In
"Not the Fun Kind of Feminist/How Trump helped make Andrea Dworkin relevant again" (NYT)— which I've already written about today,
here — Michelle Goldberg writes something about prostitution and pornography that I need to break out into a separate post:
[T]he resurrection of Dworkin’s work and reputation is in some ways quite strange, because her contemporary admirers tend to reject her central political commitments. Dworkin, who’d turned tricks as a broke, bohemian young woman, wanted to outlaw prostitution and pornography, and in the 1980s she made an alliance with the religious right to push anti-pornography legislation. There is no sympathy for such a bargain in feminist circles today, where it’s mostly taboo to treat sex work as distinct from any other kind of labor.
In the comments at the NYT, some readers take issue with her. Among the most-liked comments is this, from a reader named Liz:
This article is false in that it’s “mostly taboo” for feminists to view “sex work” as different from work. Do your research — there are many of us (again, not the fun kind of feminists) who oppose prostitution as the exploitative, misogynistic, and violent system that it is. Pro tip: if your feminism aligns perfectly with what pimps, traffickers, and johns desire, it’s not so feminist after all. Dworkin is getting the resurgence she deserves.
And this, from a reader named Lisa:
Back in the 90s, as a young feminist, I thought Dworkin’s anti-porn stance was a ridiculous dismissal of women’s agency. Now, having worked with teenagers for 25 years, I see the damage pornography has done to young people’s sense of themselves as sexual people and to their ability to build sexual relationships. It’s so much worse with the internet normalizing the extreme.
Kids —boys and girls— are seeing hard core, brutal pornography long before they’ve even had a first kiss. Teenage girls seek to be aesthetically pleasing and fulfill porn-derived expectations without regard for their own desires or even comfort. Dworkin may have been a frizzy caricature in overalls, but she wasn’t wrong.
And this, from ML:
I was an angry feminist in the 70s. I'm a furious feminist now. I do not find this "hard to say."
My daughters' generation lives in a world that is far more sexually restrictive than mine, for this I blame pornography. Although Ms Dworkin could not have foreseen the rise of the internet and the pervasive availability of porn, she did see the root cause of the sad devolution of women's sexuality into no more than porn stars robotically performing sex acts scripted by men: "pornography eroticizes the contempt of women."
The now routine torturing of the normal female body for the sake of conformity to un-natural standards: breast implants, labial reconstruction, removal of all pubic hair were unheard of 50 years ago. The free and natural sex of the 1970s celebrated the beauty of the female body and its capacity for pleasure. Such freedom, such equality of pleasure could not last.
Who says you can't stuff the genie back into the bottle?
Posts
112 comments:
The free and natural sex of the 1970s was for men. For women, well, they were free to be used and abused by the men espousing "free" sexual behavior by women, which meant only no "cost" for the men using the women.
Let's ask Jeffery Epstein and Robert Kraft about this prostitution business. Good or bad? Should the law be enforcing morality? Ten Commandments?
I'd make a joke right now, but THAT'S NOT FUNNY.
Here we go with the lies.
Everybody's watching porn, including women. For those of you who don't think so, look around the room in a cafe and notice how many young women are sporting tats and hardware advertising their sexual kinks that they codified thru porn. Porn now has social communities.
The degrading aspect of porn is there, certainly. Another aspect is that men are seeing what women could do if they'd cease withholding to advance their social status and actually put out. The withholding, dead meat thing that so many woman now put out won't sell today.
The genie is out of the bottle, ladies. You have to compete in bed with women who will make themselves pretty and who want to have fun with men.
It isn't taboo to oppose prostitution and porn, but it's a lost cause. The genie won't go back in the bottle. We know how to digitize video.
We had a sexual revolution, and women lost. The sad thing is most women don't seem to realize it.
Two quick initial comments:
1. The picture of Andrew Dorkin in the NYT will counteract and negate 20 nude pictures of Raquel Welch.
2. The subject is interesting and important -- I do see young teens today totally bolloxed up in the dating scene, and perhaps internet porn contributes to this. But ditzy Michelle Goldberg is the wrong person to write about it. The woman is shallow and stupid. I'd rather hear from Camille Paglia.
Personally I think that books like 50 Shades of Gray and bodice ripping romances are at least as damaging as male porn.
According to today's academic feminism, all heterosexual sex is patriarchal rape anyway.
Another aspect is that men are seeing what women could do if they'd cease withholding to advance their social status and actually put out.
The heart of any Bond movie, BTW.
At their core it seems like third and fourth wave feminism are antihedonistic. Sort of like the old Temperance movement.
The "sex workers" union could have been such a great source of funding for Democratic Party campaigns.
Pornography is the solution to the one-night stand, not its enabler.
Pornography may be dispiriting, but it will never destroy women's essential selves like the cultural mainstreaming of abortion: "pornography eroticizes the contempt of women", but abortion fetishizes the contempt women feel for themselves.
Given the choice between breast implants and abortion, I would recommend the woman choose breast implants.
I saw the best women of my generation
destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the intersectional streets
at dawn looking for their angry fix,
abortion-headed spinsters
burning against the ancient heavenly connection
to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night…
I am Laslo.
In this debate re these three v Goldberg, I need a tie breaker.
Liz Kennedy's opinion is what I'd trust.
Or, as always on this blog, go w/ the rat's POV:
https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2018/10/06/emily-ratajowski-told-to-put-on-bra-protesting-kavanaugh/
IMHO.
OTOH, if we knew what these other three looked like, I could make an assessment sans other gals' input. Can't trust homely folks' POVs, they're biased.
Gay male sex culture is saturated with degradation... S&M and B&D cults, dungeon cults, excrement cults, etc.
A certain percentage of people enjoy degradation. Some of them are women.
What are you going to do about it? What kind of policing and censuring systems would it take?
The moral vacuousness and incoherence of leftist ideology shows most clearly when they turn against each other like this. We're going to see more blue on blue the next couple of years. Or in this case, blue on anti-blue.
The genie isn't going back in.
Query: Are the airbrushed Playboy Playmate Bunnies women or are they just actors playing fantasy roles for money that men will spend?
What about the actresses who use sex to advance their careers? They are simply "in kind" prostitutes and merely skip the money and go straight to what they want their sex act to buy them without the Benjamins. What about the feminist that didn't get the role because she did not consider selling her body for her career as an option?
90% of the shows on TLC, like "say yes to the dress" are more damaging to women than pornography.
There should be another Goldberg/Althouse bloggingheads thing-y.
Althouse really got her when Goldberg was asked to support her claim that BHO's first book was amazing literature.
Plus the aesthetics of dueling hair-helmets, one black one white, is appealing.
IMHO.
Back in the 90s, as a young feminist, I thought Dworkin’s anti-porn stance was a ridiculous dismissal of women’s agency. Now, having worked with teenagers for 25 years, I see the damage pornography has done to young people’s sense of themselves as sexual people and to their ability to build sexual relationships.
A conservative is a liberal who got mugged. Except she can’t figure out she’s a conservative. All of us will be dead in a hundred years except maybe Insty, and this will sort itself out. The wheels of evolution grind slowly and exceedingly fine. How many kids did Dworkin have?
In 1983, Dworkin published Right-Wing Women: The Politics of Domesticated Females, an examination of women's reasons for collaborating with men for the limitation of women's freedom. - Wikipedia
Methinks thou dost protest too much.
And, both like hamming up facial expressions.
I think this discussion dies on that odd paradox of feminism... sex toys and dildoes are empowering for women, but sex bots and porn for men will probably bring on the Apocalpyse.
For as much as most feminists complain about men objectifying women, they seem to objectify themselves an awful lot. There are endless articles with titles like, "Trump made women..." "The Republicans are forcing women..." "Men are harming women...". Maybe that is why they complain about objectification so much, as they see themselves as completely without agency.
their ability to build sexual relationships
Hostile workplace rules are the problem here. No flirting.
Dworkin looks like John Belushi.
"sex toys and dildoes are empowering for women"
Yur a total bigot!
What about pre-op trans women? Got no vagina and clitoris. So those items are symbols of oppression.
Even post-op, does the reconstructed vagina/clitoris "feel" dildoes? If not, associating that stimulation w/ womanhood is oppression for these women.
Arguments about what pornography has done to our our souls are very similar to arguments about what capitalism has done to our souls: Interesting in a theoretical, how-many-angels-can-fuck-on-the-head-of-a-pin way, but utterly irrelevant because pornography and capitalism are both here to stay.
Read porn if you must; don't watch it. It's smut after all, and has little redeeming value. It's a waste of precious time. If your brain has to process it by reading it, then some good may come from it. Would I outlaw it? No, but it sucks, and is degrading and exploitative, sort of like killing a cow to eat her. I would outlaw the killing of pigs and cattle, however. That's far worse.
Dworkin, who’d turned tricks as a broke, bohemian young woman earning her rent 50 cents a time.
The only immoral act in progressive orthodoxy is not being in total lockstep with progressive orthodxy.
It shifts daily, so don't etch your taboos in stone.
"Dworkin, who’d turned tricks as a broke, bohemian young woman earning her rent 50 cents a time."
Frankly, your comment sucks. Never disparage someone trying to survive in a cruel world. Never! You exemplify that cruelty as does the GOP.
Two days ago I published on my Dirty Dancing blog an article titled Dirty Dancing: Feminism, PostFeminism and Neo-Feminism. My article reviews a scholarly article, of the same title, written by Hilary Radner, a university professor of film and media studies.
Radner wrote, in a nutshell, that the movie takes place in 1963 and was released in 1987 and that this 1963-1987 interval contained a feminism that was (in my own words) severely critical critical of gender relationships. The movie audience in 1987 was watching the young protagonist behave herself with a 1963 "proto-feminist" consciousness.
That protagonist, Baby Houseman, still was reserved and mostly compliant in her interactions with the movie's male characters.
During that 1963-1987 interval, Andrea Dworkin published most of her books. In particular, Dworkin published her book Intercourse in 1987.
I don't recall whether Radner's article mentioned Dworkin, but I understand that Dworkin's severe, angry criticism of gender relationships was rather characteristic of feminism during that interval.
Anyway, Radner argued that the female movie audience in 1987 and the following years was basically over feminism of Dworkin's kind. Most young women had passed into a new attitude, which Radner called Neo-Feminism and therefore enjoy watching Dirty Dancing without criticizing Baby Houseman for being insufficiently feminist.
Here's my broad general, anecdotal take:
While in college (35 or so years), my recollection is that the vast majority of girls were attractive, healthy, good-looking and easy to talk with, date, dance with, and generate some romance. There was no internet. Life was good. There wasn't a stirring need for pornography, because the real thing was plentiful and available, and, most importantly, fun!
While in San Francisco (25 years ago, pre-marriage), my recollection was that the vast majority girls in North Beach Downtown, and the Marina were also attractive, healthy, and good-looking. The main dynamic, though, was developing our careers. If you had a job, a car, wore a suit, you were in the game. If not, girls were generally not interested in you. They had stress from work, too, and had no time for slackers or slobs. Again, there wasn't a big need for pornography, because young, professional folks -- now with jobs -- were coupling up (Kamala and Willie!). This was still before the internet and smart phones.
Today, it is amazing to me how slovenly the guys are and how thoroughly unattractive the ladies are. You take BART to/from San Francisco to Oakland, the girls look tired and ragged, and haggard, and the guys look like sloppy, leftwing idiots. You go to the UC Berkeley campus -- the ratio of attractive/ugly women is 1/10, whereas in decades past it was 7/10. Most of the guys, look like dorks, too.
So, I'm for anything (supporting porn or banning porn) that reverses this unfortunate trend.
Hotter girls in Walnut Creek & Lafayette area, though!
My 2 cents.
"I was an angry feminist in the 70s. I'm a furious feminist now. I do not find this "hard to say."
The reason I loath feminism so much is because people who are "angry" or "furious" all the time are so destructive that it is best to avoid interacting with them as much as possible.
Here we go with the lies.
Well, there they went with the anecdotes, which are even better than lies for propaganda purposes: anecdotes can be true, but they don't really mean anything.
How Trump helped make Andrea Dworkin relevant again.
That was not explained, but thanks to the power of Trump, rape is 1/5th as common in 2003 as in 1973, and continues to become even rarer.
@Bay Area Guy
I was resident in the Bay Area from 1971 thru 1977.
A golden era of heterosexual lust. This was before feminism had really dug into the women and before the adoration of gaydom had set in.
Everybody wanted to drink, drug and party and there were still a hell of a lot of heteros in town.
You could see the Hell that was coming in the mid 70s as the gay bacchanal began to collapse into the AIDS epidemic.
again with the kvetching. Almost nobody seems to understand we are in the middle of a multi-generational revolution in all aspects of sex and some eggs will get broken and seed corn eaten (fair and balanced). You got to go easy and enjoy the ride: humor, ridicule and sarcasm help as long as anger isn't the driver.
I was a feminist in the early 70's, being the first in my community to hold 'consciousness-raising' sessions and think pornography and prostitution are bad for women. And as a conservative Christian since I was 37, I believe both to be spirit-destroying careers and also harmful to society in general. However, I also believe it is a woman's personal decision. Adult women have agency!!! Unless they have been kidnapped [as some young girls have been] and literally forced into prostitution or porn, I don't believe it to be the business of feminists or even the state to declare them as 'exploited'.
How Trump helped make Andrea Dworkin relevant again.
I'll bet an honest poll would show that < 1% of the public had given Andrea Dworkin a moment's thought in the last 2 years.
The picture of Andrew Dorkin in the NYT will counteract and negate 20 nude pictures of Raquel Welch.
Andrea Dworkin waddled into a bar and the bartender said "Why the long guts?"
"Think of the woman who told a reporter, last year, about an encounter with the actor Aziz Ansari that she’d come to understand as sexual assault, though she didn’t describe force or threat."
It is lines like this from the article that scare the crap out of me about generic feminists. I know there was noticeable push back in the media from feminists who said this wasn't rape or sexual assault, but it is hard to tell the good from the bad.
where it’s mostly taboo to treat sex work as distinct from any other kind of labor.
No sexbots!
How do you ban the Kardashians and the rest? I don’t understand the look to be Barbie.
This is not a topic about which talking in universals is especially helpful, and where the adage that anecdotes are not data is more than usually apt.
@ST,
Yeah, the 70s were a little too crazy in SF -- Jim Jones, Harvey Milk, the bath-houses, the hippies, the druggies, etc, etc.
But the 80s and 90s were pretty good - there seemed to be a step-back from the brink, at least for the straight, professional folks.
Now, there seems to be many obstacles that vex the historically normal interactions between the sexes. Unpleasant, aggressive feminists don't help. The gender-bending doesn't help. The competition between the sexes doesn't help. Lotta unhappy, lonely folks.
This could be unique to Northern California, and not happening across the land, which would be great. But I'm glad I got married when I did.
I don't see how Trump has anything to do with this.
n 1983, Dworkin published Right-Wing Women: The Politics of Domesticated Females, an examination of women's reasons for collaborating with men for the limitation of women's freedom. - Wikipedia
Just because I can kill the spider, doesn’t mean I want to. I’ve limited my freedom.
I did vacuum a stink bug yesterday.
“Arguments about what pornography has done to our our souls are very similar to arguments about what capitalism has done to our souls: Interesting in a theoretical, how-many-angels-can-fuck-on-the-head-of-a-pin way, but utterly irrelevant because pornography and capitalism are both here to stay.”
“Would I outlaw it? No, but it sucks, and is degrading and exploitative...”
“I was a feminist in the early 70's, being the first in my community to hold 'consciousness-raising' sessions and think pornography and prostitution are bad for women.”
All three excellent comments.
“I'll bet an honest poll would show that < 1% of the public had given Andrea Dworkin a moment's thought in the last 2 years.”
True!
Isn't a prostitute actually exploiting a man's lust?
"Isn't a prostitute actually exploiting a man's lust?"
Depends if he paid more than the current market value.
I am Laslo.
"Back in the 90s, as a young feminist, I thought Dworkin’s anti-porn stance was a ridiculous dismissal of women’s agency. Now, having worked with teenagers for 25 years, I see the damage pornography has done to young people’s sense of themselves..."
Or... "Back in the 90s, I thought, 'oranges'... Now, having worked with teenagers for 25 years, I see 'apples'..."
Isn't she talking about two different things? Does a woman have agency in the 90s, then lose it in 2019? Because a NYT reader now sees the damage done by poor parenting, women must lose their freedom to choose? I'm no fan of Dworkin, porn or damaged teenagers, but comments like the above do not get at the heart of the matter and do more to confuse the issue.
Every generation of parents has many things to worry about and many things to keep their children from. And every generation has a percentage of parents who would seek to limit the choices of others in order to make parenting easier. Parenting is hard. Perhaps the zero-growth crowd should emphasize the utter frustration and thanklessness of raising a teen rather than harping on any environmental damage done by more than one baby per household.
Hey, as a member of the younger generation, I'd like to say, people still look good. What is this older gen criticism, nostalgia? Yeah, perhaps too many men wearing skinny pants. But lots of healthy, good looking people. visit your local gyms or athletic clubs.
And, note that people can still figure out how to date and get married. All of my friends are married and having children. Do you know how many baby shower presents I've had to buy in the last 5 years? We hosted a toddler Valentine's day party last weekend. Lots of kiddos, from 8 months to 4 years old. It's not as if people can't figure it out!
but...the internet does cause issues. It's horrifying to think about what young kids can access if parents don't know how to put security controls on computers.
Also: Prostitution & Porn. It's possible to be against both, but be wary of criminal law as a solution. The solution needs to solve the problem, not make it worse.
& I'm sick of call-out-culture. I don't care about some song from the 1940s or 50s.
“I'll bet an honest poll would show that < 1% of the public had given Andrea Dworkin a moment's thought in the last 2 years.”
True!
LOL, so true! Have I read Andrea Dworkin? nope.
But people do talk about porn & strip clubs, and what they think about it. No one wants a porn shop or a strip club in their neighbourhood, that's for sure.
I remember watching the documentary "Not a Love Story" back in the day. It starts in Toronto, where I have spent a chunk of my life. A somewhat naive narrator/director starts to discover how much porn there is in her corner store in a nice neighbourhood: colour magazines, with very little showing to the general customer. This is long before the internet. She makes her way to some hot spots in Toronto to see what is for sale, live or on paper as it were. Wow! She is in for a bit of a shock! Then off to Manhattan. Kazzam! Pow! Bash! (Borrowing from the old Batman show). She is inclined to think all these poor women are being exploited, then she talks to a woman who performs live sex with her husband. The woman says: working in an office was slavery; this is freedom. The last scene, as I recall, has a famous feminist (Robin Morgan?) with her husband/partner, asking why, why must men seek out porn when it hurts women. A lot of tears. I think feminism rests on an assumption that women will do better with their own bodies than they would have done in the old uptight patriarchal days. I would say maybe, maybe not.
Although wary of criminal law in some of these issues, I'm very happy when the criminal law prosecutes someone who is a predator that preys on underage children & engages in human trafficking and child prostitution.
R. Kelly has been indicted. Very happy to see that.
Bay Area Guy said...
While in college (35 or so years),...
Slow learner...
"My daughters' generation lives in a world that is far more sexually restrictive than mine, for this I blame pornography."
My fourteen-year-old daughter does not have tattoos, her hair is not dyed pink or shaved to the scalp, she doesn't cut herself or worry about food, she isn't on the pill, she does not dress provocatively, although she has her own sense of fashion, and, as far as I know, she doesn't have any connection to pornography. I suppose she's probably seen some, she knows how to use a computer. Oh, and she is completely ignorant of the correct technique for putting a condom on a banana. You see, she's home-schooled, and she reads a lot, which means she spends most of her time with intelligent adults.
If your children aren't criminals, don't send them to prison. Home-school your kids.
It's the combination of prostitution and trafficking that is horrific. & the trafficking of underage girls makes it all that more disgusting & horrific.
It looks like it's been a theme of posts today, but people aren't talking about it much. The assumption seems to have been prostitution where women are not children and not coerced or trafficked.
-Robert Kraft (Patriots owner) at that spa with trafficked women held a slaves.
-The Epstein situation & underage girls.
A certain percentage of people enjoy degradation. Some of them are women.
A LOT of them are women. I’ve seen reports that rape/S&M-type stuff is either the single most popular category of porn watched by women, or a close second to lesbianism. What could be more taboo for today’s smart young liberated woman than watching other women be forced into degrading, painful sex acts against their will? And taboos are where the titillation lies. Goes back to Sylvia Plath and “Every girl loves a a Fascist.” Or probably long before that.
"Kraft is accused of soliciting prostitution at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, where an investigation had found women were being held there in "sexual servitude."
Many of the woman at the spa were from China, and were not allowed to leave the premises, police said, according to the TCPalm.com news site. Police have already arrested multiple people accused of being involved in the business."
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/22/new-england-patriots-owner-robert-kraft-charged-with-soliciting-prostitution.html
"Kraft is accused of soliciting prostitution at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, where an investigation had found women were being held there in "sexual servitude."
Maybe Kraft need his balls deflated.
I am Laslo.
Humanitarian pornographers, producers, abortionists, and feminists.
"Martin County Sheriff says the women involved in human trafficking ring were given no days off. They averaged about 1,500 men a year. He says their hygiene was “minimal” at best @NBC10Boston"
https://twitter.com/PerryNBCBoston
He's a billionaire. This place charged like 50$ or something.
-Robert Kraft (Patriots owner) at that spa with trafficked women held a slaves.
-The Epstein situation & underage girls.
So, you're equating Kraft to Epstein?
Oh, no. Not quite.
You use the term "slaves" in the Kraft line, and "situation" in the Epstein line. One is a liberal donor, one is friends with Trump. I wonder which is which.
gahrie at 11:59:
According to today's academic feminism, all heterosexual sex is patriarchal rape anyway.
Since all leftism eventually results in autophagy, just wait until all sexual practices are classified as Matriarchal, Patriarchal, Transarchal, and so forth. That should happen just before medical science is permitted to reveal that all of today's gender-transitioning practices are analogous to the marvels of yesteryear's fashionable salvation, prefrontal lobotomy.
" You dont need 8 women Dworkin around you "
Maybe Kraft need his balls deflated.
I am Laslo.
LOL! :-D
no, I was commenting that Althouse had a day theme w/ prostitution and A. Dworkin and exploitation and Epstein and Kraft.
I thought she had posted on Kraft, but I was wrong. She's posted on Epstein but not Kraft. Althouse often does "themes" with multiple posts. I like to figure out the "theme of the day."
The theme seems to ask: Do feminists think prostitution is ok? What do you think of A. D. and her ideas that sex is exploitative to women & girls? & what do you do about the exploitation? Can today's feminists be against prostitution?
Kraft & R. Kelly haven't been posted on, but the themes are timely.
"Hey, as a member of the younger generation, I'd like to say, people still look good. "
Some look good. Many look like shit. It's a mixed bag in every generation. On the plus side, I have no complaint about six-pack abs (not something generally seen 50 or 40 years ago. Look at pictures of Paul Newman or Sean Connery. Fit, but not ripped in the modern sense) or a moderate amount of manscaping. I remember seeing guys on the beach in the 70's who had back hair a llama would envy. Women in curlers were also an eyesore.
OTOH, nobody thought it was attractive to have fluorescent hair, full body tats, ear gauges you can fit beer cans through, and so much hardware in noses, lips, cheeks and eyebrows that kids look like they've fallen face first into a tackle box.
More disturbingly, when I lived near a college campus a few years back, I thought many of the kids looked, well, just sort of wan and sad and timid, lacking the sort of boisterous joy that I've always thought of as a mark of youth. But that was my subjective judgment.
Now, get off my damn lawn!
"He's a billionaire. This place charged like 50$ or something."
How do ya think ya get rich? By wasting dough?
Duh.
wwww said...
no, I was commenting that Althouse had a day theme w/ prostitution and A. Dworkin and exploitation and Epstein and Kraft.
Fair enough. Apologies for being accusatory.
Browndog,
Epstein preyed upon underage girls. horrific -- called it the "situation" because it was shorthand for all of the illegal activities. Trafficking, rape, plotting to wrap other underage girls into the ring. Brought in other men to exploit the girls.
RE: younger gens & physical appearance. I was in Mountain View, CA a few years ago. Visited a company, restaurant, walked around. People looked good to me. Granted, I didn't visit Berkley, but saw a lot of people in their 20s & 30s in silicon valley. Ok, so some of the men wear hoodies. But not all. Mostly business casual.
I gotta say, I'm not a fan of the fashion & color scheme of the 1970s. Powder blue prom jackets. 70s ties. I'm not convinced that people in their 20s dress worse today.
Men want to marry debt-free virgins without tattoos.
So Ann are you a yea or nay? Do you want to ban pornography and prostitution? Step up and show me wrong.
Howard,
"Almost nobody seems to understand we are in the middle of a multi-generational revolution in all aspects of sex and some eggs will get broken and seed corn eaten (fair and balanced)."
Humanity will survive. But you (the current owners/operators, and natives, of the USA) won't. There are only so many eggs to break, and you are gobbling up your "seed corn" at a tremendous rate. The end is in sight.
You certainly can laugh, even if you are shortly expecting your end. But it wont put off your end.
Dworkin was just another bizarre cultist typical of any system approaching decadence.
You are not marrying, forming families, reproducing, raising children in stability and socializing them to be responsible and productive and, especially, fertile. And the "best" people least of all.
Dead ends all over the place.
I wouldn’t outlaw prostitution for the very same reason I wouldn’t outlaw abortion. It requires an intrusive state to maintain the restriction. The same goes for free markets, the security, spying, and punishment apparatus it takes to stamp out free markets almost guarantees that a Stalin will end up at the head of it. It gets to the point that there are so many criminals, the price of a bullet is all you can afford for each one.
Were it legal, there would be no need for sex slaves.
tim in vermont said...
Were it legal, there would be no need for sex slaves.
If it were legal, it would greatly reduce the demand for slaves. But we will not ( and should not ) legalize child prostitution.
Tim in Vermont explains: I wouldn’t outlaw prostitution for the very same reason I wouldn’t outlaw abortion. It requires an intrusive state to maintain the restriction.
But prostitution is [or should be] between consenting adults. Abortion is the murder of an unborn human being with absolutely no say in the matter.
What the hell is with all the bicycles demanding the fish act better?
Laws are meant to enforce social norms.
Long ago, society decided a woman should not offer sex for money, and men should court women in a proper way. Sex should occur within marriage. We've gone form sex outside of marriage is legal, to normal, bordering preferred in short order.
Prostitution is detrimental to the family unit. I fear the fight to preserve it is lost.
Howard is a little bit right, even if buwaya wants to disagree that the West is the corn that will get eaten and lost.
Yes some things never change and yes yes to think that it can ever be frozen in amber is foolish and yes yes yes one generation's hubris is the next one's chortle but .... there has never been in history a time like this - that is to say: with so many oldies still around to pester the younger ones about their own days of revolutionary thought and idealized perspectives.
Until the 21st century it used to be a pyramid so that while you may have heard a little from a few in the over sixties cohort, you weren't inundated with their continued world view by their sheer greater numbers.
The pyramid (in the west) is gone and to think that the shift in balance hasn't had a profound impact on how people in their 10s or 20s behave or think about anything - including sex...
(I leave aside the tech and the pill and the horrid "population bomb" scare that is now gospel. Because when you want to compete with the academics, you got to be bloody single minded and make everything fit your ragman theory)
That all said if you don't like heterosexuality and you really don't like men, don't go on YouTube and sing along with Tammi Terrell "Two can have a Party" set to dancing from Hellzapoppin. Life's too short
“Pro tip: if your feminism aligns perfectly with what pimps, traffickers, and johns desire, it’s not so feminist after all.”
That’s called Clintonian Feminism.
“Humanity will survive. But you (the current owners/operators, and natives, of the USA) won't. There are only so many eggs to break, and you are gobbling up your "seed corn" at a tremendous rate. The end is in sight.”
Ah the purveyor of doom and gloom again. The Phillipines will end long before the US will.
Of course Buwaya won’t discuss the sex trade in the Phillipines or it’s booming market in prostitution. The Phillipines has no major issues, no ISIS, no terrorism, no crime, no sin, only good Catholics, eh? He’s too busy trying to convince you people that our country is ready to implode, he loves his self appointed role of fear mongerer.
Prostitution And Sex Tourism In The Philippines
Maybe some people should take a look in their own backyard.
You are not marrying, forming families, reproducing, raising children in stability and socializing them to be responsible and productive and, especially, fertile. And the "best" people least of all.
You quite simply have no idea what you’re talking about. The American upper middle class leads Leave It to Beaver lives, getting and staying married at the highest rates in American society. The problem is that they won’t preach what they practice.
Earnest,
You aren't seriously proposing that the American UMC has an above-replacement total fertility rate, are you?
"Isn't a prostitute actually exploiting a man's lust?"
Depends if he paid more than the current market value.
I am Laslo.
Prostitution and porn reduce the market value of fulfilling male lust. Makes sense that a feminist primarily concerned with female empowerment would look askance at them. OTOH, despite what someone posted above about prostitution damaging the family, the institution may actually help preserve marriages by offering a convenient outlet for satisfying lust. The most interesting thing I learned about Karl Lagerfeld this week is from his quotes about sex and love. He never slept with people he loved including his long-term boyfriend because love can last but sex can’t. He slept only with high-priced escorts, and recommended that others do the same if they could afford it—porn for the plebes who can’t afford prostitutes. There’s something very romantic in how he cherished love.
We need to teach teenage boys and girls how to date again.
For boys, comb your hair, wash your car, put on a nice shirt, dump the Iphone, and INVITE the girl out for a nice dinner, where you drive and pay. Then, go to a movie, and see how the vibe plays out.
For girls, pretend like you need to attract a nice guy, who may one day get a decent job. Y'all know how to dress up nice and look good, you just don't do it enough these days.
Let me put this out there:
Proposition: after millennium of push and pull between the genders, Chivalry, the nuclear family, monogamy and strict divorce laws, with the wife as homemaker ("There was a time when women could go to the bank and take money out. We could just HAVE IT. We didn't have to work for it! And all for the small price of having sex with our husbands once a month.") was the best deal that women ever had as human beings.
Of course Feminism destroyed that because Andrea Dworkin married poorly.
Gosh, what a tragic turn of events that would be. A very good, healthy, stable lifestyle for everyone involved was overturned because Steinem and Dworkin got butt hurt in life and took it out on all of humanity.
But that depends on if you believe in the UnGreat Woman Hypothesis or just Mass Movements in history.
I don't see why a woman can't be a Feminist and anti porn and anti pro. But then again, why can't a woman be anti- abortion and a Feminist?
That being said, what is the titillation of porn? It is to do 'taboo' things.
So back in Bay Guy's Halcyon days, having sex with a 'non wife' was 'taboo'. Seeing naked people was 'taboo'.
Now? We have horribly ugly feminists marching around nude. Where is the titillation of seeing a tit these days? ("They have orange juice ads with lesbians and dildoes.")
So the only direction of 'taboo' is...vile and demeaning. Shameful in ways.
Porn these days is not sex positive but IS taboo.
This is not Hugh Hefner's porn.
But...men are raping less. They tend to demand MORE from women...and women aren't exactly happy about Hummers, much less Anal, Role Playing, or Bondage, (See Aziz)
That quip of "We had a sexual revolution and women lost" was pungent and true.
This does not mean that men won.
For all the damage that porn did, essentially normalizing acts that used to be only in the provenance of highly paid hookers with substance abuse problems, I would like to see Feminists add the damage THEY did to 'normal sexual relationships'.
They eschew all responsibility in that regard.
“Proposition: after millennium of push and pull between the genders, Chivalry, the nuclear family, monogamy and strict divorce laws, with the wife as homemaker ("There was a time when women could go to the bank and take money out. We could just HAVE IT. We didn't have to work for it! And all for the small price of having sex with our husbands once a month.") was the best deal that women ever had as human beings.”
IF your wife loves you she’ll have sex with you far more than once a month and not in payment to you for supporting her. Some women even work outside the home and STILL have sex with the husband they love. No one has to “pay” them to do anything, it’s voluntary.
FIDO: I'm sorry you married such a dud.
And, BTW, if you think that managing a household and taking care of children is a gravy train, try it sometime.
If you click the link, you will see it was a BBC comedy sketch which is pungently...evocative.
Unlike some parents and spouses, I tend to avoid outing my household dynamics. She is not your concern nor are my comments reflective of my personal life.
And yup, I have managed a household just fine. Didn't say it was a gravy train. I suggested that Feminism did not offer more actual happiness and 'advancement' for women in any regard as a debating proposition.
Women are getting less sleep.
Women are unhappier.
Women are having fewer children.
Women are showing higher amounts of dissatisfaction across the board since the 70's.
What happened to make such broad changes in the 70's?
Teaching dissatisfaction and anger is not exactly a difficult task. It is the stock in trade of Feminism since forever.
And just to note: Porn and Prostitutes have been around since forever, ever since the Venus statues from 10,000 B.C.
Inga is of course not responsive.
To indulge in some Spenglerism -
For the record, it won't be Filipinos or Spaniards that will replace the Americans.
The first lot is very far away - If the Philippines were attached to the US as Mexico is, it would be another story, but there is the entire Pacific Ocean to protect Inga from them. The Spaniards are in an even worse way, demographically, than you are, and they never liked coming here anyway. And the Filipinos, on average, are not up to filling your shoes.
It won't be the Mexicans because as a mass, on average, they also aren't capable of filling your shoes, nor of taking power in their own right. And they are suffering a demographic collapse of their own. And they will be just a part of the mix that will be the mass.
The Americans, the proper ethnicity, are rapidly dwindling both in numbers and as a proportion of the US. The immigrants and their descendants are being brainwashed to be - something else, and they have been intensely propagandized with hate for your dwindling remnant, and disdain for your culture. Or at any rate, for any of its higher pretensions.
The question is what group will take over as your elite, and your middle class, as those die out. Its hard to speculate, as per that old business of "events, dear boy, events". But at the moment it seems that it will not be too long before you have a mostly-Asian elite, drawn mostly from the upper fractions of both China and India, ruling over an extremely heterogenous mass drawn from the entire earth, neither of which will have anything like a national consciousness nor much interest in or sympathy with the remnants of what you were, not the remaining people nor their history or myths or philosophies.
The United States, at that point, will be, not exactly just a geographic expression, but something entirely different, and without, probably, even the category of a higher culture as that is a condition that cannot survive the grinding wheel of the lowest common denominator, and whatever you leave to your replacements will be regarded as both arcane and irrelevant.
Everything that you have made or written and read and laughed or cried over will be pulped and deleted. There will be no Moby Dick or Casablanca or Emerson or Gettysburg or Midway or Babbit or Topsy, no Poe or Mark Twain (he is disappearing fast), no cowboys and no Indians(feather), no Longfellow or Dickinson, not even Woody Allen. And they certainly will be singing something other than "The Star-Spangled Banner" (can you imagine them understanding the context of that?) at whatever they come up with for a professional sport. Probably it will be proper football (soccer).
The future, as always, belongs to those who show up. And there are no consolation prizes for those who don't bother to try.
The model, as always, is California. This is the condition of the rest of you five or ten years forward. It is a deceptive vision of course, with a facade of glitter, with something quite different behind it.
This all is the result of a vicious struggle between the white castes, high against the middle, both of which are losing.
This could have been avoided, partly. Some of it is the inevitable result of technology. Its easier to move, and its easier to know how and why to move, and its easier to seek better pay and also, for the counterparty, lower labor costs. It is natural arbitrage. Men have been remolded by their own inventions for thousands of years.
But the worst of it, and that which could have been prevented, is that devil-inspired education that your elite caste has inflicted on everyone, destructive of your myths and history and culture, intended to deracinate the minds of both the natives and the immigrants, and moreover to foster difference and hate between them. This is the main front of the caste war.
The model, as always, is California. This is the condition of the rest of you five or ten years forward. It is a deceptive vision of course, with a facade of glitter, with something quite different behind it.
buywaya made me think of the following -- here is the Wiki version:
"The Day of the Locust is a 1939 novel by American author Nathanael West set in Hollywood, California. The novel follows a young artist from the Yale School of Fine Arts named Tod Hackett, who has been hired by a Hollywood studio to do scenic design and painting. While he works he plans an important painting to be called "The Burning of Los Angeles," a portrayal of the chaotic and fiery holocaust which will destroy the city. While the cast of characters Tod befriends are a conglomerate of Hollywood stereotypes, his greater discovery is a part of society whose "eyes filled with hatred," and "had come to California to die." This undercurrent of society captures the despair of Americans who worked and saved their entire lives only to realize, too late, that the American dream was more elusive than they imagine. Their anger boils into rage, and the craze over the latest Hollywood premiere erupts violently into mob rule and absolute chaos.
The Day of the Locust; the Lord of the Flies. Add Kafka's cockroach and we are almost there.
I am Laslo.
You aren't seriously proposing that the American UMC has an above-replacement total fertility rate, are you?
You're only twenty years late to the party!
What are you going to do about it?
Spread and foster love, dignity, and encouragement wherever I can, in order to do my little part to counteract Satan's lies that we are all worthless and deserve to be degraded.
He never slept with people he loved including his long-term boyfriend because love can last but sex can’t. He slept only with high-priced escorts, and recommended that others do the same if they could afford it—porn for the plebes who can’t afford prostitutes. There’s something very romantic in how he cherished love.
Yeah, I'm sure that will sell well amongst the normals.
Hey hetero ladies and gents, who wants to exclusively have sex with prostitutes so that your marriage can be a chaste partnership for, I dunno, antiquing and walking the Lhaso Apso?
Karl Lagerfeld wasn’t attempting to carry on the species in any way.
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