Mary Eberstadt is on a roll. A few months ago, she announced that “food was the new sex“, a conclusion I found historically inaccurate at best and deeply wrong-headed at worst. Clearly, however, our Mary has found what she regards as a fertile field; she’s back this month with Is Pornography the New Tobacco? (Since all good things seem to come in threes, prizes must go to those who guess the topic of her third installment. I’m tempted to write a first-century theological satire, based on debates among early Christians about changing purity laws: “Is Divorce the New Pork?”)
Like her food/sex thesis, Eberstadt’s suggestion that “Big Porn” mimics the earlier tactics of “Big Tobacco” seems alluringly insightful, but falls apart under scrutiny. She returns to her trope from the food-sex article by offering us “Betty” (a thirty-year old woman in the 1950s) and “Jennifer” (a contemporary thirty year-old) and contrasting their views on porn and tobacco.
Like many of her friends, and also like her husband Barney, Betty smokes cigarettes. She does so unselfconsciously and throughout the day — in the kitchen and most other rooms of the house, during her housecleaning, on the front steps, around the children, in the car, at the movies and in restaurants, even walking down the sidewalk. It’s not the sort of thing she gives much thought to, though when she does she sometimes feels conflicted. For Betty, the issue of tobacco may raise certain questions of expediency (she worries about the money she spends on it). She also wonders from time to time about its possible effect on her health, as people by 1958 are starting to talk about that too.
On the other hand, despite these occasional personal misgivings, Betty does not see smoking as a moral issue in its own right. It is rather, she believes, a matter of individual taste.
Jennifer, on the other hand, takes a similar stance on pornography:
On the one hand, like Betty, she does not think that this particular substance — in Jennifer’s case, pornography — poses any genuine moral issue. On the other, again like Betty, when she does stop to think about it she feels conflicted. From time to time, her boyfriend Jason has persuaded Jennifer into watching some together on the internet. On the outside, Jennifer goes along with this gracefully enough. On the inside, though, she is not so sure she likes it — more precisely, that she likes Jason liking it. One thing she is certain of is that Jason knows more about pornography than she does. She has more than once caught him unawares while he was watching it, and she’s overheard allusions to it among his friends.
Even so, and despite her occasional misgivings, about pornography as such Jennifer has the standard-issue generational opinion of her time. She is not a Kantian about it. She has her own personal likes and dislikes; she assumes everyone else does too. In sum, she does not think that pornography, when made by and for consenting adults, is morally wrong. She thinks it is a matter of individual taste.
Eberstadt is absolutely right that social mores change over time. This is not news. That which was unclean becomes clean; that which was permitted is now banned. (Think of the shift between the Torah and the New Testament on pork and divorce, for example, which I referenced above.) Of course, we have a responsibility to do more than accept social changes with a fatalistic shrug; we do need to be particularly critical about the ways in which our own sense of what is acceptable causes us to turn a blind eye to suffering.
I am no defender of pornography, as my archives on the subject will reveal. Like Robert Jensen, I am deeply troubled by much of what is produced as “mainstream” heterosexual pornography; I see evidence of tremendous misogyny and contempt for both women and men in many facets of what is commercially produced to arouse. I am sympathetic to the thesis that porn can be both harmful and addictive, not least because I am fully aware that it proved to be both in my own life. I don’t look at porn today for a variety of reasons, not least because I am aware that the way in which I used it has proved damaging to me.
At the same time, I reject Eberstadt’s Betty and Jennifer comparison. In both cases, there’s a curious absence of a willingness to consider female desire. Conceding that both porn and tobacco can be not only addictive but intensely pleasurable to consume, it’s strange that Eberstadt doesn’t note that Betty might smoke as much for delight as out of reflexive submission to a cultural norm. Similarly, Eberstadt repeats the common and questionable thesis that women only look at porn in the company of male partners, and that they do so less out of libidinousness or curiosity and more out of a desire to be pleasing. While there’s no question that many women do endure visits to strip clubs and long sessions of porn viewing with husbands and boyfriends, the evidence suggests (something Eberstadt concedes later in her article) that a growing number of women view pornography privately and take pleasure in doing so.
To the extent that Eberstadt is willing to consider that women use porn for reasons other than pleasing men or demonstrating their own cultural sophistication, she argues that this is thanks to the seductive marketing of what she persists in calling “Big Porn.” Long excerpt:
Most important, and also like tobacco yesterday, Big Porn today further explicitly links its product pitch to the image of the modern, liberated, cool woman. In The Cigarette Century, a Pulitzer-Prize winning history of tobacco cited earlier, Allan M. Brandt summarizes the campaigns to create female smokers as follows:
Smoking for women, in this crucial phase of successful recruitment, became part and parcel of the good life as conceived by the American consumer culture and explicitly represented in advertising campaigns. The effectiveness of these campaigns was heightened and reinforced by public relations efforts to create a positive environment for the new images. Together, the ad campaigns and the pr promoted a product and a behavior that now possessed specific and appealing social meanings of glamour, beauty, autonomy, and equality.
Similar invocations of “autonomy†and “equality†are pitched to today’s women by marketers of pornography. In fact, even before the birth of the internet, a previous generation of industry entrepreneurs was already trying to break into the female market using “equality†and “liberation†as lures. Thus Playgirl magazine, which debuted in 1973 as the first magazine for women showing full frontal male nudity, pitched itself to “today’s liberated, independent, self-aware, sensual woman.†Similarly, as a pornographic film producer told Time magazine in 1987, her movies “stressed equality and the idea that sex was for both women and men, not just men having sex with women.â€
In sum, women’s liberation has been used in the attempt to sell women on pornography in much the same fashion as it was used to sell women on cigarettes beginning almost a century ago. Feminists often echo this theme themselves in their roaming defenses of the newer product. No less an authority than Betty Friedan, for example, endorsed the book Defending Pornography by aclu President Nadine Strossen — with the notion that “free expression is an essential foundation for women’s liberty, equality and security.â€
No, Mary. Playgirl was, famously, for much of its history a commercial failure; it has now ceased print publication. A quotation, more than twenty years old, from Time doesn’t provide evidence that there has ever been a concerted campaign to connect porn use with women’s liberation on the par of, say, the Virginia Slims ads with their famous “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby” tag. And Eberstadt willfully misreads Friedan; her endorsement of the Strossen book was an attack on government censorship of pornography, not a statement of support for pornography consumption. Friedan, like a great many feminists, was troubled by pornography — but she rightly saw the proposed remedy of censorship as infinitely worse than the disease it sought to cure. Eberstadt ought to know better than to conflate those who see porn as a redemptive force for social good with those who see porn as problematic and anti-feminist, but nonetheless deserving of First Amendment protection.
And of course, there is no “Big Porn.” Indeed, the histories of the tobacco and adult entertainment industries reveal that they have developed in opposite directions. Over decades, the tobacco industry became increasingly consolidated in the hands of a few mega-companies like Phillip Morris; small “mom-and-pop” tobacco producers were gradually bought out and absorbed into massive corporations. In the 1960s and 1970s, a few big companies (Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler) produced much of what was sold in the porn industry; today, the spread of digital democracy means that anyone with a camera and an internet connection can produce and market erotic material. Indeed, the big porn producers are losing profits as more consumers figure out that it’s cheaper (not to mention more authentic and arousing) to view videos uploaded for free by one’s neighbors than to pay money for DVDs produced in the San Fernando Valley. The commercial porn industry is struggling even as porn consumption increases — and of course, nothing like that dynamic ever played out in the tobacco industry.
In the end, Eberstadt is right that one generation’s taboos become another generation’s customs. Broadly speaking, she’s right that porn and tobacco have shifted positions, at least in the minds of some. But while she’s right in her generalities, she’s sufficiently wrong in her specifics as to render her thesis essentially banal. And to the extent that social conservatives will seize upon her argument to suggest that the government ought to move against porn as it has moved against tobacco, Eberstadt’s thesis is less banal than dangerously misleading. As a former cigarette smoker and a former porn user, I accept the premise that both can be addictive. Of course, I was also addicted to illegal drugs and to compulsive exercise! The fact that two substances or behaviors are equally addictive doesn’t mean that they are equally pernicious.
To compare the irrefutable evidence of tobacco’s universal harm with the far more complex and nuanced impact of erotic material on contemporary society is silly; Eberstadt’s case is superficially attractive, but it falls apart under thoughtful analysis.
Still, I wait for her next installment.
Hugo, I haven’t been here in a while and am surprised that you have not posted about Susan Boyle. This phenom raises some of the issues that you write about. Que pasa?
I have nothing original to say about Susan Boyle. I liked this piece by Tanya Gold, and it said what I thought needed saying:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/16/britains-got-talent-susan-boyle
Given how little time I have to post, I try and avoid writing about what everyone else is writing about!
From the quotes you post, it doesn’t seem like a good analogy at all. The porn part is all about “Jennifer” being OK with her boyfriend using porn, not thinking is A-OK to walk down the street with porn, or peruse porn while doing laundry. Even in her own description the relationship between the hypothetical everywoman and the substance at issue (tobacco v. porn) is totally different. To the degree that it’s hard to believe she’s really saying anything.
Re: The fact that two substances or behaviors are equally addictive doesn’t mean that they are equally pernicious.
Are you kidding me? If I ever have a son, I would feel much less unhappy about him being a smoker than a porn addict. (And to make it clear, I don’t view non-addictive porn use as being morally OK; I would make it clear that porn was not allowed in the house, period, and explain why I felt that it was wrong).
Inasmuch as our views about sex, gender and relationships affect us spiritually as well as physically, and color the way we interact with other people, they are of even more moral importance than smoking. It’s true that smoking harms those around you too, and isn’t merely a self-regarding vice, but neither again is porn.
Hector, two scenarios for your son’s ride to school in the neighborhood carpool
a. Driver A smokes every day with the windows rolled up, your son breathing in second-hand smoke. Doesn’t use porn.
b. Driver B, a non-smoker who drives your kid to school in the carpool, masturbates to internet porn when he’s home alone.
You get to pick one of them to drive your son. Are you seriously telling me you’d rather have driver A?
Hugo,
Bad analogy. For the two scenarios to be comparable, Driver A would have to be consuming tobacco in the privacy of his own home. Most people can refrain from smoking tobacco for the duration or a twenty minute car ride.
But it’s the analogy that Eberstadt herself makes, Hector! That’s the whole damn point — her comparison is fundamentally flawed for exactly that reason.
Fine. Your daughter will work in an office where all of her co-workers smoke throughout the day; she will breathe second-hand smoke regularly.
Or, your daughter can work in an office where her coworkers surreptitiously look at pornography.
Which office do you want her working in?
Hugo,
Well, it would concern me more if my hypothetical daughter’s _intimate associates_ were looking at porn, instead of her coworkers. I do think I would rather my daughter be friends with a bunch of smokers than with a bunch of porn watchers.
But even given the workplace example, women do sometimes bring complaints against their coworkers for using porn at the office, and they tend to win those arguments. (And rightly so). So it would seem that some women at least, strongly dislike the presence of porn at the workplace.
Hugo, I’m not sure how original it was, but I commented on Susan Boyle here: http://open.salon.com/blog/lester_hunt
Wait – the Hoover Institution published something stupid? No!
For a feminist, Hugo, you’re awfully sanguine about porn. One would think that Christians and feminists, and especially Christian feminists, would not be fans of it.
Goodness, Hector, where have you gotten the idea I’m a fan of porn? Read my archives on the subject! I am troubled by porn, but troubled too by the way in which the experiences of many who use it and work within it are dismissed.
‘You don’t agree with me about issue X, therefore you’re a bad Christian.’? Really, Hector?
Also, Hector, even you should know better than to assert that there’s some ‘feminist’ position on porn. Ask four feminists about their opinions on porn and you’ll get five different answers. Or just send Mary Daly and Pat Califia into Thunderdome together, which would probably be about as productive.
Can I just say how tired I am of arguments against people that are made as “well, what if your daughter was doing X, dating X, or whatever-ing X”? It’s pretty condescending and I’ve been noticing it a lot lately, as if there ought to be a special concern over one’s daughters, but one doesn’t have to worry about one’s sons.
Well, Hector, as somebody who formerly “worked within it”, it’s amazing how fast my own experiences are dismissed by people who dislike pornography.
Re: It’s pretty condescending and I’ve been noticing it a lot lately, as if there ought to be a special concern over one’s daughters, but one doesn’t have to worry about one’s sons.
Well, gee, Nav, if you read my post you would notice that I started by saying that I don’t want my son to read porn. Hugo brought up daughters. And can I also say that generally when I hear the words “it’s pretty condescending” in any context whatever, I tend not to take very seriously what the person has to say from that point on. Paternalism is not a bad thing.
Most of my male co-workers also “strongly dislike the presence of porn in the workplace”. Whatever you think of porn at home, in the workplace? Who wants to walk into a co-worker’s office to ask a question and find them looking at porn?
Re: Who wants to walk into a co-worker’s office to ask a question and find them looking at porn?
Yes, Mythago. But the reason people dislike that is because they realize, intuitively, that porn is wrong even if they can’t articulate why. If porn was as morally neutral as baseball, then you wouldn’t have a problem if your co-worker was watching the highlights of last night’s game.
I don’t want to walk into a colleague’s office and see him or her shaving their pubis, either — and that’s a morally neutral act. The offense lies not in what is done, but that it is done in a place it ought not to be done.
I brought up daughters because I have daughters on the brain, for obvious reasons, not because I think girls need special protection.
Hector displays the common-amongst-conservatives inability to distinguish between ‘skeevy’ and ‘morally wrong’.
But the reason people dislike that is because they realize, intuitively, that porn is wrong even if they can’t articulate why
Uh, no, it’s because I really don’t want to know about my co-workers’ sex lives, or see them engaged in sexual activity. There’s nothing morally wrong about a married couple making love, but I hope even you would consider it inappropriate for a co-worker to have sex with his wife in the office.
Hector, it was a general statement, and yes, I saw your previous one. But it comes back to the same thing, you don’t want your son to do it, you don’t want your daughter to date someone who does it. That kind of makes hypothetical daughter sort of passive in the situation, eh? While I can extrapolate that you would also desire that the daughter would not look at porn, you used a different way of putting her in the porn situation.
//Uh, no, it’s because I really don’t want to know about my co-workers’ sex lives//
I’ve always thought that public virginity pledges by celebs fell into this category as well. I don’t want to know where they have OR HAVEN’T been.
Re: While I can extrapolate that you would also desire that the daughter would not look at porn, you used a different way of putting her in the porn situation
For good evolutionary biological reasons, I’m not worried about my future daughter, or any other women of my acquaintance, looking at porn themselves or on their own initiative. That seems to be an almost entirely male vice, and the sociobiological literature backs me up there.
hector: O really?
I watch porn, all by myself, with no dictates from men about the issue at all. In fact, there are a lot of women who watch porn or read very sexually graphic erotica.
And as has been said above more or less- there is nothing wrong with people having consenting sex. If I worked in an office would I want to see them having it? Not bloody likely. It’s a matter of social decorum in a professional enviornment, not ewwww, porn is EVIL!
Um, yeah. Women do look at porn. More than, like, zero. A recent British newspaper survey, while not the most scientific of methods, found that 66% of their female readers watched porn. A professor named Clarissa Smith has authored an academic-style book on women and porn and says not only do about 40% of women watch porn, most of them do it alone–without a partner. So for anyone who thinks porn won’t come up for his daughter as an individual woman–maybe should do some more research on the subject.
Lisa and Mythago,
My answer is, as Matthew 19:8 says, “From the beginning it was not so.” In other words, that isn’t the natural order of things, its the hash that WE have made of them. Women who use porn today, do so because society has taught them that the natural revulsion they feel, as spiritual beings, towards pornography is something to be ashamed of. And because it has taught them that if they want to be accepted as ‘cool’, ‘with-it’, and get boys to pay attention to them, they need to pretend like they like porn. So they do, and some of them even wind up convincing themselves they like it. But from the beginning it was not so. This horrible feature of today is one of the worst legacies of the cultural changes of the last few decades. if you defend it, you should be ashamed of yourself.
Parenthetically, I was just looking up a Danish study from 2006 on gender differences in porn consumption, and I was bowled over. Apparently almost 98% of young men have watched hard core pornography at some point in their lives. Is this serious? That’s really sickening. I may be a sexual sinner in other ways, but Im damned glad to be in that 2%.
Going back to the topic, I don’t see why defending porn is so evil while defending the production of cigarettes (or other tobacco products for that matter) is not. I won’t speak of whether or not pornography harms those who frequently view it one way or the other, but as Hugo said, it is just indisputable that tobacco smoking is bad news, health-wise. And despite what Eberstadt claims, it is FAR from being “nearly universally discouraged and stigmatized” in the United States, except maybe for Utah (and even there I might be wrong, having not been there for many years; I’m just guessing that the Mormon culture would tend to be correlated, at least slightly, with lower rates of smoking). Perhaps Eberstadt is confusing the fact that smoking is frowned up in certain situations (her stereotypical smoking household, or smoking in the offices) with some imagined persecution of smokers.
Simply put, I doubt it will ever come to pass that pornography becomes so acceptable that it actually becomes culturally expected practice to do things like viewing porn at work, or viewing porn with the kids. That is a good thing. Still, why do some people, like Eberstadt, seem to think it is such an injustice that smoking is now viewed as an unhealthy subject?
Hector: Nice of you to speak for women like that, on what they should find naturally revolting and all, or what they can be aroused by…sure, yeah, the watch it ALL for the men and to be liked.
Uh huh. How utterly condescending and misogynistic of you in ways uncounted.
Agreed, RenegadeEvolution!
Hector, my two cents is that it’s fine if you find pornography immoral. However, your previous post where you say that it’s against the natural order for women to like pornography… but it’s natural for men to like it… but wait, no it isn’t, it’s sickening… first of all, like Ren said, it’s misogynistic. Second, it’s really inconsistent…maybe it’d be best if you write out your posts and read through them again before posting them on a blog.
Re: However, your previous post where you say that it’s against the natural order for women to like pornography… but it’s natural for men to like it
I certainly didn’t say it’s _natural_ for men to like it, in fact I made the point that I was shocked that 98% of Danish men have watched porn. Watching porn is unnatural and immoral, for men as well as women. However, it’s a crime that men are more likely to commit (as are most sexual crimes) due to the fact that we tend to be weaker and less morally strong in this regard.
If you seriously doubt that women are less likely than men to be willing to indulge in casual sex, prostitution or pornography, then I’d suggest you look at some of the voluminous evolutionary biology literature out there. Start with the famous “would you sleep with me tonight” study on the college campus.
Watching porn is criminal? Oh my I think not. And the attitude of men as morally weak and women as moral gate-keepers? So very insulting to both men and women. Now, you can continue to ignore me Hector, but I’m a woman, I watch porn, and I sure as hell figure I know a bit more about the whys of that than you do, and frankly, no woman needs you deciding what is natural or non natural for her.
However, it’s a crime that men are more likely to commit (as are most sexual crimes) due to the fact that we tend to be weaker and less morally strong in this regard.
With regards to moral strength, speak for yourself alone and not for men as a whole, please. I, as a man, don’t view myself as morally worse because of my sex. With regard to actual sexual crimes (watching porn isn’t a crime), the fact that more men commit them has to do not with men being automatically morally rotten, but due to the fact that sexual crimes that victimize women aren’t prosecuted as often as they should be.
Why, Hector. Your usual faux reasonable-loving stance just popped a few cracks there, din’t it?
Going back to the topic
Yes, thank you, Ben. I’m not really in the mood for pseudo evo-bio pontificating just at the moment.
Eberstadt needs to publish to justify her salary, I suppose. Inventing “Betty” and “Jennifer” to puppet their way through her New Shocking Thesis. How conveniently their attitudes mirror one another. And how clumsily she hints that there are hidden dangers of porn, just like the dangers of cigarettes that Betty didn’t know about in the 1950s.
I dunno. See Kenneth Roberts “Northwest Passage”, “Oliver Wiswell”. Old historical novels. There are others of that era.
They usually involve at least one situation of imminent starvation solved by finally coming to an inn where they gorge on colonial-era chow such as…syllabub, whatever that is, sometimes including a recipe.
So ifyou couldn’t put in sex–vicarious from the reader’s point of view–you could put in vicarious satiation of another urge.
AFAIK, nobody else has ever made that connection. It’s terrific to be in front.
See, I like me some evolutionary psychology and studies of why we think certain ways and not other ways and our intellectual strengths and weaknesses. But Hector here is a sterling example of why that sort of thing gets a bad reputation. OMG, college girls are less likely to say yes to a night of sex with a total stranger than college boys? Must be evolution! Couldn’t possibly be socialization.
Plus, evolution made all boys exactly alike and all girls exactly alike (but completely opposite from the boys). It’s Oscar Wilde-esque how pop evolutionary biology confirms our beliefs about gender so neatly.
On a total tangent, the findings about primate social behavior (particularly bonobos) explain buckets about how humans think – our deeply-rooted sense of fairness and justice, for example, and our constant wheeling and dealing for status.
Now, you can continue to ignore me Hector, but I’m a woman, I watch porn…
Ah, but RenegadeEvolution, the sociobiological literature told Hector that women don’t watch porn. Why should he bother with the messy bits of listening to living, breathing women who say otherwise?
I think that shall be my response for everything now. “The sociobiological literature told me so!”
Hector, you remind me a bit of this guy I used to date. No one else’s experiences that were outside of his safe little box were real to him, and he used himself as a yardstick by which everything else was measured. Of course, thank GOODNESS you are in that 2% of non-porn watchers. Nevermind all your other self-confessed “sexual sins” – you are the upstanding non-porn watcher! Everyone else should be a little bit more like Hector!
“I watch porn, all by myself, with no dictates from men about the issue at all. ”
Not terribly often that I agree with Ren these days, but I fully agree with her here.
Hector,
You seriously seem to be utterly clueless about the opposite gender. Many women do most certainly use porn at some point in their lives. I consumed a great deal of porn for my own personal consumption before I became mostly anti-porn due to the heavy levels of misogyny prevalent in porn, in the industry itself, and in the mindset of many male watchers. Even my ridiculously conservative mother has used porn in her lifetime for her own personal consumption. While I have issues with the sex industry, they have nothing to do with believing porn is “immoral” or “unnatural”. There is nothing “unnatural” about porn or the fact that women consume it in increasingly large numbers. We are all sexual beings, Hector. It isn’t only men who have a sex drive. This is a fact of life that you seriously seem to have yet discovered.
“Now, you can continue to ignore me Hector,”
He has consistently ignored me, too, every time I’ve made it perfectly clear that I am a highly sexual woman.
“Start with the famous “would you sleep with me tonight†study on the college campus.”
The would you sleep with me tonight fantasy proves nothing. The study which you are referring to involved complete strangers asking both men and women if they would have sex with them tonight, correct? See, Hector, clearly you’ve missed this reality, but we live in a society in which women who say yes to sex are in very real danger of being viciously slut-shamed, raped, beat, and even murdered for daring to say yes. Men, on the other hand, only increase their social standing by having sex. This has -nothing- to do with biology, Hector. Biology is not the only factor which has an impact on social behavior.
Re: Ah, but RenegadeEvolution, the sociobiological literature told Hector that women don’t watch porn. Why should he bother with the messy bits of listening to living, breathing women who say otherwise.
Fine, B. Let me put it this way. When sociobiology was developed in the 1960s and 1970s, there was plenty of data to back up the contention that women do not use porn, and that this is a reflection of the fact that women are less tempted by casual and promiscuous sex. Now, it would seem that, at least in California and in Denmark, things are different now, and women do use porn. You can choose to believe that’s a good thing, and that women are now free to indulge their deepest desires. I wll continue to believe it’s a bad thing, and that society has encouraged and pressured women to corrupt and debase themselves in the same way that men have historically. That’s not progress, to me; that’s regress. Great job, all of you guys!
Since I’m not among friends on this blog, let me clarify that I think that sleeping with someone you met just that day, is wrong. Wrong for men, and wrong for women. The fact that women are less likely to do this, and less likely to be tempted to do it, is to their credit. And those who try to argue that women should be as promiscuous as men, are committing the sin of scandal, which is a grave sin indeed. We would all be better off if we didn’t sleep with anyone with whom we weren’t in an actual relationship.
Re: He has consistently ignored me, too, every time I’ve made it perfectly clear that I am a highly sexual woman.
Um, I consistently ignored you after you made it clear you had nothing but contempt for everything that I value. As the saying goes, if you’re not welcome in a town then you shake the dust of your shoes and go somewhere else.
Re: And those who try to argue that women should be as promiscuous as men, are committing the sin of scandal, which is a grave sin indeed.
OK, that was badly phrased, let me clarify again. What I mean to say is this “Those who try to argue that women should be as promiscuous as men are today….” In an ideal world, neither sex would be promiscuous, or use porn, at all. The fact that today too many men do, is an argument from trying to get men to stop, not for trying to get women to start.
“As the saying goes, if you’re not welcome in a town then you shake the dust of your shoes and go somewhere else.”
Hector,
You do realize that you are commenting on a feminist blog? If you find the establishment here so vile and contemptuous, why exactly do you continue to engage with all us horrible sinners?
“In an ideal world, neither sex would be promiscuous”
You mean in -your- ideal world, Hector.
“The fact that today too many men do, is an argument from trying to get men to stop, not for trying to get women to start.”
I’m actually all for fewer people using the porn that is currently on the market. I do wish that we could live in a society with sexual material which did not involve the direct exploitation of vulnerable women, and which did not involve abject misogyny, but unfortunately we do not currently live in that particular society. There is a small subset of porn which some people with a great deal of knowledge of feminism and human sexuality feel is friendly to women, but that subset of porn is very, very small…and all of it which I have seen has, unfortunately, had at least a small degree of patriarchal influence evident, to me at least.
“When sociobiology was developed in the 1960s and 1970s, there was plenty of data to back up the contention that women do not use porn, and that this is a reflection of the fact that women are less tempted by casual and promiscuous sex.”
What those studies found was that women in the 1960s and ’70s didn’t -admit- to watching porn. If you were a woman in the ’60s, you didn’t admit to enjoying having sex or watching other people having sex…not unless you wanted to be virtually ostracized from society.
Re: You do realize that you are commenting on a feminist blog?
You do realize, Faith, that your sentence above implying that all feminists like porn and free love? Hell, even I wouldn’t tar ‘feminists’ as a group with that broad brush; I think better of (some) feminists than that.
In response to your comment, I don’t believe that society is well serves when we we segregate ourselves into intellectual ghettoes of the like-minded.
“You do realize, Faith, that your sentence above implying that all feminists like porn and free love?”
Uh, no, Hector, it doesn’t. But feminists do believe in women’s right to have sex, or to not have sex, without being judged by men arrogant enough to declare all casual sex wrong. There are plenty of feminists who have a problem with porn. I don’t think you are going to find many who have a problem with “free love”, however.
“I think better of (some) feminists than that.”
Yea, it’s quite clear that you have a very high opinion of feminists. You just drip love and respect for feminists and obviously have a clear understanding of what we do or do not stand for.
“You do realize, Faith, that your sentence above implying that all feminists like porn and free love?”
Then why ignore a woman who is clearly not like-minded? Two women who are clearly not like-minded, as a matter of fact? Stating that you believe that we shouldn’t segregate ourselves based on beliefs and then ignoring two women who clearly go heavily against the grain of your beliefs seems just a tad bit disingenuous. And that’s being as polite as I can be. Many other feminists would likely tell you it just makes you look like a misogynist ass.
The last paragraph in my last comment was actually in response to this comment: “In response to your comment, I don’t believe that society is well serves when we we segregate ourselves into intellectual ghettoes of the like-minded.”
Faith is dead on above, in the 60′s and 70′s there were probably a lot of women who would never, ever admit to using porn because they’d be shamed for it. Or, hey, did not think of their sex-filled romance novels as “pornographic”. Well, women can now admit to porn use with slightly less shame, and gee, they do.
Hector, it is fine for you to have ideas about how the world should be, but do not for a second think that everyone else should feel the same, or that your ideas are even the correct ones.
When sociobiology was developed in the 1960s and 1970s, there was plenty of data to back up the contention that women do not use porn, and that this is a reflection of the fact that women are less tempted by casual and promiscuous sex.
Wrong-o. It’s a reflection of the societal injunction against *nice girls* either looking at porn or ADMITTING TO looking.
Sheesh.
Sorry. Old post, and everyone else covered it already. But honestly, Hector just has no sense.