Stern Show — while some were recruited, it’s a soft sell; most seek it out as a career choice. The world’s most famous porn star, Jenna Jameson, eagerly pursued it as soon as she turned 18.) It’s not that I don’t believe the women in the first group; I just don’t believe that their individual experiences are the norm for the porn industry. Based solely on their individual experiences, they would have no idea what is the norm, they only know what they and those enslaved with them experienced.

   According to one study cited in wikipedia, as access to porn has increased (exponentially in recent years), rape has decreased. The theory is that it provides an outlet. You can certainly argue that there are men out there who rape woman and who watch porn, but when you are dealing with sociopaths, I don’t think sociopaths need porn to commit crimes such as rape or murder. We have had mental illness and serial killers longer than we have had porn. Also, looking at countries like the Netherlands, the US, and Saudi Arabia, it is hard to find a correlation (except an inverse one) between porn and a society’s overall subjugation of women.

   A recent Slate article argues quite well that porn, counter-intuitively to some, reduces rape:
   http://www.slate.com/id/2152487/?nav=ais
   “[I]f you want to understand the effects of on-screen sex and violence outside the laboratory, psych experiments don’t tell you very much. Sooner or later, you’ve got to look at the data.”

   While an infrequent porn viewer, I have browsed porn video stores and Internet sites and simply haven’t found support for the claim that much of porn involves depictions of rape. And were someone interested in watching depictions of rape, it does not mean he would enjoy rape in real life (now enjoying watching real rape would be another matter). For instance, I don’t like cops, especially dirty cops (”dirty cops” may be redundant). I also live a peaceful life, oppose the death penalty, and abhor the “war on drugs.” Yet, one of my favorite shows is The Shield, about a group of corrupt cops who use unethical, violent, and even lethal means to go after the drug trade. My only explanation is I find the characters compelling and the show entertaining, but I can’t say it makes sense; to me it’s entertainment, not reality. Watching The Shield has not affected my beliefs in the least.

   Any way, I hope I am not offending you by responding to your entries. And if you are simply arguing that porn and prostitution are not part of a utopian society, I think I would agree with you. However, I disagree with some of your claims, and feel strongly that banning porn and prostitution is actually harmful to those who will work in the fields regardless of whether they are legal (I can’t quite tell if you agree or disagree with that).

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   pattrice:
   June 9th, 2007 at 9:32 am

   Gary, I think that the resistance to believing that fighting roosters can be rehabilitated is rooted in their importance as a symbol of allegedly natural masculinity. It was in the course of working with roosters here at the sanctuary that I came to understand how we (ab)use animals in the process of the social construction of masculinity and femininity. We project our ideas about gender onto animals. Then we either do things to them to force them to enact those stereotypes or simply filter our observations of them according to those stereotypes. Then we point to the animals and say, “See! It’s natural for males to be aggressive!”

   Paul, Now that I know you are a consumer of pornography, I understand better why you are so invested in defending it. Instead of scouring the internet for any support of pornography that you can find, the ethical thing to do, as a sometime consumer of pornography who has been told — repeatedly — that pornography hurts both the women who appear in it and the women who must live within a culture of pornography, would be to force yourself to look at the evidence against pornography. The website NoPornNorthampton.org contains over 400 articles.

   When I said that many if not most of the sexual acts recorded by pornography are rapes, I did not mean that most porn is rape porn. I meant that many if not most of the sexual acts portrayed as if they were consensual are, in actual fact, rape. We know this from the testimonies of women and men who have appeared in pornography, many of which are collected in the book Making Violence Sexy. If you don’t want to believe them, you might want to ask yourself why you don’t want to believe them.

   You assert that much of the porn you have seen is, at least on the surface, nonabusive. That may be so. But in actual fact, the proportion of pornography that is actively degrading is increasing as is the level of degradation portrayed. For facts about this, see Professor Gail Dines’ lecture on pornography and pop culture. This link takes you to an overview of the hour-long lecture, the film of which may be viewed in its entirety online.

   For an answer to the assertion that pornography and other kinds of sex work can be somehow empowering to women, see the text of Rebecca Whisnant’s lecture Not Your Father’s Playboy, Not Your Mother’s Feminist Movement.

   You suggest that I have changed arguments when I go from talking about prostitution to talking about pornograhy. First, pornography is prostitution in that it entails engaging in sexual acts for money. Secondly, my point was that women enslaved by the sex industry are forced to work in brothels, dance in clubs, and appear in pornography.

   Finally, I never mind when people comment. However, I have noted that many of your comments reveal an underlying lack of knowledge about the extent of violence against women here in the USA and worldwide. I think that any man who wants to weigh in on pornography, and especially any pornography viewer who wants to defend pornography, has an obligation to thoroughly educate himself on that subject before claiming that the objectification of women inherent in pornography as well as the many abuses of women known to be associated with pornography do not contribute to the cultural climate that has led the United Nations to declare violence against women a global public health crisis.

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   pattrice:
   June 12th, 2007 at 9:36 pm

   Those of you coming to this post via direct link from elsewhere may want to look at the original post on this topic, because I lay out the evidence for some of the findings that I merely reiterate here.

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   @:
   June 29th, 2007 at 12:17 am

   “I said that we know that many, if not most, of the sex acts depicted in pornography are, in fact, rapes.”

   The inference here that this (certainly existent, I agree) number equates a significant fraction of porn is just not true. (Although of course that is to say ANY rape whatsoever is significant, but you get the point.) And I think your response to Paul is belittling, condescending and dismissive. You’ve put him in an unfair logical loop. When the act of ever observing A is declared inseparable from the morality of A, then the question of whether or not A is moral cannot be based in any first-hand evidence, thus your suspicious win outright simply because they are suspicions.

   I’ve followed these reports and debates VERY closely over the last decade with the constant desire to self-question and find hidden evil in my assumptions and behavior. (To the personal): I am a young, ascetic devoutly anarchist male who hit puberty at an extraordinarily young age sealed in a completely female 2nd wave household. The only real connection to external gender roles I got growing up was being told (by otherwise good people) constantly that I was both the innately inferior gender and my natural state was oppressing women. (these days my sisters and I joke about just how utterly over the top my mother would be about it without realizing it.) Though today I’m more or less fluent in popular society and culture to the point where I’m always wryly making references when with friends, and whatever scarring of childhood abuse has long since been dissolved… I am naturally rather deeply aware of male privilege and all the little horrible nuances, at least more so than the vast majority of men and women. For example, on sheer personal moral principle I adamantly refrain from personally being the one to take any proactive step in a sexual or amorous relationship when with women. It just wouldn’t be conceivable in this world’s social context. That’s just the background to which I operate. And just given my childhood alone, oppression or power structures in any form are naturally pretty much the biggest turn off, if not puke-inducing, thing I can think of.

   But I look at “porn.” These days pretty much every night (that I’m alone). My body and my genetics are intensely sexual, medically my body has consistently generated an unusually high amount of hormones and the levels equated with puberty never really ended. Of course masturbation does not directly equate porn. But I think the distinction is fuzzy. What are you thinking of? I doubt nothing. Isn’t that impression, in a certain sense “objectification”? I think the distinction breaks down.

   There’s a website that asks normal people to send in images or videos of their faces (just their faces) mid-orgasm. That’s pretty much the most erotic thing I’ve ever seen. They do very, very good business.

   There’s a photographer who recently did a series of shots of normal women nonchalantly bare-chested, participating normally in everyday NY life (and at the bottom of each photo was printed interviews with said women). On the one hand it was obviously political, but on the other hand copies of it were extremely popular on porn sites. Why? I think it was because the photos were essentially selling the illusion of another, less restrictive world. That’s crucial I think. It was the creation and substantiation of a fantasy. In such a case the women were not being connected to as deeply contextualized individuals, but as data points to prop up a psychological & neurological state.

   Now that’s a complicated situation. Is it alright to watch a play that details a utopian world, not to enjoy the actors as they are fully fleshed people in real life, but solely to enjoy the illusion? (For the record, my pursuit with porn is pretty much for the illusion of the old anarchist holy grail of casual intimacy.)

   Certainly the context of patriarchy and sexual exploitation upon any graphical portrayal of sex is RATHER IMMENSE. But at the same time the only way we’re ever going to reclaim sexuality is by actually, you know, reclaiming sexuality. It’s telling to me that every single queer person I’ve ever met has been explicitly in favor of porn (although this is also a generation thing). The most passionate anti-patriarchy activists I know have all uniformly defended porn at the drop of a hat, and whatsmore, the conventional porn cranked out by the industry.

   I know three friends who, at one time or another in their lives worked in the porn industry. One a straight male anarchist who got tons of cash for gay porn, one a queer male-identified woman who did everything for the heck of it, and another a lesbian (although technically self-identified as queer) who did softcore and stripped for two years. (All activists, all anarcho-ish although the latter would debate the point.) None of them feel negatively about their experience. (Although, obviously, they had complaints about the industry those complaints were relatively mild and they generally agreed that the problems they faced were FAR better than a good number of jobs.
   “Everyone is bored with sex so they’re card-punchers,” was the constant summary. )

   I think that, in and of itself is something rather bad, but hey. Obviously the porn industry is evil. It’s an *industry* for christsake. We’re talking corporate capitalism where your body is a commodity. That’s never a good thing.

   But nothing I’ve read backs up the inherent horrors purported by your favored interest group.

   Sex slavery is a BIG, BIG issue. But it’s almost completely removed from pornography. The aggression by which anti-porn groups pursue former actresses for blood is legendary. If you lie you get money. A queer activist compared it to “ex-gays.” I’ve no doubt abuse takes place. (And come on, it’s capitalism, the whole thing is inherently abuse.) Most (over 90%) of hardcore porn actresses are approached at a club by some slimeball who extols their physical virtues for thirty seconds and then gives them a card. They show up, there’s testing and licensing (pounds of it in California where a strong fraction takes place), they do a shoot where nobody really cares, the boss behaves like all bosses, and then they get a stack of money. Those few who actually like sex come back for the rush, psychology and solidarity of fellow workers, (they make the big bucks because the VAST majority of watchers are watching for–what they, and our society unfortunately, see as–the fantastical myth of a girl enjoying sex without reservations) the rest do it for the money and then they leave with the same annoyances of any work-em to-burn-out job (plus the whole being up close with patriarchal realities for months on end) . THAT’s the porn industry. Abuse allegations utterly destroy small outfits and the large corporations sell a few select individuals as brands, consequently those ones have huge power.

   (By the way, porn shot by the industry is hideous and unbearable to look at. It’s clumsy and ugly and very obviously intended towards the same 1970s archetype of quantified sexual roles.)

   However, and I should note this clearly, the clear majority of pornographic photos in existence are homemade and go through a weird chat/p2p/archivesite circulation I don’t really understand. Mainly it’s just people trading images of themselves online for the rush and egoboost of positive feedback. (With a dash of scorned exes posting their hated other.)

   (Oh and both my summaries of the industry and the majority of amateur stuff were talking about hardcore porn. Softcore porn vastly, vastly, vastly outnumbers it, but these days is shot pretty tamely as regular models and photographers that fancy themselves artists. And it’s NEVER referred to as porn by those who do it. Only as “erotic-(noun)”. (I know a street fighting IWW organizer who moonlights as a model and she’s done such shoots because she just likes admiring her body.)

   So 99.9% of pornographic pictures and 99.9% of pornographic “models” are in no way related to what even I’d consider rape.

   And, as to all the mad digging Paul must have done to unearth those defenses of his obviously indefensible evil past-time. Hell, in the last four years the “porn reduces rape” academic study fest has been repeated endlessly.

   Eh… Now I’m more bored than annoyed. Hopefully taking this time to respond will help in someway. My flurry of typing stems from suddenly finding another smart anarchist blog only to see the writer seem to make a ridiculous turn and then be condescending about it. ‘No!’ I cry, ‘But we just became friends!’

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   pattrice:
   August 14th, 2007 at 7:49 pm

   @’s comment, with its allegation that feminists prey on sex workers and that former sex workers who have come forward to speak for themselves are lying, set my brain to seething. I wrote a long response, which I elected to save rather than publish. I then went to delete my comment spam, finding the longest, lewdest, most violent list of pornography links I have ever seen. None of them were surprising to me, as someone with first-hand knowledge of the sex industry, but they were especially upsetting in conjunction with this denial of the reality of pornography. So, I set the whole thing aside to deal with another day.

   Which is still not today.

   I will say, however, that I am and have been writing about for-profit pornography rather than the DIY pornography that @ seems to favor. There are still problems with that, of course, from the inherent objectification involved in relating to literally objectified rather than live people to the fact that battered women often are compelled by their batterers to perform in home-made pornography (and, no, you won’t see the violence behind the pictures in the pictures).

   And a piece of good news. I’ve been in contact with Diana Russell, who has consented to allow me to interview her for an online magazine. Since I know that she and other feminists are and have been for, not against, the women in pornography and have persisted in being good allies to them despite being denigrated and dismissed and misrepresented for 30 years, I am very grateful and happy about that.

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