"Is this power and freedom or a post-feminist backslide?"

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1526/5783040.html

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http://www.startribune.com/dynamic/mobile_story.php?story=5783040

link to The Male Gaze Checklist:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=229&topic_id=3488&mesg_id=3488


Liberation gone wild: Why are women exploiting themselves?
Is this power and freedom or a post-feminist backslide?

Kristin Tillotson, Star Tribune
December 18, 2005

<snip>

The overall effect is a sort of psychological plastic surgery on attitudes, one that places a higher-than-ever premium on the way girls and women look while at the same time narrowing the parameters of what constitutes beauty to an almost cartoonish standard. If today's independent woman can take or leave the male gaze, why do Olympic athletes at the top of their games pose nude in men's magazines? Why are a growing number of women paying thousands of dollars for the next frontier in body alteration, painful vanity surgery on their genitals?

<snip>

Levy said the most troublesome trend she observed was the effect that the mainstreaming of porn is having on teens and preteens. In video games and on MTV, glammed-up strippers and "hos" are featured characters. In 2003, girls between the ages of 13 and 17 spent more than $157 million on thong underwear. “The girls I talked to have this sense that it's about having big breasts, being as hot as possible, putting on a performance," Levy said. "They haven't existed at a time when 'ho' wasn't part of the lexicon, when feminism had a potent presence in the culture. It's been a punch line or a punching bag."

<snip>

For Levy, it's no surprise that an atmosphere in which pornography is being mainstreamed can thrive under red-state political domination. "Foreign reporters often ask me how it's possible that this is happening alongside such a conservative administration, and when 80 percent of the schools teaching sex education advocate abstinence-only," she said. "People vote for their ideals, and for many people that's different than their own behavior. If you have a repressive society like ours right now, we can all manage to turn our attention to gay marriage. If you have a country this panicked about that, you can't say we're libertine hedonists."

Eli Coleman, director of the University of Minnesota's Program in Human Sexuality, also sees contradictions in the current sociopolitical climate. "We can hardly talk about contraceptives in the schools and yet are being bombarded with these incredible images," Coleman said. "They need to be educated about the whole effect of oversexualizing bodies and losing a sense of what it is to be a person and feel good about themselves. There is exploitation involved, not only of the but of the viewers."...As she writes in the final chapter, her book is not about the sex industry. It's "about what we have decided the sex industry means ... how we have held it up, cleaned it off and distorted it. How we depend on it to mark us as an erotic and uninhibited culture at a moment when fear and repression are rampant."

because I've been thinking these things for a while now.

The whole issue is so confusing..repression and exhibitionism at the same time. I see so much of this dichotomy in my elementary classroom.

Thanks for posting this.

"...repression and exhibitionism at the same time. I see so much of this dichotomy in my elementary classroom."

Do you find yourself trying to help sort out some of the confusion as a teacher?

The simultaneous "repression and exhibitionism" feed right into consumerism and the planned obsolescence of fashion. Get them neurotic and trendy early enough and they're hooked for life....................... TV feeds the need.

As the article points out, this commodifies the young person's sense of self and replaces well-being and confidence with spending and pleasing others.

Give the above poster a cigar. Absolutely correct. Repression, fueled primarily by guilt and shame increases anxiety, lack of self worth etc, which then feeds into consumerism as a means to address and assuage these often uncomfortable experiences. Keep people thinking and feeling that they are inadequate and then tell them your "product" will "fix" them.

We are provided with the extremes in sexuality with no sense of balance between the two.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5623847&mesg_id=5623847 for a zoftig discussion of this...

"zoftig" or "foctup"?

The article and subject deserve an alternative less sensational.

newswolf56 (1000+ posts) Tue Dec-13-05 06:28 PM
Response to Original message

20. With all due respect, the poster (#11) who describes...
ancient statuary of the Goddess (and by implication all such iconography) as "quite possibly the paleolithic equivalent of the internet porn site" fails to recognize that "pornography" is essentially a state of mind, an attitude or rather an entire complex of attitudes. That one would argue Goddess-iconography and porn are equivalent also suggests dire confusion between the attitudes that result in "pornography" and the radically different state of shamelessness or freedom from guilt that anthropology has shown to be characteristic of many so-called "primitive" peoples.

Pornography is always a manifestation of sexual guilt (hatred of self fostered by the conditioning imposed by Abrahamic religion) and hatred of women and nature (the central element in the Abrahamic creed): the entire notion this world exists merely as a series of obstacles to be transcended on the way to "eternity" and is therefore but vile ensnarement. Depending on its content, pornography may express specific aspects of characteristic Abrahamic hostilities -- an ultimate example would be snuff films in which women are horribly murdered -- or it may attempt to express the sensuality forbidden by Abrahamic precepts and thus be an act of rebellion. It may also be a confused expression of both motives. Whatever, the defining characteristic of pornography is not its imagery per se; it is rather the fact that it is invariably a product of guilt and shame: a definition strongly implied by the related jurisprudence, especially the notions of "socially redeeming value" and "local standards." The ultimate measure of pornography's implicit shamefulness is the fact that while pornography may exist in public, its erotic functions are all carefully concealed, relegated to back-alley shops with suspiciously stained floors, dark theaters with damp seats, spaces sealed by locked doors, under mattresses, in computer rooms protected by drawn shades. Not only that; in many places these erotic functions are specifically prohibited, as are the images themselves.

The milieu from which the Goddess iconography emerged is almost certainly the diametrical opposite of Abrahamic society. Everything that is known about so-called "primitive" peoples suggests they are mercifully unpoisoned by sexual guilt: literally shameless. And with their psyches never mangled by Abrahamic creeds, their attitudes toward sexually charged iconography would therefore be radically different too. We are so far removed from that purity, and so savagely twisted by 2600 years of doctrinally imposed guilt, I believe that even our most sexually healed individuals can approach "primitive" sexual consciousness only by analogy. In this sense it is as the Zen masters say about describing enlightenment: like trying to describe water to someone who has never tasted nor felt nor even seen it -- and yet enlightenment, like original shamelessness, is "nothing special." Indeed I am not even certain we can describe it by analogy; perhaps we can only speak in terms of what such shamelessness is not: despite Abrahamic efforts to condemn it as evil, it is as organic as the tendency of a flower to open or a stalk to grow. It is not remotely akin to the moral imbecility of the sociopath; neither is its lust like greed or covetousness -- not the greed of the spoiled child nor the greed of the predatory capitalist -- for how can one covet that which one cannot possibly own?: that which therefore cannot be diminished by ownership.

Which brings me to my final summation of the distinctions: one may own pornography, but one cannot possibly own the Goddess -- even if one regards her as nothing more than a metaphor.

:kick:

In these times, mere survival is a revolutionary act.

I was so poisoned by Abrahamic religion that I'll never be a sexually whole person.

For some reason that old George Michael song popped into my head: "Sex is natural; sex is good." He was stating the obvious. It is like saying, "Water is wet." But in this society is was almost revolutionary to say it. I remember feeling shocked at the lyrics (old programming) while at the same time acknowledging that they were true.

"Oh but they LIKE being dragged by their hair....."

Heard Marvin Gaye "Sexual Healing" on the radio tonight. Marvin and Al Green heal, indeed.

:hi: :hug:

A good start toward healing will be appreciation that women's point of view is distinct and valuable and it EXISTS, instead of continuously hearing from men that they know what we should think and we should see it their way (sooooooooo last millennium :evilgrin: ) or sit down and shut up. (link above for "Male Gaze Checklist")

all along. I actually did my thesis in Grad School on this subject (roughly) - it was entitled "Christian Views of the Feminine and Female Body Image" and my thesis was that women have been taught to hate themselves, thier bodies and therefore do violence to themselves (eating disorders, plastic surgery, obsessing over beauty, etc.) or allow others to do violence to them (pornography, domestic violence, etc.)

The point is that our sexuality - both men and women - is so warped and twisted due to the centuries of indoctrination of Abrahamic traditions and it's attendant devaluation of women and the female body.

and the planet and Mother Nature

The aliens from Trafalmadore watched people gorging disgusitingly and wasting food since it was such a forbidden sin to waste. Point well taken.

consumed by the homeless down below, outside the windows?

Which story is that?

Was it "their porn" or "elitist privilege"?

"They haven't existed at a time when 'ho' wasn't part of the lexicon, when feminism had a potent presence in the culture. It's been a punch line or a punching bag."


"Women exploiting themselves" thread is HUGU!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111 How many there actually read the article?

::yoiks: :hi:

How we depend on it to mark us as an erotic and uninhibited culture at a moment when fear and repression are rampant."



...:hide:
:bounce::bounce:

on Saturday-- a whole row of them shellacked and painted like they were going onto the opera stage. From the article: "almost cartoonish standard beauty."

Quotes from smirkymonkey and wise wolf with permission-- Thank yous!

Dial up warning-- enormous (over 300 replies) thread on same article
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5623847&mesg_id=5627271

I completely agree.

Posted by smirkymonkey

Porn - whether run by a woman or a man - is not about female liberation. Nobody ever questions the fact that sexual relationships in a patriarchal culture are inequal in the first place - if women were truly liberated they would be able to have as sex as freely as men and to enjoy it, without fear of being censured for it. There would be no need for objectification if there was no power struggle regarding sexuality.
"Some feminist philosophers argue that pornography violates the moral imperative to treat people as autonomous, rational subjects. According to Alison Assiter, “the Master-Slave dialectic seems to capture the relation between people in pornographic eroticism. In much pornography, people, usually women, become objects for another … In the case of pornography, what happens is that the one person becomes a body desired by the other, but this is not reciprocated” (Assiter 1988, 65). To treat someone as merely a body for another's use, without recognizing that she too is a subject with desires, is to treat someone as a slave, as a subhuman creature or object, and therefore violates her dignity as a human being. Assiter explains that, for Hegel, “‘the Master-Slave dialectic’ is a phase in the development of world history — in the progression towards freedom of the ‘Spirit’ that controls historical change. In fact, the relation is disadvantageous both for the slave and for the master” (Assiter 1988, 65), for neither gains the forms of recognition necessary for self-conscious awareness and emotional fulfillment. Assiter also argues that “the role of the wife in marriage is very like that of the Slave” for the wife's social identity is subsumed by her husband, who holds social power, and thus she is not a social subject in her own right (Assiter 1988, 65).

Harry Brod argues that pornography harms men individually even while it augments men's collective power (Brod 1992, 158). Brod also employs a Hegelian framework and writes, “The female is primarily there as a sex object, not sexual subject (emphasis mine)if she is not completely objectified, since men do want to be desired themselves, hers is at least a subjugated subjectivity. But one needs another independent subject, not an object or a captured subjectivity, if one either wants one's own prowess validated, or if one simply desires human interaction. Men functioning in the pornographic mode of male sexuality, in which men dominate women, are denied satisfaction of these human desires” (Brod 1992, 154). For Brod then, pornography enhances men's political power over women, while diminishing the quality of men's intersubjective relationships with women, and thereby contributes to the loss of positive human interaction and self-realization. Brod also argues that pornography contributes to the commodification of sexuality, which enhances men's powers as consumers, although not necessarily their genuine autonomy and freedom."

Being anti-porn is not about being anti-sex, rather it is against the commodification of sexuality.

:evilfrown:

I was thinking about this issue at work. I know that manty here hate Andrea Dworkin, especially her words against porn, but in thinking about this issue I thought about her book Intercourse. While I understand why some would interpret this book as anti male, anti heterosexual sex, she does raise some good issues that might be pertinent here.
Men, in many cultures and especially this one, have a tendency to think less of women who they have sex with or see as a sex object, like a prostitute. Have men's attitudes changed on this? If men's attitudes have not changed on this, a girl or woman who dresses like a prostitue is not winning a man's respect. If most young women appear like prostitutes, does this diminish men's attitudes towards women in general?
Does heterosexual intercourse mean different things to men than women? Is this culturual or is it inherent biologically? For example, intercourse is something that happens inside a woman's body and to her while for a man, it happens outside his body that he does to her.
I think that we must answer these questions before we decide whether this is empowering. My opion is that men have not moved far enough past sexual woman=whore for the sexually provocative woman to be empowered. Sexual intercourse remains an act that culturually and biologically favors men. That is not to say that women don't enjoy sexual intercourse, but it remains an act that is more empowering to men than women especially with culturual baggage.

and your thoughtful post :hi: provides lotsa food for thought...........

Some common ground that was carved out in this thread and the other enormous thread on the same article, is the commodification of body image and the commodification of sex and sexuality.

Commodification and objectification-- which might be possible for DU to discuss without too much !!!!!!!!!111111!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"...a girl or woman who dresses like a prostitue is not winning a man's respect. If most young women appear like prostitutes, does this diminish men's attitudes towards women in general?"

"...have not moved far enough past sexual woman=whore for the sexually provocative woman to be empowered."

From the point of view of marketing, trends, fashion, branding, peer pressure, etc. -- especially when talking about very young girls and women -- the (unavoidable) prevalence of (overwhelming) LIMITED fashion, image and role model choices, is going to cause a lot of confusion, at the least. Dressing up to look like a victim before you go out; looking vulnerable, weak and unprotected; coupled with the whiny, strangulated voice affected by so many young women and girls, does not say "empowerment"-- it says "doormat."

First, to be clear, some of this is pure urban myth. The genital surgery thing, for instance. Anyone remember the stories about the "tongue splitting" fad? It's like that, or like the "sex bracelets on kids" thing: mostly urban legend puffed up by the media and reported as fact. If you actually looked up the number of women having genital surgery, I suspect you would find it's in the double or triple digits.

Likewise, the effect of porn is overrated. People have not stopped having sex in favor of pornography. Nor has porn--which has been around since fifteen minutes after we learned to draw--suddenly just now started destroying everyone's relationships. Some people have problems, but some people ALWAYS have problems.

All that said, yes, broad sexual disinhibition does lead to a kind of consumerization of sex. But that's kind of to be expected. Once you take something out of the realm of taboo and dust it off, you overuse it for awhile trying to figure out its place. Chalk it up to looking for comfort in sexuality during a time of fear, or whatever you like. But cultural attitudes come and go, and they're rarely so simple as to be buttonholed into a simple either/or scenario layed out by a story in the Star Tribune. Things will settle out.

From the words "First, to be clear" to "Things will settle out" this seems to be saying "Eh, whuts the big deal?" and "Fuggedaboudit."

Dismissing the cultural and societal and psychological impacts of the subject of the article doesn't make them disappear, except inside the minds of the those who want to oversimplify and flippantly REINFORCE all the effects under discussion, by pretending they don't exist.

Capiche?

The tone here belies the words "they're rarely so simple as to be buttonholed into a simple either/or scenario layed out by a story in the Star Tribune." "To be clear" the article never buttonholed cultural attitudes "into a simple either/or scenario." It brought up topics for discussion that, so far, hasn't happened yet.

:hi:

Imagine the scene: A male is walking down the street; it is late at night. There is only a streetlight and the moon. The male hears a sound, feels fear, keeps walking. The sound gets closer, the male walks faster. Suddenly, out of the shadows jumps a woman with a huge knife. She cuts the male's dick off, shoves it down the bastard's throat, stands on the prick's chest, and laughs. You then see a whole crowd of other women come out of the shadows, but not to help the male; instead, to laugh and enjoy, as the prick bleeds.

I love porn! Obviously, the only reason pricks want to keep this stuff from us, is that they are frigid, tight-assed pricks, or because they don't want us to have any fun. They should have fun at this too, because I said so.


If you notice the vicious hate directed at women on the other thread, going on and on and on, I think you will get closer to understanding the real motivator of their clinging to their products, pretending that it is "us." Notice the types of attacks and abuse they kept going back to, over and over. The pretense is that it is sexual and "visual," etc., and that the sensationalism and anti-social violence only "just so happen" to increase as it goes on, but if you just pay attention to the comments they make most often, you can pick it all up from the start. Their main theme the whole time was "You women are trying to tell us what to do, and fuck you--you aren't going to!" It was like the discovery--when criminal science finally admitted what feminists knew--that the most basic mindset of rapists was not that they had been abused, etc., as most had not, but that they hated and felt superior to women. They were extremely hostile bigots, and it was a hate crime. They also felt isolated in their minds, and were endlessly ruminating about their hate. If there are two things that sum up the male porno attitude, it is that they are alone--there is no "couple" here, as they pathetically pitch it--a male alone with objects, and that they have contempt for real women, are always criticizing them, and fantasize violence and humiliation. The porn attitude is that these are males selling bitches to other males.

I don't want to spend a lot of time on this depressing, oppressive topic, with the kind of horrible males who respond to these threads, except to refer to something I happened to read a long time ago, like early '80s or so. It was an extended magazine interview with the sex researchers Masters and Johnson, if you remember them. While they were giving their fake spiel about how all "porn is healthy" (all of it, regardless of attitude, apparently), Virginia Johnson mentioned a trend, just starting, that they had never heard of before. Women were being browbeaten by their husbands and boyfriends to do things they did not want to do, and felt humiliated and forced. As a result, they were starting to shut down emotionally completely, and to hate sex and their partners. All these things were from the male's porn, now being inflicted on the woman. I thought this was an absolute bombshell, and actually searched around the corporate prick's media for years before I realized that this devil would never allow such reality to become known. I have also read since, that this forcing the woman to imitate pornography, abusing her if she doesn't, has been the basis of many divorce actions I have read about. Funny, how it all gets censored--but of course, THEY never have to justify their censorship of our reality, unlike all the women on the other thread that was supposed to be "our" topic.

Another disgusting encroachment into all the remainder of life, by their media, has been the "pornification" of other types of programming, that once had its own content. The "forensics/crime" type TV series, fictional and real cases, is well known. All beautiful young white women, all raped and tortured, and now they even show the corpse's naked body on TV, just to amuse themselves. Is there no limit to these demons? It is reaching the stage where no woman can get on "their" media at all unless she "puts out"--have you watched even figure skating, for Christ's sake, lately? Why is almost every routine the male's idea of "sexual"? I agree that they are killing all of our minds and souls, and replacing it all with their hate, and their profit.

I do not agree, though, that it has anything to do with religion as a basis. Talk to any woman-hating pornographer, and they are just as atheistic as you are, on this thread. I am a Christian, and a feminist. Get up to date; you have to turn and face the enemy, and call it a male, and not hide behind these other, "safer," labels. You know who it is.

These things, as well as unwed/unplanned pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, etc., always increase during politically "conservative" times, because the entire message of public society is anti-woman and anti-feminist. I remember the unwed teenage pregnancy rate dropping during the liberal/feminist '70s, and rising again during the Reagan '80s to the highest level since the '50s. This is not surprising, any more than the United Nations discovery several years ago, finding a total correspondence in the world's countries between women's rights and availability of abortion. Where there were democracies with women's rights, there were safe, legal abortions available. Where there are women's rights, teenage girls put off pregnancies, because they can actually do things in the world, with their lives. During "prick," conservative times, they cannot, and what the male wants, rules. Face it or not, the statistics are always there. The teenage/unwanted pragnancy rate dropped again during the Clinton '90s, and are up again this decade.

People who have healthy attitudes about sex and about other people, do not like porn; this is one of the ways that women are oppressed. Now wait for the attacks.

stay out of the bedrooms of other consenting adults.

They don't try to tell other people what they can do with their own body.

They don't try to tell other people what they should read and view in the privacy of their own homes.

They don't make broad brush attacks on men in general.

What a bunch of psycobabble crap you peddle. You're so oppressed by something you don't even view. Go figure.

Yet again, the little twat accuses a woman of trying to "stop" you. Please quote me, as I never did any such thing. Yet again, you pretend that women are NEVER forced to do things they do not want to do because of selfish males, a stupid posture on your part on the face of it, especially as I referred to the findings of Masters and Johnson as early as the 1980s. Please do not play the little game of pretending to be oppressed, and that we are trying to "stop" you from doing anything. You were taken apart over and over on the other thread by people knocking down your phony attacks. Do you have no brain at all?

I never said you were trying to stop me. Appearantly comprehension is not your strong suit.

Oh, I never said that women were never forced to do things either.

".... I think you will get closer to understanding the real motivator of their clinging to their products, pretending that it is "us.""

Given the news of the day and the lack of control that most people feel in their lives and lack of power in their country, these redundant arguments appear to be an outlet for frustration. "YOU can't tell ME what to DO or NOT!!!!!!!!11" That's not even the point (telling anyone what to do) but it hardly matters if that frustration has people seeing red.

Heard on Thom Hartmann, a Rong Winger complaining about the "war on Christmas"-- a real pathetic whiner. The SAME arguments almost verbatim came out of him, about some people trying to tell him and his friends what they could do or not do........ I can't remember the paranoid lingo. Strange to hear the arguments of pent up Rong Wingers mimic identically the accusations spewed against those who bring up certain subjects-- accused of being like the Right Wingers telling em what to DO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111

(That makes no sense, which is why it sounds like it makes no sense.....) :evilgrin:

As far as I'm concerned any discussion involving porn needs to include what is happening in third world countries. I talk often to a co-worker who keeps up on Filipino politics. We were discussing this very issue. She was talking about the soul eating poverty of her country, and how, recently a little girl who was raped parents settled out of court. In other words, they sold her. Or how many Filipina's were going to Japan under the guise of "cultural dancers" When the law got changed so that the women actually had to have a certain amount of training as dancers, the women could no longer go, because they weren't dancers, they were sex workers. The women were pissed off. They needed to work, they needed money, and the sex worker industry was what was available to them in that particular economy. Filipino's sometimes go to the Middle East to look for jobs--NOT as sex workers. They get raped, they get killed. Nobody cares.

In America, where we actually have the option to debate or discuss issues of self-exploitation, pornography, body image, and the ultimate harm it can cause, we get silly neophyte porn stars in shows like Girls gone wild. The men and women involved evidently have no idea what a thin line between percieved sexual freedom and economic sexual slavery can be. In America, young women act out not only out of desperation as the article says, but confusion of what there sexual roles and how to present them should-or could, be. In America, we get porn apologists who want to defend the indefensible under the guise of the first amendment or sexual choice or sexual freedom.

In other countries, there is no debate. There are no options. Women, girls and little girls, and sometimes young men and boys are chattel and worse. There is no choice even, in labial surgury. We call it female cicumcision here. The major difference is, they sometimes remove that little part called the clitoris. There is no sexual freedom or enlightenment. It's a purely economic driven sex industry.

To me there is no separating world economics from pornography. It's a multi-billion dollar industry, and like other huge industries, the finer points of human behavior or even human lives don't matter.

Until human lives and human behavior matters to the industry, indulging oneself searching for the ultimate orgasm at the expense of a being who is nothing more than an assortment of performing body parts will always be repressive and damaging. In a patriarchal world, it's women who are going to pay the highest price.

Because it is so bad to let consenting adults have the ability to make their own decision about CONSENTUAL SEX.

Oh wait, it seems your point is - every time I sell a movie a girl is raped in the third world. What a crock.

It is about sexual choice, it is about sexual freedom. It's not about nanny statists telling other women how they should behave, on or off camera.

It's more about history, and economics. Take for instance, the first generation of Chinese women immigrants. Because of racist laws, and the political situation in China, almost all were prostitutes. It's a part of American history.
Take a look at the history of porn itself. Why was English 19th century porn based so much on Sadio/masochistic relationships with men always the controller? What was going on with sexual mores and values, as well as economics at the time in England?
Take a look at the history of womens rights. When were they allowed to vote? What employment opportunities were available to them, 30,40, 100 years ago? What is available now? Is there equal pay, for equal work, in the United States? Has the the Virgin/Whore sigma gone away in the minds of the American male? Is there a common ground, a sexual equality? A real one?

There is a very high price that's paid for hedonistic sexual pleasure. We are still a patriarchal world. Women are going to be paying that price.

I have friends into alternate sexuality. The clubs they go to have surprisingly strict rules about boundaries. "STOP" means stop. In this way, some of these sex clubs are more enlightened than say, your average college jock-type porn consumer, who is unable to form a sexual attachment to a women without regulating her to a sub-human status.

The abuse I describe in other countries is real, and it needs to be fought. American economics--not necessarily the porn industry is adding to the economic pressure in some of these countries. But the porn industry cleans up. An economic field day.
The American female has been fooled into thinking that unthinking sexual activity is sexual freedom. The American Male still calls the sexual shots as far as male demand to constant sexual access to women.

I think I understand the world you want, but I don't agree that it exists.

And American economics certainly affects the world (for the worse most of the time).

But I don't think you can single porn out as any kind of factor. Especially when it's made in the USA for USA consumption.

The American female has been fooled into thinking that unthinking sexual activity is sexual freedom. The American Male still calls the sexual shots as far as male demand to constant sexual access to women.

Personally, I don't judge others sexuality as thinking or unthinking -- and as long as it is between consenting adults -- I don't judge it at all. It just is. There has always been prostitution, and even if there was 100% equality, prostitution would still exist. The porn industry is just an extention of that.

As far as men calling the shots, if you asked most men I believe they would say that it was women who control sexual access during courtship.

And as far as your "friends" go (just kidding 'bout the quotation marks) -- in my experience, that is the rule at all the clubs. Women call all the shots in the swinging lifestyle, no means no -- and there is usually a burley bouncer to toss any guy who can't understand that.

If you had a link to your info about 19th century porn, I'd appreciate it. I've never heard that before. Most "french" postcards that I have seen are just nude poses.

Until human lives and human behavior matters to the industry, indulging oneself searching for the ultimate" PROFIT "at the expense of a being who is nothing more than an assortment of performing body parts will always be repressive and damaging."

Yup, the free market sorts it all out...........:sarcasm:

Even those who don't connect the dots from local/national issues to a global perspective, may understand that the same issues are involved: power and control. Having it or not. Pretty basic.

"The men and women involved evidently have no idea what a thin line between percieved sexual freedom and economic sexual slavery can be. In America, young women act out not only out of desperation as the article says, but confusion of what there sexual roles and how to present them should-or could, be. In America, we get porn apologists who want to defend the indefensible under the guise of the first amendment or sexual choice or sexual freedom."

Well said.

No matter where our opinions lie regarding porn, we can recognize (hopefully) the effects brought up in the article, especially on young people (both genders). The YOUNG wo/men involved need to have some idea (and education) about "what a thin line between percieved sexual freedom and economic sexual slavery can be."

Is when the only job you can get is at Walmart, who will only give you 24 hours/week, and so you need food stamps, medicaid and government subsidised housing to live.

Fortunatly, the adult industry pays much higher. I wish I only had to work 5-10 days/month like most porn stars do.

"Until human lives and human behavior matters to" ANY "industry, indulging oneself searching for the ultimate" PROFIT "at the expense of a being who is nothing more than an assortment of" WORKING/CONSUMING "body parts will always be repressive and damaging."