Posts by Russell Brown
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... reality based, intelligent, left wing progressive types who wince at the exploitation of a whale construct a mental fiction about the exploitation of often the most vulnerable young women in the porn industry ...
But is gay porn different? Is dyke porn (which has existed for a long time) okay if only lesbians look at it? If a suburban couple want to publish pictures of themselves for other such couples to get horny over, are they oppressing themselves? Is it different if a woman takes self-portraits and sends them to I Shot Myself? I'm just not sure there's one answer for all of it, or that the unusual things people do can never be consensual.
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I'm really uncomfortable with what seems like a growth in the "girls gone wild" type porn, when there's a pack mentality and also lots of booze involved. That seems pretty borderline consentual when the girls are often about to pass out.
The "Spring Break" thing? Yeah, that's pretty creepy - but then I suspect that kind of creepy behaviour existed before it made its media debut.
That touches on the element of real-life behaviour of young people in America. You've got one lot swearing chastity and the other arranging anonymous hookups via MySpace. Peaches Geldof (no, really) presented quite a good TV documentary on American youth and emerged from it clearly dumbfounded by both sides.
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Maybe what you meant was that actual feminist theorists with something to say about contemporary culture seem increasingly underground, because domininant media voices pretty much just mock them when they say perfectly obvious things like: 'Sportscafe is kinda dumb and sexist.'
If only the paper about Sports Cafe had been so, er, prosaic as to actually say "Sportscafe is kinda dumb and sexist" ...
As for saying "I don't buy either extreme of the argument" - yes, the reality is "prosaic" and variegated. That does not mean that the reality (of both porn and public sexualisation of women) is not deeply and inextricably embedded in power relations. Eliminating that analysis through characterising it as either side of a political-theoretic 'extreme', and relegating everyday manifestations of capitalism appropriating our mammary ducts to the 'trivial', doesn't do women any favours at all.
I'd have appreciated a better look at what young men and women do think about it though (rather than basically gasping but it's not like the 80s!), because there does seem to have been a gear shift in attitudes towards sexual display that doesn't answer to either pole of dehumanising/empowering feminist critiques.
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Personally, I don't think porn has very much effect at all, other than perhaps leading to a decline of imagination.
I think one valid criticism is that it's unhelpful if young men grow up thinking the sex they're going to have in the real world is like porn. For technical and emotional reasons, that seems likely to end in tears.
What I'm more interested in is why so many people have a problem with it. The 'pornification of culture' is just our generation's celebration of one particular kind of beauty.
Do you ever watch pop shows on music TV? Quite a few videos are aggressively sexual in a way I don't think is good for girls or boys. I wish that wasn't the case. Porn should keep to its own side of the fence.
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Hmm... if you are seriously implying that there is no political meaning (or point in finding political meaning) in the use of mostly-naked female bodies to sell consumer products (whereas using babies bodies to do the same is bad, m'kay, because you, like, had babies once, but not girl babies...) well, that's pretty bizarre, coming from someone who spent all that time in that emasculating feminist squat in radical 80s London.
But that was sort of the upshot of the story. Ruth Laugesen went on campus and seemed shocked that she couldn't find a lot of militant feminist theorising on the issue, least of all from the women's rights officer, oddly. What people, including the guys, did seem to think is that dressing like Paris Hilton was tacky.
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... no matter how much Russell hearts Suicide Girls (um, ew) ...
Er, should make clear I'm not like a regular visitor there. But I think Posh, the famous one who goes out with the guy from Digg is quite interesting. She has a life (as a Photoshop jockey), devises her shoots and even turned up in World of Warcraft.
All I'm saying is that I don't buy either extreme of the argument; either that porn is inevitably dehumanising or that it is somehow empowering. The reality seems more prosaic than that.
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Re Suicide Girls: the site is run by a fairly unpleasant man who exercises strict editorial control, and sells on pictures to hardcore porn sites without permission if the "girls" try to deviate from the script of happy, empowered harlotry. In other words, far from being a sex-positive affirmation of female something-or-other, it's Fanny Hill for our time.
It has multiple owners, including women, but it's certainly true to say that the gloss went off it with a dispute about the onerous non-compete contracts it presents to models. Some of their leading members walked and started other sites. owners tried, unsuccessfully, to sue several former models.
The Wikipedia entry only mentions one incident of pics being sold without permission, but there may have been others. Ironically, another focus for dispute was the owners removing fetish-themed material from shoots designed by the models that they thought might get them into trouble with the authorities.
I'm dubious about the empowerment-via-porn thing though - I think it loads a political meaning onto something that doesn't necessarily deserve it. But I still don't think SG fits the sweeping characterisation in the SST story.
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The Mint Chicks - christ, every band in every pup and SU bar in my yoof played like these guys, for better or worse, usually worse. 30 minutes nostalgia was enough, not enough safety pins or phlegm around for the true flahback kick.
I know a 14 year-old girl who'd probably fight you for that ...
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Nick said:
The thing that *really* gets me is that in 1986 (or thereabouts) the Homosexual Law Reform Act was passed on the premise that the State had no business in your bedroom, which I concur with. Now the worm has turned and the State is right back in your house and we have the Labour Party supporting this intrusion when in 1986 they were active in opposing it.
That is one thing I can't fathom.
Isn't the difference really very evident?
One is the domain of consenting adults. The other involves a non-consenting minor.
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If you wanted to get all sue-bradford-y about it you could describe my child as my prisoner: his location in physical space is mine to decide ...
Uh-huh. Just like, say, a criminal in prison, whose freedom of movement is determined by authority. But authority can have absolute power over the convict and still, in our country anyway, can't hit him for purposes of correction. You haven't really answered the question.
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