Posts by Emma Hart
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Oh! I got a happy!
I read several US-based feminist sites, and I see a lot of women of different 'brands' bitching and sniping at each other.
As an antidote to that, here's Deborah and Ren in the same carnival.
And it has Whedonness as well. I knew this was better than housework.
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When it comes to free consent, you need to distinguish between formal freedom, and substantive freedom. A woman (or a man, but can we just accept that in this instance I want the female to include the male), may claim that she has freely consented, and may even use the words, "I consent to appreaing in pron / breast implants / whatever." But that doesn't necessarily mean that she has made an autonomous choice.
I understand this, believe me. Growing up very poor, I've experienced how particular factors can limit available choices. But I also know how 'set lasers to frag' angry this line makes Ren, because it, to her, implies that she is not capable of making real choices:
I understand there are a lot of anti-porn people out there. They have the absolute right to be anti-porn, I can even understand why people are anti-porn. I seriously doubt I’m going to change a whole lot of minds on that, and further more, right now, I’m not trying to. But there is something that I every time I read it, it not only upsets and annoys me, yep, sure enough, it stings.
It’s the blanket assertion that the women (all of them) in porn (all of it), are, in the course of filming porn, being raped. This bothers me for so many reasons. Chief among them, I really do think overuse of the word rape cheapens it. I really do. I think it’s an insult to women who really have been raped to liken what happened to them to what goes on with a consenting woman who makes pornography. It also is incredibly insulting and agency denying to the consenting woman who does make pornography. And no, I’m not saying that every woman in porn is there under ideal circumstances, but there are women who are. There are women in porn who truly choose to be there, even amid other attractive options. Women who really do have pretty level heads on their shoulders, who have educations, women who, aside from being in porn, are pretty normal and average in almost every other way. I’ve never been raped. To say I have been, that I am every time I shoot a scene, well, it’s not only incredibly insulting and yeah, hurtful and enraging to me, but I think its all of those things to women who really have been raped.
And I don’t think me asking people to remember that, to see that, is too much to ask. When a woman (no matter what she does for a living) says she’s been raped, I want to believe her. I don’t see why it is so hard when a woman (in any business) says she hasn’t been raped, she can't be believed too.
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(I actually squealed out loud like a little girl when I read that article last month.)
I have to actually LOL. I just squealed like a little girl as I read it just then.
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But I also don't see evidence of a clear causal relationship between the apparent correlation between the simultaneous rise in pornography (or accessibility of pornography) and decrease in violence against women.
Dude, I'm hoping you're agreeing with me, because twice now I've said it's not causal at all, and I don't even think it's correlative, just two things that seem to have happened over the same rough period of time.
Then there's the problems in getting accurate statistics on and reporting of violence against women, and the way this fluctuates over time.
Just to totally shoot myself in the foot, I've been trying to do research for a column on Australia's upcoming Total Net Filtering. But comparing rates of domestic violence and rape between countries is hugely difficult for just those reasons. "Yes, here in Qumar we have a total ban on pornography, and no domestic violence complaints at all!"
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No really, I'll get back to the pron now!
Ha, I love the fact that this may be the first time in history a thread has gone off-topic and STOPPED talking about porn.
I saw Metropolis with live piano in the Arts Centre back in the early nineties and it was strangely affecting, but being affected did seem to involve buying into the conventions. There are some very odd scenes in that movie.
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It seems to me that the statistics presented here show that there's not a clear causal relationship between pornography, behaviour and/or good/bad responses or practices. Consequently it seems to me that other factors must also be in play: eg social context, peer group influences, gendered attitudes the users are exposed to in their daily lives and other/mainstream media, type of pornography etc.
Yay! I agree with everything Carolyn just said.
Sexual and physical violence is a big fcuking deal to me, and that's why I get so tetchy about people mis-identifying 'cause'. Say you decided that 'rugby' fueled violence against women, and you banned it. It doesn't, so you'd have done nothing to alieviate the problem, AND you've wasted a lot of time, energy and resources that could have been devoted to actually combating domestic violence. AND you've removed from some women the pleasure they were getting from playing rugby, even though it's mostly something men do.
Wow my writing is deteriorating.
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Tangentially, it is very clear in quite a lot of mainstream porn that the women are faking their orgasms. That also weirds me out.
Oddly, I watched the trailer for Erika Lust's Barcelona Sex Project a couple of days ago, and it made me feel very weird, because it's clear that the orgasms, male and female, are real. I felt like I should be apologising and backing out of the room.
This is possibly why I prefer written porn. There's no worry about performers or the line between... simulation, and acting, and real pleasure?
Um. I can provide a link to that trailer, but I feel weird about doing so. It IS porn, but it also clearly demonstrates the difference between 'mainstream' chicka-wah-wah porn and modern femme/indie/goth/punk porn.
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So last year I got her a new machine and now all she has to do is sit down and turn it on; within a few seconds the grandchildren appear thanks to the magic of Skype. And it still seems almost unfair, that it should be so easy, that it should make us feel so close. Almost, but not quite.
Giovanni, that's lovely. That closeness-distance thing has made me realise what I wanted to say.
I got into the internet seriously when my kids were little and I was ill. I remember thinking just before I found writing boards and blogging that I was probably pretty much done with this internet thing.
The parenting boards and CFS support groups left me completely cold, but eventually I found a bunch of happy, relaxed, porny women with whom I felt comfortable. Given the way the net lets you drip-feed personal information, it was a while before I found out who was Republican, who was Pentecostal, who was four foot ten, who was twenty or forty or sixty.
But then there were the times when something went wrong, and it really smacks home to you how far apart you are. A friend's child goes into hospital, and you can't help look after their other kid or drop over food. Another friend is suddenly uprooted and moved to another state, and you can't help her pack or lend her boxes.
And the worst thing is when someone suddenly disappears. A few days pass, and you realise you haven't seen them. They don't respond to emails, they don't blog, they don't write, and you have no idea what happened to them. They're just gone.
Should I get run over by a truck, there's a list of people I've never met that my partner has to tell.
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Sorry, anjum, when I wrote:
There's an uncomfortable fact that some women really enjoy rough sex or 'degrading' sex, but it's still consensual sex.
I meant, in their own lives. Y'know, ordinary women. So do some men, and I mean being on the receiving end. The BDSM community just doesn't break down by gender, their are fairly even numbers of Doms and subs in both genders.
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In that you've finally found yourself discussing porn on an online forum? Yeah. Me too.
Come to the Dark Side, Andrew, we have porn and cookies.
I don't know what I think.
There are areas around this where I am just hugely conflicted. I'm more interested in people who find the whole thing complex and difficult than those that see it in stark black and white terms, either way.
Like breast implants. I hate breast implants (with the same caveats Craig put on it re cancer and transsexuals). I love breasts, I think they're great, but not if they look like missile cones.
But according to what I've actually advocated, if a woman makes a free, educated decision to get breast implants, isn't that none of my business? Also, I've never been in the position of sitting home being miserable because I thought my breasts were too small.