During countless classroom discussions, boys have told me that from a very young age, they have been taught that for a "real" man, sex is about the aggressive conquest of female bodies and scoring with as many of them as you can. While these ideas have long been around, they are more socially sanctioned now than ever before.
So what happens when individual risk factors become societal norms? And when pornography, because of its ubiquity and availability, effectively becomes sex ed?...
[Girls are] feeling depressed and worthless as they realize that real-life translations of porn don't make them feel sexy or powerful at all, since the sexual personas they're trying to emulate have been created by - and for - men.
January 2, 2011
"Perhaps that sounds to you like an archaic feminist assertion - the kind of thing that hip women no longer say."
Rachel Henes — a social worker and "youth violence prevention specialist" — takes up the anti-pornography cause:
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71 comments:
2 & 5 is not an option because . . . ?
How about she's a complete fucking idiot? The first line of the article:
I was recently speaking to a colleague who just found out that a close female friend of his was date raped.
Her precious article starts out with an assertion of rape based on a hearsay conversation.
And, after that, you want us to pay attention to the dumb bitch?
Ah, she's caught on to the old "sex cures pimples" scam. I'm sure Freud never intended his thoughts to be simplified in that way...
Our society actively ridicules men who are gentle and express sensitivity about sex...
Somebody is only seeing what they want to see. How does she explain Justin Bieber and Twilight? Or cougars? Or female teachers raping their male students?
She needs to stop being a feminist and start being a human being.
..boys have told me that from a very young age, they have been taught that for a "real" man, sex is about the aggressive conquest of female bodies and scoring with as many of them as you can. While these ideas have long been around, they are more socially sanctioned now than ever before.
Was Darwin a prude? I suspect so.
I blame social Darwinists.
I'm always surprised how often adults forget that other people, especially children, simply tell you what you want to hear.
Repeating their own talking points back to them gets more praise from the grown ups than arguing with them. Then, once the adult is mollified, the children can go back to doing what they want without thinking too hard about whatever it was the adult was pestering them about.
"2 & 5 is not an option because . . . ?"
I knew if I gave combination options, I'd get criticisms like this. That's why I normally don't do it. You want every permutation. Just pick the one that's closest to what you think.
My mom sends me youtube videos with women on roller coasters and their tits coming out of their shirts.
Is that weird?
I can't get enough of women's tits on roller coaster videos. I think they are the funnest. I love watching them bounce, and sway side and side, falling out and seeing the women try to get them back in their rightful place.
(the other kev)
Be careful, Rachel. Those windmill blades may not seem like they're fast, but they'll hurt you if you're not careful.
Our society actively ridicules men who are gentle and express sensitivity about sex...
Fifty thousand Cosmo articles about how to land the 'Bad Boy' are totally blameless, of course. Woman and men make stupid mistakes when it comes to love and/or sex. Unless you're advocating frontal lobotomies in kindergarten, that's not going to change.
I like the link below the article about how XXX DVDs in Iraq show increased security for the area.
Pornography -- diverse meanings in a diverse world.
1 and 5 are slightly ahead as of right now.. meaning the problem is worst than we thought.
Take away everybody else's porn.. and just leave mine alone ;)
I recall watching the late, notorious anti-porn crusader Andrea Dworkin in some documentary on TV. She was her usual bombastic self about how pornography promotes rape. But a very striking moment came later in the film when Dworkin said that she believed there were rapists out there who never would have become rapists if they'd never been exposed to pornography.
What struck me about that statement was the way Dworkin delivered it - in a softer tone, tinged with what I took to be a trace of uncertainty.
And then it dawned on me. Of course. Andrea Dworkin needed to believe that there is direct causation between pornography and rape. She had to believe that it's possible to take a boy or young man without sexually violent impulses and turn him into a rapist by exposing him to porn, because without that cause and effect, her life's work would go down the tubes.
Of course, for militantly anti-porn feminists, porn can't be a symptom of a sick psyche - it has to be the disease itself.
Word verification: anandexa.
The women are laughing up a storm during the entire episode and as a result I do not find it as exploitive as it may sound.
They are having fun and their tits seemed to be happy.
If their tits are really big they can go over their head on an upside down roller coaster.
I wonder if this is a Crack bait..
Maybe a wee-bit ;)
The factual basis of this article is an accusation of rape heard at third hand.
This rape may or may not have even occurred. The writer may have made it up for dramatic purposes. Wouldn't surprise me.
So, what do you have here?
Absolutely nothing.
Yes, Althouse, Against Our Will was, indeed, an influential book.
While these ideas have long been around, they are more socially sanctioned now than ever before.
And her peer-reviewed systematic study to prove that to a 95% confidence level is where, exactly?
Oh. So all she's actually saying is that an idea that's been around a long time is still around. She doesn't really know that it's actually becoming more sanctioned, she just feels like it is. As a result, she cannot actually say whether the rise in availability of pornography over the last fifty years has worsened or improved the situation.
She peddles the old "porn leads to rape" bit, but there is a lot of material that too much deadens male interest in real women. So, too much really is a bad thing.
That said, the real issue is the cheapening of sex across society and porn is just the tip (glans?) of the iceberg.
Why in this day and age are we talking about what feminists think about?
They are cult with wierd and arcane beliefs that will evenually die out because they don't reproduce.
Like the Shakers.
And they don't even make good furniture.
Everything looks like a box.
So to speak.
They used to run a radio PSA that claimed that 180,000 women in the Baton Rouge area have been raped or sexually abused. There are only about 400,000 people in the area my guess is about 200,000 are women. How do they come up with this crap?
I's one aspect of the problem, but easily accessible porn on the internet nowhere near defines and explains the problem. To me the single biggest contributing factor is the lack of a mature and strong father in the home. Boys AND girls need that. Blacks AND whites.
In my peak porno consumption years, porn consisted of pretty women photographed with most of their clothes off. Bob Guccione took the daring step of photographing the pubic hair of women. People thought the world would end. There was perhaps a slight uptick in masturbation, but the gears of civilization continued to mesh. The women who were photographed went on lead lives that for the most part did not end in early death in a cheap whorehouse, and the men who ogled them, while perhaps a trifle disappointed by the banality of married sex, did not become lechers, libertines, or rapists. Just as reading great literature does not give us great souls, the consumption of trash does not lead to depravity. More's the pity. There's this to be said for prudery: it pays proper respect to the elemental force of sexuality.
Althouse, my comment was a lighthearted jab more than a pointed criticism. Too many permutations spoil the broth.
I'm sick of hearing that men and women aren't different at all, except that women are superior in every way.
"Hip women" -- what a telling use of phrase.
After Chesterton:
Give me the drain-pipes of the Puritans rather than the pan-pipes of the feminists; the drainpipes have a nicer smell.
William said...
In my peak porno consumption years, porn consisted of pretty women photographed with most of their clothes off. Bob Guccione took the daring step of photographing the pubic hair of women. People thought the world would end. There was perhaps a slight uptick in masturbation, but the gears of civilization continued to mesh. The women who were photographed went on lead lives that for the most part did not end in early death in a cheap whorehouse
Don't put a lot of money on that one...
PS She does try to hit both sides of the coin, as it were. The sexting thing is as odious to her as porn's effect on men (though Gloria Steinbrenner and her crowd probably would have applauded if it had been available in the 70s). I'd ask where was the idea that men were supposed to respect women, but stripping away that respect was one of feminism's major goals.
See how it empowered women?
[Girls are] feeling depressed and worthless as they realize that real-life translations of porn don't make them feel sexy or powerful at all, since the sexual personas they're trying to emulate have been created by - and for - men.
>>>
I have to call BS on this one. Men, in general, are not all that happy with the skankification of our womenfolk, and find ourselves in the awkward position of trying to convince our lady friends, relatives, coworkers, etc that hey, you know maybe acting a little more like a lady would be a good idea.
'Easy' women are fun if you never have to talk to them again but for anyone you are interested in seeing more than once, its really just kind of sad.
@Peter You pushed my button!
@Trooper Because it was in The Daily News.
"... sex is about the aggressive conquest of female bodies and scoring with as many of them as you can."
I'm still trying to figure out what is objectionable about either one of tehse goals.
My girlfriends seem to have their most intense orgasms when I am aggressively conquesting them - very hard and repeatedly. Conquesting the fuck out of them.
They've told me this is the hottest kind of sex that we have.
And a million years of human biology urges men to have as many sexual partners as their situation and abilities permits them to have. This ensures a viable, healthy gene pool and has many positive effects on the human race.
So, I'm having a hard time getting worked up over what Ms. Henes is alleging.
And not for nothing but the FBI disagrees that more access to pornography is leading to more rapes. In fact, fewer rapes are being committed in the United States every year.
In 2009, the number of forcible rapes was estimated at 88,097. By comparison, the estimated volume of rapes for 2009 was 2.6 percent lower than the 2008 estimate, and 6.6 percent lower than the 2005 number.
The official government data (which are merely estimates of the number of rapes ... and not actual reports of real rapes) suggest that there are, in fact, fewer rapes as access to internet porn becomes more prevalent.
These are claimed rapes and claimed attempted rapes ... not actual arrests for rape. More rapes are claimed than actually occur because it is possible for women to lie about being raped. There were only a little over 21,000 arrests for forcible rape in the United States in 2009. Those are also estimates. Unfortunately, the FBI can only provide estimates because our government is so fucking dumb it cannot even manage to count the number of people it arrests.
Best estimates are reported rapes and arrests for rape have fallen continuously as the prevalence of porn has increased.
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/arrests/national_est.html
There seems to be a sizable fraction of women who have no sense of the purely visual as a source of sexual stimulation. For such women, male use of pornography must be mystifying, like colors to a blind man.
Remember when Prof Althouse posted the NYT story on how female physical sexual response didn't sync up with their mental response? I thought one major problem with that experiment was that it depended on the women responding to purely visual stimuli, as if they were men.
I bet if you repeated that experiment, except instead of showing smut, brought in the woman's favorite athlete or rock star to flirt with her, the physical and mental responses would sync up 100%.
WV: zonstate In middle english, bordered on yon state.
New Ham says: My girlfriends seem to have their most intense orgasms when I am aggressively conquesting them - very hard and repeatedly. Conquesting the fuck out of them.
Your hands can have orgasms? Amazing!
Everything else aside, this is yet another woman who denies that women are sexual beings.
The shocking thing to me is the willingness of pretty young girls to do porno flicks when they are completely unaware of how they will come back someday at an inconvenient time. A model posing nude is a lot different from making porno movies.
Most men enjoy pornography once in a while. When I was in college 50 years ago, my fiancé's sorority sisters wanted me to set up a movie projector and a skin flick so they could see what it was like. I set it up and made myself scarce so they could see what boys were interested in.
Dan Savage, a couple days ago:
At this point I'd be much more interested in reading, say, a thread on pessimism and porn or communism and porn or fems-'n-gism and porn. Anything but another feminism and porn thread, please.
"Your hands can have orgasms? Amazing!"
This is how the left debates. Personal ad hominem when the facts diverge from their preferred narrative.
Pr0n is prevalent only because women are willing - even eager- participants in the production of it. Without their aggressive participation it simply wouldn't exist.
The world's oldest profession is not journalism.
There are approximately 150,000,000 women living in the United States and about the same number of men - and 65% of them have access to the internet ... arguably the world's largest porn distribution system.
And yet there were only 88,000 reports of a forcible rape or attempted rape in 2009. That means less than 0.000586667% of women claimed an attempted or actual rape (and many of these women were lying).
We've licked the rape problem - but take a look at the explosion of women shooting mirror pics of themselves and sending them over public telephone systems.
If we have a problem - it's the perverted sexual behavior of young females who seem to want everyone to see their vajazzled vajayjay's.
The young male produces a million sperm a day, the female one egg per month and feminists know that the indiscriminate male urge is based on a wrong thought or idea.
"Everything else aside, this is yet another woman who denies that women are sexual beings."
Everything else aside, this is yet another woman who can't stand it that her husband Matt is looking at internet porn because Rachel is boring in bed.
2 and 4 is not an option?
Does anyone here know of any lives that have been destroyed or significantly damaged by pornography or lechery? I know of many lives that have been altered for the worse--some even ended-- by overeating, drinking, drugs, and even driving too fast. So far as sex goes, I know of a few busted marriages and that's about it....While a certain amount of poverty absolutely guarantees misery, wealth does not insure happiness. Likewise with sex: while repression leads to neurosis and all sorts of unhappiness, sexual freedom ends just as often in banality as in ectasy.....We have such high hopes and such grand fears concerning sex, and they all come to meh in the end.
Porn is still smut.
Wv: chestful - I kid you not!
You know in 1969 women were all about free love and what not.
Porn is still smut.
One man's smut is another's treasure.
Joe said...
Everything else aside, this is yet another woman who denies that women are sexual beings.
The Lefty reply. Being sexual doesn't translate for a woman into being promiscuous (or a man, for that matter). The Lefties know one of the Demos' most reliable constituencies is single mothers. Pushing irresponsible sex as "empowerment" and "liberation" helps keep the Demos supplied with reliable voting blocs.
"You want every permutation."
NTTAWWT.
"Porn is still smut."
Good porn is still smut.
FIFY
Maybe we should flip things around a bit. All those trashy romances in the super market? Female porn.
Males are visually oriented, esp. when it comes to sex. Most of us may drool, and maybe mentally undress, that winsome female that comes into our field of vision. But, that one is quickly forgotten.
Women, on the other hand, are more influenced by the emotion, but much of that emotion is non-beneficial to their long term well being, in our more complicated society.
Much of that female porn teaches that it is great for a woman to be swept off her feet into bed with inappropriate men. Not something that you want your daughters following.
That sort of female porn teaches being overwhelmed by ultra-masculine guys - somewhat the same sort of guys that are being blamed for all these troubles.
So, women should logically run from this sort of male dominance behavior. But, they are programmed to respond to it, because the genes of dominant males are better than for the non-dominants. And, they are programmed by their reading matter, and what they see on TV. And, so, they respond positively, not negatively, to these male traits.
This appears to be a much more complex issue than the good/bad on/off switch.
I had a marketing client a few years back who made most of their money from clothing (or lack thereof), toys and video sales. As long as discretion was assured the target audience of most likely purhasers was onlhy 60:40 m:f.
just saying that this isn't a simple subject.
EVELYN: Porn empowers women.
JAKE (stares at her, charged with anger, slaps her): I said the truth!
EVELYN: Porn is rape!
Jake slaps her again.
EVELYN: Empowerment!
Jake slaps her again.
EVELYN: It's rape!
He hits her again.
EVELYN: It's empowerment, it's rape....
He belts her, knocking onto the sofa, sobbing.
JAKE: I said I want the truth.
EVELYN (almost screaming it): Porn is rape and empowerment!
WALSH (dragging him away from the scene): "Forget it, Jake -- it's Feminism."
Does anyone here know of any lives that have been destroyed or significantly damaged by pornography or lechery?
Yes. One man who became obsessed with it to the exclusion of everything else. He lives like a drug addict but without drugs, just porn. His wife left.
How does date rape fall in here?
Well, what is it? Why wasn't it a problem until fairly recently?
Part of it, I will suggest, is because females are putting themselves in positions that they shouldn't, partly next-day regret, and partially not taking responsibility for their own behavior.
Back when I was the age that this is relevant, everyone knew the rules. There was some danger with a girl making out with a guy, more danger the longer it went on, etc. And, after hours of trying, when the girl quit saying no, she was essentially saying yes. Her actually saying yes before the act would flag her as a slit, etc., unless she were involved in a long term relationship with the guy.
So, what do we have now? There are a lot of young women in college who binge drink - it appears that while the males may drink more during the week, and therefore overall, it is the women who drink the heaviest and get the most blasted at the parties (on average, etc.) And, yes, that is where a lot of the "date rape", etc. occurs, after they hook up with someone after getting blasted by binge drinking. Either they are so drunk they can't say no, or they have next-day regrets.
And, so, why do all these girls and young women binge drink, then hook up, etc.? One author has suggested that this is a way for them to be sexually active, without thinking of themselves as sluts. And, yes, the other girls thinking that of them too.
For hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years, males have been genetically programmed to take whatever booty they can. Not just mammals, but birds too. And, likely other types of animals. And, all of a sudden, they are supposed to tell willing females "no", because the female's consent may not be fully, 100%, adequate. She may have had something to drink, she may have read a romance novel that day, or have been at a wedding, or just at her most fertile time.
The cause for the malaise she complains about is not porn but no father in the home. It would not do for a feminist to agree with the data stating that children do best growing up with fathers. So she raises the canard of porn. But kids view less porn in homes with fathers. So there.
Trey
If men are visual and women not why someone does not like baseball for the pajamas they use?
Ms. Henes says, "Here's to hoping that in 2011, we can take active steps to combat the misogynistic take on sex that porn promotes."
Aw, yes. Easier to pick on porn than to point out that too many young women aren't able to learn from their own failed sexual encounters or from their single mother classmates obviously bad choices.
Learning from mistakes, your own as well as others, is a HUMAN endeavor in which both boys and girls can participate in separate but equal ways.
Another social worker/feminist who wants to change the world so that it suits women. From the second sentence of the article: "'How do we help men take women's feelings more seriously?'"
From the second paragraph: "We have to figure out how to make the world safer for women."
Yeah, forget the men who suffer from violent deaths, work related deaths, commit suicide, etc at much higher rates than women.
This isn't about pornography. It's about a woman wanting more and more power for women over men's lives.
Why do women put up with so much "male-dominant" behavior? Porn, hook-ups, absent fathers, and so on...
The problem for feminists is that the more power women get, the more responsible they are for what happens to them. Why, then, have women chosen chaos?
The incredible increase in illegitimacy, premarital sex, and pornography has something to do with women. Why female success in the political and economic sphere leads to so much unhappiness in the social sphere is a very interesting question.
My stab at the answer is that women are as bad at making good choices as men are.
In the past, most rules governing sex and marriage were enforced on women to a much greater degree than on men. Now that women have (correctly) liberated themselves from this unequal and unjust arrangement, they are free to make mistakes.
Womens' lib worked. The problem for women is that it freed them to have sex without commitment (what an empty promise that turns out to be.) Men overvalue sex more than women do, but it's only relative. It's not really "male dominant" behavior, it's the behavior that arises when both sexes are free to indulge their desires.
It turns out that the old rules, while unfairly enforced, were good for long-term happiness. People really do have better lives when raised in an intact family, and when they are married rather than drifting between break-ups.
All human beings, unless restrained, tend to go for short-term thrills rather than long term happiness. Women only recently got the freedom to make the same mistakes that men have been making all along.
That's the catch when it comes to individual freedom- you are responsible for your own misery.
Feminists who blame men are missing the point. The problem of happiness isn't a male problem, it's a human problem.
So, yes, sex sells - but the human cost is immeasurable. And young women pay the highest price.
To some extent, I agree, but not for the reason that the author suggests.
Looking sexually available has always worked for short term access by women to males. And, much of what so many young women wear these days makes them look sexually available.
What seems to be missing these days is the condemnation of society, which mostly means, by other women, of this mode of dress.
So, somehow, it is men's fault that they respond to female undress in a way that they are supposed to, both by millions of years of programming, and by the women dressing that way.
What she doesn't address is that women are far less likely to be "date raped" if they don't dress proactively, nor put themselves in a position where such is easy. Attending parties where they dress proactively, get drunk, and then leave with guys is not a way to prevent this sort of thing from happening.
And, then why shouldn't the mothers of these young women take a lot of the blame. I see some mothers tarting up their daughters to attract males. But I know others who make sure that their daughters do not walk out the door dressed immodestly. But, then, these mothers are women, and so, according to feminist orthodoxy, have no culpability or power in this area.
I was recently speaking to a colleague who just found out that a close female friend of his was date raped. As he struggled to understand what happened, he asked me: "How do we help men take women's feelings more seriously?"
No man ever said this. And if he did he's a dork. It's too unctuous to have been uttered by a real person.
Modern commercial porn might mislead novice males into thinking that every woman delights in double-penetration, or in immediately following anal intercourse with fellatio.
I recommend amateur porn or vintage porn.
Ha!!! Using anti-porn causes as a feminist trope.
Porn is a pernicious, insidious visual addiction to many people and yet, because it's basically sexual intercourse of one style vs. another or in the case of fetishes, one form of pleasure/pain vs. another, we are told without hesitation or reservation that not only is it free speech which is something I don't disagree with, but don't I don't like, but that it's good for you too. Just like in the days when cigarettes were being promoted by doctors as being a healthy lifestyle choice.
So while pornographers go after porn pirates who download their wares without paying by saying that they will shame and embarrass the illegal users of their product, they miss the irony that they've all but admitted that their product is shameful and embarrassing.
I was going to type a comment but found it difficult to do using only one hand.
And, B. Hayden, I think you were going for "provocatively" rather than "proactively". I could be wrong, of course.
...every woman delights in double-penetration, or in immediately following anal intercourse with fellatio.
That's been my experience.
And, B. Hayden, I think you were going for "provocatively" rather than "proactively". I could be wrong, of course.
Likely you are correct, though "proactively" would be more interesting. This is the problem of spell checking - I use it too often, and I think in that case may have fat-fingered the selection of the desired word.
When Chivalry is dead, all you have left is unapologetic conquest of women. So, feminists, stop bitching since you killed chivalry.
If her hypothesis were true, rape and sexual assaults should have skyrocketed, first with the widespread availability of the VCR, and second with the widespread availability of broadband internet.
a woman defending what could be called porn:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/navy-videos-context-female-navy-flier/story?id=12527090&page=1
Yep, Blue@9.
But, hey, while she doesn't have any evidence (much less proof) that porn has any connection to rape, however tenuous, she feels it's true, so obviously that must be reality.
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