I wondered. I remember the big anti-pornography movement of the 1980s — and how it was squelched — and I thought it is due for a comeback. We're censoring Dr. Seuss books for minor racial improprieties, but the monumental misogyny problems of pornography are ignored.
So I looked to see if there were signs of a resurgence of the anti-pornography movement, and I found this (from a few days ago, at Vox): "This week in TikTok: The problem with the 'Cancel Porn' movement/On TikTok, it’s impossible to have a nuanced discussion about sex work."
Apparently, there's enough of a new movement that Vox needs to instruct us about what's wrong with it. If there's a resurgence there's also a squelching of the resurgence, off and running.
Notice that Vox's problem with it is structured as feminism — helping sex workers? — but that's how the squelching of the 1980s movement worked too. It was packaged as feminism. What's different now: There's TikTok, and the activists are teenagers reaching teenagers.
Here's #cancelporn if you want to educate yourself about how this movement is taking off.
ADDED: Here's a Reddit discussion from January: "I'm very worried about the #cancelporn movement on TikTok." The worry expressed is that it will be used "to shame sex workers and generally safe ways of sex work."
Someone there says: "I wouldn't worry too much, the porn industry is one of the largest in the world and there's no chance in hell that a bunch of TikTok cringe artists are going to have any sort of actual impact."
That roughly corresponds to something I was thinking. You can't pressure porn businesses if they are nothing but porn. It's not like demanding some publishing company take out a book here and there or movie company cancel some of its productions. If the questionable material is only a part of a business, there is leverage to pressure the business.
So the "Cancel Porn" movement will need a different strategy. What I would expect to see is young people, especially women, staunchly disapproving of people who consume porn and declining to be in a relationship with a porn user. Boycott the users.
AND: From the Vox article (which is written by a woman, Rebecca Jennings):
[The Cancel Porn movement is] just one facet of a conservatism, for lack of a better term, that’s proliferating on TikTok from rather unlikely sources: young, presumably progressive women (for the most part) who seem to believe that “choice feminism,” or the idea that every choice a woman makes is inherently feminist because a woman made it, is propagating patriarchy and the male gaze....
Escorts, sugar babies, cam girls, strippers, OnlyFans creators, and folks who sell feet pics or panties online have used [TikTok] to show both the highs and lows of their jobs.... Yet even more than those videos, I’m seeing the backlash to them: “Liberal feminism telling young girls that hookup culture is liberating, conditioning them to think that if you dont have extreme kinks at a young age then they’re boring and vanilla, and encouraging them to get into sex work the minute they turn 18,” reads the caption on one video by a TikToker whose bio says she’s 16...
On TikTok, where only a certain kind of video will always rise to the top... [i]t begins to seem like there are only two teams: the left-wing feminists who seek liberation through beauty and sex work and the SWERFs who lean so far into what they believe is left-wing feminism that it becomes conservative (horseshoe theory, etc., etc.)....
SWERFs! That's a new one to me, but it's obviously like TERFs. The "RF" stands for "radical feminist," and these acronyms are used to demonize feminists who go radical in a way that's deemed wrong. The "E" stands for "exclusionary," though, ironically, the acronym is all about excluding a type of person — a radical feminist who doesn't want to consider transgender women to be women (TERF) or a radical feminist who's critical of sex work (SWERF).
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203 comments:
1 – 200 of 203 Newer› Newest»--- the monumental misogyny problems of pornography are ignored.
Monumental? Or just incidental?
Wet Ass Pussy is art!
Wet Ass Pussy and threesomes!!!
There are an awful lot of things about women that pornographers love. But women are not their customers.
Porn helps depopulate the developed world, so it's good for global warming. Women and non-existent children must take the hit.
The Dems like porn. That’s why no cancellation. The Fake News likes it too.
I remember an episode of Designing Women back in the 80s where Julia ran her car into a news stand because it was selling copies of Playboy. Free speech, she explained, was only for political speech and everybody knew it. But during the same period the film Pretty Woman came out with the message that being a prostitute isn't so bad. if you don't kiss the Johns. The point being that porn is bad, and should be banned. But we live in a secular society. So any arguments for banning porn are going to have to be secular. And claims of the inherent misogyny are going to be countered with the argument that you are simply a prude. Arguments stating that it is inherently dehumanizing and destructive to your soul are going to be sniggered at and derided as the retrograde ramblings of God botherers.
They first need to drive a wedge between porn and prostitution (one is liberating sex work, the other is oppressive misogyny). Once that's done, the campaign against porn can be waged in earnest. It’ll be a loser, though. Roughly like prohibition. The demand is inelastic and it is already enough of a disreputable grey market that they won’t be able to stamp it out. There’s no big corporation like Amazon that they can bully into submission. Just a lot of skeezy guys who don’t care if the woke crowd hates them.
There are an awful lot of things about women that pornographers love. But women are not their customers.
Yes, they are.
Why do you suppose all the women more or less simultaneously shaved their pussies some years back?
There is not even a blue check mark among the #cancelporn crowd.That is not a growing movement.Cancel culture is effective because it is supported by big media and big tech, neither are on board with #cancelporn. They have canceled a US President from every platform but are fine with 5 year olds watching WAP and worse on YouTube.
Porn cancellation will be selective and mostly designed to appeal to prog sensibilities. They’ll hone in on racial inequities and stereotypes that somehow have crept into some movies and the industry will vow to do better. As for misogyny, they’ve already gone after Ron Jeremy and some other guy for rape or being too rough or something. I don’t think they want to go too far with the battle of the sexes given that women performers vastly outearn their male costars in porn. The disparity might make too many people realize that disparities in pay are often (usually) totally justified by market forces and not the result of discrimination.
I’ve been thinking about slipping this line into the comments for a few days, and this post is a good pretext:
Any movement or organization for the betterment of women will ultimately be hijacked and led by man hating diesel dykes.
This seems to be an iron clad rule.
---Yes, they are. Why do you suppose all the women more or less simultaneously shaved their pussies some years back? [ST]
It definitely seemed to become more fashionable, although my direct personal experience is limited. [Pagine Caroline1]
So your point taken. But what percent of Pornhub viewers would you say are female?
There may be a hashtag, but there is no "cancel porn" movement of any consequence any more.
Shouting Thomas said...Why do you suppose all the women more or less simultaneously shaved their pussies some years back?
Same reason they shave everywhere else—guys want them to.
Here's #cancelporn if you want to educate yourself about how this movement is taking off.
#cancelporn sounds like a great way to meat, er, to meet young women who are already thinking about sex.
Seriously, though, I knew a guy who resurgence was squelched all over the carpet after he played a porno on his pornograph.
Same reason they shave everywhere else—guys want them to.
And how did women discover that?
I’m old enough that I can remember when they all had bushes.
"Not like that, Sophia!"
"Same reason they shave everywhere else—guys want them to."
Either that or that it was cooties. Ooh...ick.
What is porn these days? It's hard to see how a campaign against it could be successfully launched when so much of the content available everywhere else is borderline porn or so close to it to be indistinguishable.
I would also say free speech but clearly it's not that. It's the same reason the drug wars have failed, I think, and legalization is taking hold (except for pharmaceutical doctor prescribed opioids of course). Money. There is a lot of money in porn. And in drugs. And there is also a close connection between those two, drugs and porn, at least based on the women I've known who were professional porn performers.
I believe there is a line in _The People vs Larry Flynt_ where Woody Harrelson (as Flynt) voices a line wondering if Hugh Hefner realized he was a pornographer. Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, the producer of _Designing Women_ and outspoken feminist, thought he was. And now that Hefner is dead and no longer funding left-wing causes he has become problematic.
Wasn't Obama going to use Operation Choke Point against icky pornographers?
Democrats are batting zero at legislating. But they are hell on wheels using govt agencies to assault citizens rights. Operation Choke Point was just one of those extra constitutional programs used by Obama, hidden from the citizens.
but hey! porno paints a VERY POSITIVE IMAGE of both lesbian And bisexual women!
non porno people tend to think of lesbians as old, fat, dumpy broads; that Hate men
porno people realize that MOST lesbians and bisexuals are:
In their early twenties
GORGEOUS
Fun Loving
Open minded, and adventurous
Nothing has done enhance the world's view of lesbians like porno has!
"a vibrant anti-pornography movement"
Just noticed the clever wordplay. But isn't that a contradiction in terms?
Or perhaps A follows B.
on a serious note, Ralph L said...
Porn helps depopulate the developed world,
not only That!
Porn helps destroy families
Porn helps depopulate Churches
Porn helps people just sit on their couch, and avoid REAL Relationships
Porn helps people DO AS THEY ARE TOLD
Porn IS Progressiveism. It's not a flaw, it's a feature
Shouting Thomas said...”Same reason they shave everywhere else—guys want them to.”
And how did women discover that?
???
The men told them?
Porn is tech. That’s all.
When the tech is developed that enables a consumer need to be met, you can bet somebody will employ that tech.
Digital media makes porn easy to produce and disseminate, and it makes it impossible to prevent the seller from servicing the consumer.
The churches were depopulated by a leftist takeover of the clergy. When your priest or minister becomes a gay or feminist activist, the congregation walks out. That is all that happened. People didn’t stop believing.
They don’t want to sit there and be lectured by some fucking psycho about what bigots they are. And they want their children to give them grandchildren of their own blood and to continue their culture. That’s why they are taking their kids to church.
The men told them?
No, they watch porn.
The male belief that women have no sexual agency is funny.
Women get quite a kick out of using this against men.
Isn't an "anti-porn movement" about eliminating porn and isn't "cancel culture" about punishing individuals for transgression?
What am I missing?
A reporter for NPR says it will take fifty years to bring about full control of content on the internet. She was rooting it on, of course.
Wake me up when women start a "give your man so much sex he won't think about porn" movement.
gilbar nailed it!
It is obvious that the progressive movement believes in the bible - the evil parts are their playbook for depravity. They celebrate everything the bible teaches is wrong and destructive. With Baal worship / sacrifice of children the #1 goal.
If you don't understand why they push porn you are either evil yourself or a willing fool.
"What am I missing?”
According to the Babylon Bee, studies suggest that book burners only stop after burning a few fringe books, so there is nothing to worry about.
I guess now they are going after Breakfast at Tiffany’s because of Mickey Rooney’s little part. As if people couldn’t just watch it and roll their eyes and get on with the movie. Wait... isn’t that movie about a prostitute and a gigolo? Double plus ungood!
You can't have, "It's misogynistic to treat woman as nothing more than a sex organ," and, "My identity is based on my sex organ, or the sex organ I wish I had", during the same Cultural Revolution." "Women will have to just shut up, while we destroy the culture. 'Viva la Revolucion'"
I mean, wasn't it a thing a few years ago for DAs to publish photos of guys accused of soliciting prostitution?
That's consistent with cancel culture, insofar as I can tell.
I guess you'd have to "out" people who produce or consume pornography to cancel them.
That'd be a full-time job, for sure.
Maybe it would be efficient to start a rumor that some prominent politician whacks off to that 3d animated stuff where impossibly good-looking women have impossibly enormous schwanzstuckers.
CANCEL HIM !!!!111!!!!!
Porn is/was one of the driving forces of technology gains. Not going away anytime imho.
Why porn will never be canceled
"It's the idea that male porn users will view ALL women as sex objects. I think... that ship has sailed, years and years ago.”
You can admit it, you are mostly worried about the highly desirable men might come to view all women as sex objects. OK Cupid did a now deleted study that showed that 5% of the men get 80% of the action or something to that effect. That the men tended to go after women of equal attractiveness and that the women almost uniformly went for the chiseled hunks posing shirtless in front of their Porsches, while pretending in their profiles that they wanted something just the opposite.
I think that our best hope is an EMP from the Norks.
tim in vermont said... [hush][hide comment]
I guess now they are going after Breakfast at Tiffany’s because of Mickey Rooney’s little part.
Even better; they're canceling Guess Who's Coming To Dinner because Sidney Poitier isn't black enough.
"Porn is/was one of the driving forces of technology gains."
Beware of the "Pornographic Industrial Complex."
Rap music lyrics... old Madonna films...
Modern movies - filled with sex and violence.
All that is fine.
It's DR. Seuss and Gone with the wind that are the problem.
I remember at work in the 70s when a VAX 11/780 got a color monitor. Within a day it had a nude babe on it.
In the 60s nudes were being printed in ascii (BCD actually) on computer printer paper.
Tech = guys = babes.
Blogger Shouting Thomas said...
The men told them?
No, they watch porn.
The male belief that women have no sexual agency is funny.
Women get quite a kick out of using this against men.
Great point, Thomas.
This is the main theme of Kubrick's last picture, "Eyes Wide Shut"
Ironically, most people thought it was a porno sex movie.
My main question is why – in the current cancel culture, which approves of censorship — is there not more of a resurgence of the anti-porn movement.
I'm not addressing the question whether porn is good or bad. That's a side issue here. The question is: Doesn't it fit the cancel culture to such an extent that we need to question why it's NOT there?
This is the old issue of racism being taken more seriously than sexism — former slaves got the right to vote a half century before women did. Now, we're canceling books for racial infractions as minor as one line saying a Chinese man eats with sticks and drawing the man's eyes with a dash rather than a dot. Meanwhile, you have this immense industry depicting and promoting the subordination of women (and posing real women in this depiction). It's absurd that the outrage is centered on the little racial issue.
You don't see porn stores or porn districts anymore. Porn has gone to the internet, so there's less outrage about it. It doesn't give your street or your city a bad reputation anymore. It's a little like when an entertainer or show goes to streaming (or, once upon a time, to cable). If you aren't looking for the shows, you won't see them, so Chelsea Handler or Bill Maher might as well not exist for you.
Also, porn motifs are regarded as "empowering" to women. That sort of follows from the the fact that pornography goes under the radar now. If people don't encounter the hard-core stuff, they have much more benign views of the softer forms of titillation practiced in music videos (and those videos are also harder to see if you aren't looking for them).
You can hear about all kinds of practices in the lyrics (if you pay attention to them), and this also helps make public displays of sexuality less shocking to audiences. The "attention economy" was a popular phrase a few years back. Now we have the "outrage economy." What people pay attention to and what they don't and what people get outraged about and what they don't get outraged about and why are going to be much studied in the future.
Kinderporno is still actively prosecuted by the authorities, but the idea seems to be that consenting adults can do as they please. Seventies feminism seems to have failed there, as it did with the vision that gender would be less important. When you can pick from dozens of genres and build your identity around your choice and when girls who like trucks and rugby are deciding they are boys and boys who like dancing and fashion and flowers are deciding they are girls, it looks like a defeat for second wave feminism.
It's also a defeat when sexual exploitation is rampant but most people don't have to confront it. But that's how we've dealt with a lot of problems. People spread out and their problems do, too, so the pressure isn't concentrated and doesn't explode. Once upon a time, people went to the western frontier. Now they take to the internet.
When Friends joked about porn as a normal part of every guy’s life 25 years ago — and the women joked about it as much as the guys did — that was the first sign that pop culture acceptance was either on the way or already here.
I see comments from women on Twitter to that effect too. Everyone under 45 has grown up with it and the prevailing attitude, rightly or wrongly, is “who cares?”. It’s a generational split, with very different attitudes split along a line born before or after 1975-ish.
I’m not condoning all this but I try to be realistic — that ship has sailed.
Back in the 1980's there was the Dworkin-MacKinnon Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance which actually was passed by the Minneapolis City Council.
When Friends joked about porn as a normal part of every guy’s life 25 years ago — and the women joked about it as much as the guys did — that was the first sign that pop culture acceptance was either on the way or already here.
I see comments from women on Twitter to that effect too. Everyone under 45 has grown up with it and the prevailing attitude, rightly or wrongly, is “who cares?”. It’s a generational split, with very different attitudes split along a line born before or after 1975-ish.
I’m not condoning all this but I try to be realistic — that ship has sailed.
Why, Althouse? Because white women are the primary beneficiaries of white male privilege (your welcome). Bill Burr is all over it.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KYv4i_6FtxM
I mean, wasn't it a thing a few years ago for DAs to publish photos of guys accused of soliciting prostitution?
In Denver almost all of them turned out to be mestizo peasants.
propagating patriarchy and the male gaze
Well, to be fair, those positive aspects of porn are counter-balanced by some rather serious negative aspects, e.g.
"These porn superfans were men who have made pornography viewing an important part of their lives, who view porn quite often, and yet, they weren’t more misogynistic than the average man, but actually held stronger feminist values."
Dworkin-MacKinnon Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance which was passed by the Minneapolis City Council in 1983.
Because the ethical standard is different now.
Then: porn actors renounce their former work, either on grounds of religion or humanism (e.g. Linda Lovelace)
Now: actors in mainstream fare renounce their work on grounds of our new religion, antiracism
This activist apparently doesn't realize what the message of his own movie was, or in his utter humorlessness, doesn't recognize dramatic convention in a protagonist's journey. People laughed at slurs, that's all that matters.
I think Molly Ringwald was the pioneer of this new type of renouncement. Even though Claire really is a fat girl's name.
Give me a beak:
Why is Bill Cosby in prison when Bill Clinton's still walking around with four credible and vetted rape accusers?
Meanwhile, you have this immense industry depicting and promoting the subordination of women (and posing real women in this depiction). It's absurd that the outrage is centered on the little racial issue.
Maybe it's because women enjoy being subordinated? Who enjoyed 50 shades of Grey more... men or women? Why is there an entire genre of literature(?) called bodice rippers?
Sexism is a bullshit lie, Althouse. There is no such thing.
That’s why I don’t take sexism seriously.
This part of your game is hilarious. You were born with a silver spoon in your mouth and you’ve had your ass kissed for decades.
I’m a great fan of your weblog, prof, but sexism is just a bullshit lie.
This salvation of women thing you do is laughable. Stop doing it. It makes you look ridiculous.
Men have their porn and women have their “sex tools” and the best move for both sexes is to just accept it.
"Why is Bill Cosby in prison when Bill Clinton's still walking around with four credible and vetted rape accusers?”
Because we have a government of men and not of laws.
"The question is: Doesn't it fit the cancel culture to such an extent that we need to question why it's NOT there?"
How many of the enablers and influencers who dabble in that industry (no matter how modest or not) are active in the Cancel Culture movement?
Who are these people?
What do the want to go away?
Porn doesn't depict the subordination of women. It depicts pussy.
What industry is there to attack?
People make porn at home & post it on the internet for free.
“Doesn't it fit the cancel culture to such an extent that we need to question why it's NOT there?”
No — same generational split (“born before or after 1975”) and that Woke SJW crowd sees porn culture as empowering, not damaging.
They put on slut marches to celebrate this stuff.
Ann, your looking in the wrong place. Anti-porn is attacking the money, with SESTA/FOSTA legal claims or pushing credit card payment processors to drop adult sites from their service. There is no need for a culture war when your already winning the legal battles.
If you want to loop this into cancel culture, eBay stopping the sale of the 'racist' Dr. Suess books, along with Amazon stopping the sale of other controversial media, is a sign that cancel culture is about to move into the same space.
I happened to have just posted a 10-minute excerpt from my new musical project about how I've been coping, with cancel culture, since 2005:
"The First Man Canceled"
Needless to say, it gets petty intense.
It's almost as if porn just came into being. They haven't found it yet but I bet there is porn on some cave somewhere that a caveman (ah caveperson) put there 3ooo years ago.
Almost used Neanderthal but can't use that because we "modern" humans do have their genes with us today.
It's almost as if porn just came into being. They haven't found it yet but I bet there is porn on some cave somewhere that a caveman (ah caveperson) put there 3ooo years ago.
Almost used Neanderthal but can't use that because we "modern" humans do have their genes with us today.
AA:
To answer your question:
1. Dems like it.
2. It is a big, big business. Some stats:
. Porn sites attract more visitors each month than Amazon, Netflix, and Twitter combined.
• 30 percent of Internet content is porn.
• 88 percent of porn contains violence against women.
• From 2005 to 2013, searches for “teen porn” tripled to 500,000 a day
Colleges and universities just can't get a break. You cancel online porn and the future earnings of liberal arts/social science and, especially, fine arts majors is going to take a nose dive.
Ann Althouse said...
My main question is why – in the current cancel culture, which approves of censorship — is there not more of a resurgence of the anti-porn movement.
Internet porn is a huge change from the days of sheepishly buying a porn video or magazine and bringing it home.
1. It's anonymous.
2. It is not subject to editorial control so you have weirder stuff that appeals to a broader audience.
3. IMO, a greater array of people watch internet porn that ever read porn magazines or watched porn videos.
4. That array includes straight and gay women who objected to magazines, but likely enjoy internet porn.
I would be interested in a credible source that estimated the demographics of the billions of internet porn watchers.
NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...
Even better; they're canceling Guess Who's Coming To Dinner because Sidney Poitier isn't black enough.
Yep. They have a problem with the idea of a black male who doesn't the victim card, and who succeeds without government handouts, affirmative action, or other such social justice engineering.
Why is Bill Cosby in prison when Bill Clinton's still walking around with four credible and vetted rape accusers?
This would make a good college or even ambitious high school project, a review of the public commentary and judicial determinations in the cases of Clinton and Cosby. I'd throw in OJ since it is roughly of a similar era.
I feel that Cosby's fate was sealed by the fact that he irritated prominent black and white comedians who worked blue with his views on comedy. And he pissed off the "blacktivist industrial complex" for years with his insistence on personal responsibility and his mild critique of some of the excesses of urban black culture.
My main question is why – in the current cancel culture, which approves of censorship — is there not more of a resurgence of the anti-porn movement.
Because Cancel Culture is a Progressive endeavor while arguments against pornography are inherently conservative. Thus any attempt to reduce or reform porn will be pounced on by one of the intersectionality minded and labelled “right wing” thus repelling any lefty allies the alleged movement acquires. One thing repels name-calling Progs every time: suggest they might actually be working with The Other (conservative, white, Christian, etc.) against their “allies.”
"88 percent of porn contains violence against women.”
If you define “violence” like some feminists as PIV sex, I guess so. Otherwise, I kind of doubt it. I think you might have to search around for that stuff since it sure isn’t front paged.
My main question is why – in the current cancel culture, which approves of censorship — is there not more of a resurgence of the anti-porn movement.
Because there is you just haven't been paying attention. Beginning during the Obama administration, porn stars have been denied access to banking. Basic services like banking and we are asking why porn stars are not getting cancelled?
The "one cool trick" is to define all types of consensual adult activity as "sex trafficking" and then you can pass any law you want. The best part: no one can question whether these activity are truely "sex trafficking" anymore than you can question whether Dr. Suess is racist.
Isn't the agenda about cancelling what is good in the culture? Porn doesn't fall into that category.
I just did a search on Ebay's Adult section....
You can buy "Slanted Sluts" and "Slant Eye for the Straight Guy" on eBay.
But not Dr. Seuss, because some books contain images of Asians with slanted eyes.
To Lefties, this makes sense.
How can all the anti-bigotry crusades be driven out of public discourse?
Anti-bigotry crusades are the political nightmare and intellectual shithole of this era.
Shutting down this idiocy should be our first political and intellectual imperative.
Ann, have you ever seen a real feminist movement? The white women are there solely to be screamed at by the ethnic ladies and lezzies and trannies and gays and everyone of color.
The position of white heterosexual women in feminism is ... submission. That and the open pocketbook so you can pay for being screamed at.
This is why slur words against women aren’t investigated as hate crimes — even if they’re carved into the genitals of a white heterosexual raped and murdered woman. This is why verbal harassment of white heterosexual women isn’t investigated as hate, even if it’s accompanied by a random physical assault, even if it’s spray painted on a wall where other speech is being investigated by teams of DOJ agents swarming the scene, searching for the “haters.” This is why serial killers who off 70 women aren’t counted as hate criminals, but Daniel Greenfield is.
This is why you specifically ban only one word from your site - the “n” world, while flippantly permitting all sorts of pernicious slurs against white women to be bandied about. If you’re really wondering about any of this, read your own speech restrictions. But I think you know all of this.
The 50 Shades comparison is an interesting one.
When a book about subjugating and degrading women for sexual pleasure is targeted at women and becomes immensely popular, well ... it’s hard to take seriously the idea that what they actually want is essentially the opposite of that.
Sounds to me like “femsplaining”.
Meanwhile, you have this immense industry depicting and promoting the subordination of women (and posing real women in this depiction).
Men willingly endure humiliation and subordination for sex all the time. ALL. THE. TIME. Now apply your semi-feminist critique to gay porn and BDSM.
>>"Why is Bill Cosby in prison when Bill Clinton's still walking around with four credible and vetted rape accusers?”
Because Bill Cosby was critical of certain behaviors of a certain type of people. So he had to be punished.
The 'anti-racism' hysteria really has nothing to do with racial equality. It has everything to do with control: Instilling uncertainty and fear in anyone who has a public voice, rather like the 'Me-too' movement. Porn is not amenable to control.
Ann Althouse said...
I'm not addressing the question whether porn is good or bad. That's a side issue here. The question is: Doesn't it fit the cancel culture to such an extent that we need to question why it's NOT there?...Now, we're canceling books for racial infractions as minor as one line saying a Chinese man eats with sticks and drawing the man's eyes with a dash rather than a dot.
Just hazarding a guess; if they find Dr. Seuss that traumatic, what are the odds they've ever watched porn? Porn is about sex; which is something adults do, not the cancel culture crowd who want to remain cloaked in childhood because it allows them to sit around and point fingers and call other people evil, while believe it will never come back and bite them.
One of the most prophetic things to ever come out of Hollywood was the movie Demolition Man, where Denis Leary's character Edgar Friendly says the line; I've seen the future, you know what it is? It's a 47-year-old virgin sittin' around in his beige pajamas, drinking a banana-broccoli shake singing "I'm an Oscar-Meyer Wiener".
That's where we're at right now.
That Friends episode was a (grim?) milestone. Before it, porn was the province of very shabby guys in dirty raincoats who went into rundown city districts to slobber over dirty magazines. There was one guy who came to the local college and spent hours on the internet staring at you-know-what. After Joey and Chandler, porn became young, hip, benign, and cute. The word lost connection with what it was supposed to describe and the attitude one was supposed to have towards it. Television can be powerful.
"Before it, porn was the province of very shabby guys in dirty raincoats who went into rundown city districts to slobber over dirty magazines.”
Nah. I was a shiny faced young man who never missed school, always had a job, and usually had a girlfriend and I bought my Playboy and Oui magazines at the same drugstore where I bought phosphates as a teenager. Obviously the stuff was a lot more tame then.
So... as tech continues to narrow the uncanny valley, how long before porn producers can make an essentially convincing (I can't believe I'm going to say this) child porn character, such that right-minded people can't use the argument that an actual child is being exploited in its production or viewing? I know they can make a cartoon version now, and (see next para) I still consider that to be beyond the pale even for porn supporters and enthusiasts, but what happens when the virtual character is indistinguishable from a real child?
I mean, I'd still (and will forever) make the argument that sexualization of children, whether real or virtual, is a horrific wrong, but am I headed toward bring a porn Luddite?
No matter. Here I stand.
>>"Why is Bill Cosby in prison when Bill Clinton's still walking around with four credible and vetted rape accusers?”
Because Bill Cosby was critical of certain behaviors of a certain type of people. So he had to be punished.
It took like 40 or 50 years for Cosby to go to jail. There is still plenty of time for Willie.
I didn't get 50 Shades. The guys into sadism want to be dominant in ways they aren't in the real world. If men are sadistic, it's a flaw and a sign that there's something wrong with them, some inferiority. The real masters of the universe -- if they're into BDSM -- are the ones who want to be dominated.
@Althouse - The answer to your question is the reason it is NOT cancelled is it is ubiquitous. And there is a flavor of porn for every desire that can be articulated. I offer here Exhibit A
https://www.porzo.com/a-z/
If you follow that link, you will see naked people performing a wild variety of sex acts, but the point is to illustrate THE NUMBER of categories. And further, heterosexual men are not the ONLY consumers of porn. Do you want to deny gay men their porn viewing? I am guessing "no". And as your resident practitioner of the sexual deviancy of older men dating younger women (LEGAL AGE ONLY) I can testify that the modern young woman is an AVID consumer of porn including every possible variant of lesbian porn. Some especially high hormonal young women enjoy watching gay men in porn. Further, their sexual practices are obviously informed by pornography.
Also, Cosby was a monument, and we like tearing down monuments these days. Clinton was a monumental piece of shit, so tearing him down is not as satisfying. Even though he is much more destructive and damaging, and his crimes, even just against individual women, no less disgusting. Maybe more disgusting. But there is a lot here.
Why isn't there a "cancel rap" movement? It seems to be as socially destructive and anti-feminist as pornography. There are of course hard core and soft core, which does raise issues.
The Cosby takedown, the 2nd round which actually took him down, started with a comedian, Hannibal Burress. And comedians led the early stages of the canceling. Cosby's criticisms of other comedians and the viciousness of competition in the comedy world played a role, and there was nobody in comedy defending him.
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...
My main question is why – in the current cancel culture, which approves of censorship — is there not more of a resurgence of the anti-porn movement.
Because Cancel Culture is a Progressive endeavor while arguments against pornography are inherently conservative.
Bingo. In San Francisco, there was a massive, multi-storied warehouse where anyone could go make a few bucks, working on any of the numerous porn movies they shot there. No one thought any more of it than becoming an Uber driver.
teenagers reaching teenagers
"She spent an astonishing amount of time in attending lectures and demonstrations, distributing literature for the Junior Anti-Sex League, preparing banners for Hate Week, making collections for the savings campaign, and such-like activities. It paid, she said; it was camouflage. If you kept the small rules you could break the big ones." - 1984
And if your argument boils down to “this form of entertainment treats ‘my people’ poorly” then too bad so sad get in line. Try reconciling the depiction of white men in pop culture over the last 40 years. Every white “dad” is a doofus. Every white businessman is an evil polluting criminal. Rich white guys routinely murder their friends and enemies. Even old white male politicians talk about “whiteness” as if its a dusease to be cured and not an immutable feature of about 60% of the country.
Cancel culture is all about canceling anyone brave enough to not be an asshole leftwing c-sucker.
There's no resurgence because porn is useful to the modern left. Porn serves as a useful tool to push certain moral sentiments, as well as aesthetics which align with progressive ideas. The point of cancel culture is to attack those institutions which might serve to challenge the progressive narrative in some way. It's also a way for activists to flex their power as a means of social positioning among their peers.
Ironically, the anti-porn movement is springing up on the alt-right, who argue for pornography's destructive influence, and incorporate it into a larger ideology of self-reliance, self-discipline, traditional aesthetics, and dedication to one's community.
In addition to the great popularity of 50 Shades among women, how is it that the leading line of female support undergarments is branded "Spanx?" I know it's short for Spandex, and we're basically being playful here, but still...
David Begley said...
. Porn sites attract more visitors each month than Amazon, Netflix, and Twitter combined.
They don't advertise it, but Amazon Web Services is one of the largest hosters of streaming porn sites in the world.
Michael said...
"Why isn't there a "cancel rap" movement? It seems to be as socially destructive and anti-feminist as pornography."
Rap ain't socially destructive or anti-feminist - it's so destructive it had females like Queen Latifa and Beyonce' leading in it, and growing faster, than Rock's ever allowed women to flourish - and it has numerous gay artists, too. (White's long-running insistence that there's something wrong with Rap - starting with the earliest complaint that "Rap's not music" - is what's socially detractive, to the art form, the artists who make it, and the nation that produced it). Rap is just art that's brave enough to have never censored a straight male's point-of-view - which we should all applaud - but, in this man-hating environment, gets called "misogyny" if you don't swallow the bullshit.
Rap never will.
Many thoughtful and interesting comments. This is clearly a subject that people have pondered and researched.....Here's a thought: Some men are foot fetishists. There are porn sites devoted to the genre. Many women buy lots of shoes and pay weirdly expensive prices for such shoes. Is it possible that both men and women are acting on the same kink in their libido, although expressing that kink somewhat differently? Is kink the right word? Maybe they were just made that way......Hugh Hefner led an enviable life. He looked a little silly towards the end, but, taken as a whole (heh,heh), he had a pretty good life. His early Playmates probably wouldn't rate an R or even Mature designation in today's culture. You could use them as illustrations in children's books.
Just watch two women going at it. Misogyny solved :)
"Ron Winkleheimer said...
I remember an episode of Designing Women back in the 80s where Julia ran her car into a news stand because it was selling copies of Playboy. Free speech, she explained, was only for political speech and everybody knew it."
RW makes an interesting observation, and it goes beyond the porn issue. The contemporary movement to limit free speech is aimed at political speech specifically, a clear violation of the First Ammendment that everyone should know.
The big problem with canceling porn is that you have to admit that conevntional sexual morality might just be right.
Also...apparently a great deal of internet porn is produced outside the U.S. and thus outside the reach or our wokescolds.
SWERFs! That's a new one to me, but it's obviously like TERFs.
So I was correct, if you are against porn you are an old prude. Professor, the internet is, according to what timeline you use, between 30 and 50 years old. The general public started becoming aware of it and using it in the early 90s. I can assure you, as someone who was a Usenet admin in the early 90s, there was no shortage of porn on the net back then. Then the iphone was launched in 2007. These two facts lead to two conclusions as to why there is not a big push to ban pornography.
1) Chances are approaching 100% that any 12 - 13 year old kid you see today has seen anal sex. Easily assessable porn is now the norm. You can't put the toothpaste back into the tube.
2) You cannot shame someone for consuming porn because you cannot know if they are. People do it privately, in their homes.
The push today isn't to ban porn or shame people who consume it, just the opposite. The woke attitude is that sex for money is just another form of work and shaming people for doing "sex work" or consuming it is abhorrent. The only significant group of people in the US that would support banning porn are religious conservatives. Who would want to be seen in such unfashionable company?
---I'm not addressing the question whether porn is good or bad. That's a side issue here. [AA]
Are you sure? Your language and comments seem to contradict that assertion.
-the anti-porn movement of '80s was "squelched"
-"monumental misogyny"
-"sexism"
-"massive industry... promoting the subordination of women"
-racism gets attention, women get little or nothing
These strike me as the embodiment of a certain species of conventional wisdom, and eminently debatable as assumptions. Unless you're just trolling your readers. Hard to discuss a downstream topic when the original issue is draped in such doubtful claims.
On how gender participation breaks down, I see several surveys cited that suggest nearly 90% of men view pornography, versus 25-33% of women. Pornhub's own data were cited as showing 30% of viewers are women, a number higher than I would have expected, but only 2% of paying customers are female.
Part of it is that the young and stupid degenerate women who are fueling the Cancel Culture movement also have dreams of making decent money on OnlyFans.
And a (very) few of them actually are.
"What I would expect to see is young people, especially women, staunchly disapproving of people who consume porn and declining to be in a relationship with a porn user. Boycott the users."
The problem with that strategy is that porn users are already somewhat boycotting relationships with females, using porn to fulfill that sexual need.
The "misogyny" critique falls flat because it ignores the free will of the women who make pornography, including several porn companies run by women.
"Sex worker" is cultural Marxist language. Commies love "The workers" so whores are transformed into "Workers". I find it interesting that the Left is completely uninterested in the Human trafficking over our Southern Border. If woman are being abused and transported into the USA to be "Sex workers" against their will, well who cares?
Its typical of Democrats/Liberals/Leftists, that they think porn and whores should be given free reign but no one should talk about electoral fraud, Hunter Biden's laptop, or say a word against Transgenderism.
The problem with pornography is that some of these women have been forced/blackmailed into it. The other problem is that its hard to stop child porn or violent porn when Porn is general is legalized and even celebrated.
They don't advertise it, but Amazon Web Services is one of the largest hosters of streaming porn sites in the world.
And AWS is a huge profit center for Amazon. I did a traceroute to porn.hub. The final destination, a server (more likely server farm) that belongs to Akamia Technologies. Investors in said enterprise include Vanguard and The Canada Pensions Plan Investment board. It has $7 Billion in assets as of 2019. Its a respectable cloud services company based in MA.
Here is a little snippet about a woman who is a senior level executive at the company.
"Bonner serves on the Boards of Directors of 8x8 and Agero. On behalf of the hard work and efforts of the entire Marketing team at Akamai, she was honored to accept the 2018 Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council CMO of the Year award. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Middlebury College and a Master of Business degree from the University of Michigan."
https://www.akamai.com/us/en/about/leadership/executive-team/management-monique-bonner.jsp
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akamai_Technologies
If women boycott porn users, they'll have to boycott all men.
MJB Wolf observes: Because Cancel Culture is a Progressive endeavor while arguments against pornography are inherently conservative.
Yep.
I listen to rap sometimes, and some of it reminds me of the cowboy movies all of us old white guys used to love as kids, when Gary Cooper would strap on a pair of gats and shoot it out with a bunch of weak ass gangster punks who maybe should have thought twice before they pulled a gun on him.
"What I would expect to see is young people, especially women, staunchly disapproving of people who consume porn and declining to be in a relationship with a porn user."
That's funny. Woman doing humor!
But the point of cancel culture is that anyone can be canceled for anything. It is strictly a set of power moves. If progs decide porn needs to be canceled, they'll manufacture some arguments--toxic masculinity! sex trafficking! human rights! whatever!
If they can cancel marriage by fabricating SSM out of the 14th amendment and cancel biology by turning trans self-mutilation into a human right, anything can be canceled.
mockturtle nailed it, as usual.
My main question is why – in the current cancel culture, which approves of censorship — is there not more of a resurgence of the anti-porn movement.
When you defend politicians that brush their aid's hair while nude; it becomes difficult to be taken seriously that porn is a problem. If that is too on the point, then when you defend politicians with spouses that fly private jets to islands where young nubile women are kept for the entertainment of the well connected... Still too harsh, how about voting for politicians that become board members of streaming services that show young nubile women twerking on camera?
The above isn't meant as a satirical response. I remembering entering college in the 90's. There was a drive to run off CEO's at various companies that sexually harassed women trying to make a living in the professional workforce. It made an impression on me on how to conduct myself among women who would one day be my coworkers. To this day, I treat women with the respect they demand.
Then the biggest CEO in the land was caught having his way with an intern, and not only was it treated as just a consensual thing; it was later ignored as a big deal at all. Hell, other women came out publicly offering to give this CEO sexual favors if only he would advocate for their ideas. And then a movie came out "The People vs Larry Flint", which was the final nail in my own personal advocacy against porn. If this is what these women wanted as freedom; who was I to tell them otherwise.
As for whether the actors involved are illegally coerced into making porn, well doesn't that suggest laws already exist to remedy the situation?
I easily could have shortened this comment to just the one point that Obama is now on Netflix's board, and he had no problem what-so-ever with Cuties nor with his daughter Malia interning for the Weinstein corporation. When the Obama's get cancelled (they won't because they created cancel culture); then I'll think there is a chance that cancel culture comes for pornography as has any sort of success.
tim in vermont said...
"I listen to rap sometimes, and some of it reminds me of the cowboy movies all of us old white guys used to love as kids, when Gary Cooper would strap on a pair of gats and shoot it out with a bunch of weak ass gangster punks who maybe should have thought twice before they pulled a gun on him."
My new piece contains snippets of "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly", "Rio Bravo", and some other movie with Spencer Tracy doing Judo.
Because Cancel Culture is a Progressive endeavor while arguments against pornography are inherently conservative.
This is categorically not true. Take a look at how the Obama administration attacked the adult film industry. It was right on par with gun dealers. The conservative anti-porn crusaders and the anti-porn feministist are on the same side and have been for 40 years.
Does anyone think it was only or even mainly "conservatives" that forced pornhub to delete 80% of its content in December? I don't.
There's another example: credit card companies pressured to stop doing business with porn sites. And, our dear host asks: "why isn't porn being cancelled?"
So I guess it's not cancelling if they cut off your income stream and try to push you out of business, it's only cancelling if they are mean to you on Twitter in the process. Is that how we are defining "cancelling"?
And according to Open Secrets these are the politicians/causes that the people associated with Akamai Technologies contribute to:
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/akamai-technologies/summary?id=D000031366#:~:text=Top%20Recipients%20%20%20%20Recipient%20%20,%20%20Independent%20%208%20more%20rows%20
D.D. Driver brings up a good point. Why are Democrats going after pornhub? I find it hard to believe its because of morals.
"Donald Trump’s assaults and antediluvian behavior toward women?"
Gee, with all the beautiful women he had running around the WH, you'd think the NYT newsroom could have dug up some fresh dirt on him!
I am so disappointed.
@Althouse, was the Prohibition successful? Did you and your classmates avoid marijuana while growing up because of the war on drugs? Yet Democrats think they can ban firearms and you think porn can be canceled. Does bring politically left of center mean you never have to learn?
From Open Secrets: Georgia Federal Elections Cmte $15,889
These people don't strike me as huge Trump fans.
Interesting graph:
https://www.opensecrets.org/political-action-committees-pacs/C00041269/summary/2020
PAC Summary Data, 2019-2020
Total Raised $48,631,664
Total Spent $44,263,140
Begin Cash on Hand $431,564
End Cash on Hand Receipts $4,800,087
Debts $2,266
Independent Expenditures $626,000
Date of Last Report December 31, 2020
Ann Althouse (3/7/21, 8:12 AM) said (ellipses mine):
"My main question is why – in the current cancel culture, which approves of censorship — is there not more of a resurgence of the anti-porn movement.
...Doesn't it fit the cancel culture to such an extent that we need to question why it's NOT there?
...This is the old issue of racism being taken more seriously than sexism — former slaves got the right to vote a half century before women did.
...Meanwhile, you have this immense industry depicting and promoting the subordination of women (and posing real women in this depiction)."
I'd place my bet on an intersection with transgender activism. I understand that there is a push among trans activists and porn activists to use porn as a tool for mainstreaming transgenderism. From a current social justice perspective, nothing ranks higher than mainstreaming transgenderism (aside from anti-Black racism).
As a result, there now is a lot of "lesbian" porn showing biologically female women having sex with trans-women with penises. Likewise, trans-women are appearing much more frequently in "straight" porn aimed at men, rather than being placed in separate "trans" categories.
I think the comparison with racism is apt. Clearly, transgenderism, like racism, trumps feminism.
As an aside, I thought the use of the phrase "real women" was interesting, regardless of intent, given today's climate.
There was this young lady once who ..... never mind.
I swear I didn’t steal that idea from you Crack, I had it in the car when I was listing to “Straight Outta Compton” or something like that. I guess I can’t write the name of the group here. I was sure I was not the first one to think that. Anyway, I liked the spaghetti western stuff.
"My main question is why – in the current cancel culture, which approves of censorship — is there not more of a resurgence of the anti-porn movement."
tcrosse said, "Back in the 1980's there was the Dworkin-MacKinnon Antipornography Civil Rights Ordinance which actually was passed by the Minneapolis City Council."
tcrosse has at least part of the answer to Althouse's question. I remember the 1980's campaign. 60 Minutes even spent time on it. That "anti-porn" campaign was in reference to "the sexually explicit subordination of women" as a violation of a woman's civil rights. "Violence against woman" was a large part of the campaign, which ultimately failed on 1st Amendment grounds as I recall.
Today's porn includes gay and lesbian "activities". These don't fit neatly into feminist anti-porn ideology. Plus a woman can make money at it, and I'm sure that must be a "good thing". Empowerment, you know.
Agree with William. Plenty of good comments here. I was especially struck by Tina Trent's input.
Ron Winkleheimer said... AWS is a huge profit center for Amazon. I did a traceroute to porn.hub. The final destination, a server (more likely server farm) that belongs to Akamia Technologies. Investors in said enterprise include Vanguard and The Canada Pensions Plan Investment board. It has $7 Billion in assets as of 2019.
Interesting research. It shows that it's about following the money.
Mrs. Grundy is alive and well.
Bob Smith said...
"There was this young lady once who ..... never mind."
I know - It was that one time, at Band Camp,...
No matter. Here I stand.
The nightmare is worse than that. I predict that soon there will be "teenage" sex dolls, which will quickly lead to child sex dolls. (Coming to Japan first) The argument will be made that this is a way for pedophiles to satisfy their sexual urges without harming real children.
It's hard to cancel pornography when the Feminists LOVE the pegging videos.
Indeed, pegging videos may be porn on only a secondary level: they function foremost as a social critique of sexual dynamics in a post-modern culture, where the 'penis' can be wielded by male and female alike, with all the phallic connotations of power in which such a construct resides.
At essence is the question of trust when roles are reversed: can the pegger be trusted to stay within bounds of tasteful thrusting, or does the need for social revolution require force beyond the perceived sensitivities of the one being pegged?
The act of pegging has an inherent dichotomy for the feminist: the gender power structure is reversed, but the power only comes with the woman functioning in a traditional male manner: thus, even in pegging the patriarchy seeks to exert control over the woman.
This cognitive dissonance is why feminists are so enticed by the act of pegging: in the act they can be a liberated, in-control female, and yet they are still Daddy's Little Girl, seeking revenge on stand-ins through sexual acts. And: everyone knows feminists can only achieve sexual satisfaction when their Daddy Issue needs are being physically contextualized.
I am Laslo.
Ann (from the article): feminists "liberating themselves through beauty and sex work [...]" I laughed out loud. And the whole twisted "these people must be conservatives, b/c they don't want sex work to be what I want it to be" thing is mystifying.
Lewis Wetzel: "What industry is there to attack? People make porn at home & post it on the internet for free." Well, exactly. I suspect that the inconceivably massive amounts of free and nearly-free "amateur" porn out there have put a sizable dent in the earnings of the pros (pun intended).
The whole 50 Shades thing is revealing. I think those books were overwhelmingly bought by women, and not just to see how awful they are. A lot of women do want to put themselves in the place of a woman who wants to be degraded in this way. (That's a clumsy way of putting it; what I mean is that women don't actually want such things done to them, but they want to experience what it would be like to want them.)
I wonder occasionally whether the enduring popularity of Law & Order: SVU has something of the same roots. If I want to, I can find a cable show binge-running these any day of the week. A rape (or series of rapes) every hour! Give me the original Law & Order, where half of the show was in the courtroom. Of course, WeTV has those too (IIRC they bought rights to the entire series), but only three days a week :-(
"So I was correct, if you are against porn you are an old prude."
This post is about the Cancel Porn activism among *teenagers*, so you weren't correct. And the cancel movement may come for ageists like you, so be careful.
This post is not about being "against porn," but about how the anti-porn movement could or should fit within the current cancel culture, and I invite discussion about why it doesn't.
And men who push women to accept porn by calling them prudish or old if they don't go along are not the kind of men you should want to emulate. I would encourage women to have their own independent opinions, to not let men intimidate them, and to hold out for a good man.
Interesting research.
Thanks, but I don't think I would even call it research. I typed the command:
tracert pornhub.com in a Windows terminal, saw
11 40 ms 40 ms 40 ms a23-202-231-169.deploy.static.akamaitechnologies.com [23.202.231.169]
and used a search engine to find info on Akamai Technologies.
Either women (mostly women) over the age of 18 are responsible for making decisions or they're not.
Choose one.
But I do find it fascinating that there is a magic number of '18.'
Take photos of a naked 17-year-old ten minutes before her 18th birthday and get 10 years in jail.
But at 12:01am on the next day, film her in a gang-bang with 20 men and distribute it online and you're a 'film producer.'
Weird.
And men who push women to accept porn by calling them prudish or old if they don't go along are not the kind of men you should want to emulate.
I thought I was being pretty clear, I'm against porn. And if teenagers are against it, good for them. Its the left side of the aisle that calls women prudes and tries to pressure women into accepting porn. I'm on the right. I have just been pointing out that porn acceptance started with Playboy and Hugh Hefner, that young children have easy access to porn, and "respectable" people who go to Middlebury College (a hot bed of alt-right extremism I'm sure) profit from it. The anti-porn movement doesn't fit into the cancel culture because of those reasons.
“the monumental misogyny problems of pornography are ignored. “
You mean like the way porn seems to reduce rape? Or do you just mean preferences you find icky?
But I do find it fascinating that there is a magic number of '18.'
Take photos of a naked 17-year-old ten minutes before her 18th birthday and get 10 years in jail.
But at 12:01am on the next day, film her in a gang-bang with 20 men and distribute it online and you're a 'film producer.'
Weird.
Not really.
It's arguably a matter of probability: are there 13-14 year olds who could consent to having sex on film? Likely, but I think we could all agree that they're few and far between. Likewise there are 22 year olds who really aren't mature enough to make such a decision, but again, they're likely few in number. Trying to figure out which is which would be nightmare for society, either leave all vulnerable or giving far too much power to the authorities to dig into our lives. So it's better to pick a point where we, as a society, think that any young woman is more likely than not to have the ability to fully consent, and make that the dividing line. Sure, it means an abrupt legal change between 11:59pm one day and 12:01 am the next, but that discrepancy is far easier to deal with, and for individuals to understand and follow, than the alternatives.
Pornography concerns itself with sexual fantasy, with more participation or consumption by men than by women. Some of the depictions are real, some fake, but they are almost always consensual.
Cancel culture regarding sex derives from MeToo, which is built on claims mostly from women about allegedly predatory actual sex with (almost always) men. Yet that sex usually seems to have been consensual, too. (Matt Lauer; remember him?). Exploitative of a power advantage to the alleged victimizer, maybe.
I can't see how the latter should lead to campaigning against the former. Censoring Dr. Seuss? Seems a red herring to this discussion. So my answer to the Althouse question is that I can't see why cancel culture should lead to anti-pornography campaigns unless one thinks eliminating unhappy sex is best and most fairly achieved by eliminating any manifestation of sexual desire.
To address AA's question. Wokeness is a new religion. It has its own sacral beings. Women per se are not among them. It’s like someone asking, why do Cromwell's troops smash altars and roods but not market stalls?
Joe Smith
Not so weird. If she tries to vote before her 18th birthday it’s illegal too. Boundaries are always a bit arbitrary.
Oh wow. The "monumental misogyny problems of pornography?" Only a prude who hates sex would say something so goofy and sheltered. Lesbians watch porn. Non-lesbian women watch porn. Gay men watch porn. Women read romance novels that objectify men. Mandating that all sexual experiences must be personable, sociable, in-person only and not disembodied by/into a medium is the most asinine nonsense ever proposed. You might as well outlaw health class or sexual teaching aids visual or otherwise for not being "un-objectifying" enough. Who the hell comes up with such stupid, brainless crap?
Try banning perfume ads first. Jesus.
It’s like someone asking, why do Cromwell's troops smash altars and roods but not market stalls?
What a thoroughly silly question.
"Not so weird. If she tries to vote before her 18th birthday it’s illegal too. Boundaries are always a bit arbitrary."
And yet, that same 'actress' can't legally smoke a cigarette or drink a beer or purchase a handgun...at least not in California.
Kind of makes the argument for either lowering the age to do those things, or raising the age to vote to 21.
The cancel culture isnt interested in canceling porn. Look at where we are right now, my wet a$$ pu$$y in the number one song for teens and tweens but Dr Seuss in canceled. Maybe a porn starring Asian people, doing things with chopsticks would raise the alarm.
"Only a prude who hates sex would say something so goofy and sheltered."
This is how men bully women. Take note. No woman should fall for this old trick and no man should play it.
This post is not about being "against porn," but about how the anti-porn movement could or should fit within the current cancel culture, and I invite discussion about why it doesn't.
It fits into anything about as well as an anti-gravity movement would fit into anything. That's probably why no one who doesn't obsessively monitor anything that nominally falls outside of a right-wing worldview has ever heard about it or cares.
And men who push women to accept porn by calling them prudish or old if they don't go along are not the kind of men you should want to emulate.
Everyone has to accept that material exists they don't have to care for in a free society without widespread censorship. Didn't the courts already go through this tooth and nail anyway? You'd have to ban sexual education depictions for being just as objective. A brainless society awaits. There's no exception for fearing that someone could be stimulated by those depictions, they could be stimulated by anything. (I assume we're talking about people with normal sexual capabilities, anyway). Banning porn is no different from banning sex ed based on a prejudice against what the viewer alone is presumed to get out of it. People have to learn - the worst lovers I've had watch the least porn.
I'm going to be more explicit (yes, I know) cancel culture is not going to go after porn because powerful people benefit from it. They wouldn't want their daughters to get caught up in it, but they're perfectly willing to sell the purveyors cloud services. Its not like they are those icky alt-right people trying to talk to each other without having there icky alt-right views being moderated.
This is how men bully women.
No, it's a normal response to an authoritarian who entertains censorship based exclusively on their disapproval for the presumed reactions of a viewer. Courts have ruled and understand the psychology of it better than you seem to understand the psychology of anyone who has whatever type of consensual sex that you obviously disapprove of - on film or in person. There's just no way to "disembody" the reaction of someone so inclined from their own obvious sexual hangups. None at all.
Sex ed is legal therefore porn is legal. End of story.
a noxious habit, that often involves physical and psychological abuse and use of narcotics isn't proscribed by these virtue warriors, quelle surprise,
I think that the fact that young children are getting their ideas about sex and love from watching hardcore pornography is a tragedy with long term negative societal effects that we cannot even begin to anticipate. But hey, I'm one of those icky God botherers.
and narciso nails it.
"Only a prude who hates sex would say something so goofy and sheltered."
This is how men bully women. Take note. No woman should fall for this old trick and no man should play it.
She doesn't get the male motivation.
The guy is trying to get rid of a wired-in pussy obsession. Porn gets rid of it and for a while he can go on to something else. It's more pressing when the guy is young. It's not misogyny, in particular.
It's not being a prude exactly but just not seeing the need.
There's many things she doesn't seem to get rhhardin. Most of all why she felt a need to bully a woman like Jessica Valenti for having breasts, posing to the side, and well, whatever else she felt that Jessica Valenti did so offensively or even particularly sexually.
So this is the person who's talking about how to make a movement that's already borderline authoritarian just a little more ridiculously authoritarian. Next thing we're going to ban cats from watching objects fall lest they push your vase off of the table. Hilariously nonsensical.
Anyway, looks like someone's a little late to the bandwagon she'd like to jump on. Only in this case, it's a wayward sidecar or go-cart that's appealing to her. Piloted from a naive drunk driver or two. Hahahaha. Hilarious.
Put nudie calendars back on the walls of workplaces and there would be less sexual harassment.
So the "Cancel Porn" movement will need a different strategy. What I would expect to see is young people, especially women, staunchly disapproving of people who consume porn and declining to be in a relationship with a porn user. Boycott the users.
I suppose so. Accessing porn could be made socially unacceptable, but so long as so much of it is not seen unless you look for it, it's going to fall under the private activities of consenting adults and you won't be able to get rid of it with laws and restrictions.
Porn is in a limbo or underground now. It might seem like - if private statements can be made public and used to ban people - participation in or enjoyment of activities that are regarded as demeaning women could be grounds for banning, but most people don't tweet about their participation in or love of porn.
In a way sexism was left aside while the scolds were focused on racism, but cancel culture in a way grew out of #MeToo, or at least it got a lot of momentum from it, so you could say that feminism is one of the roots of the great growth of political correctness and cancel culture in recent years. Right now, though, there's more evidence of racial faux pas, or at least people are looking for them more. Nobody is tweeting much about their love of degrading women.
And if everyone is equal and supposed to be enjoying themselves sexually, the idea that pornography is inherently degrading to women doesn't seem to work as well. Even prostitution or "sex work" has its defenders who make feminist arguments nowadays.
P.S. Was it Woody Allen who said, "If sex is work, you aren't doing it right?"
Ann said:
This is the old issue of racism being taken more seriously than sexism — former slaves got the right to vote a half century before women did.
The 30k feet view?
Cancel culture is the left using it to gain power over conservatives. Blacks and to a much lesser extent other select minorities, and even still less, homosexuals, silencing those that refuse to kneel before them. Porn offers no selected segment of society that can be silenced.
DD, they didn’t go after Pornhub for pornography, but as an intersectionality “crime” and made them delete “problematic” content. They arent against porn they are against certain “messaging” they see in the porn.
'P.S. Was it Woody Allen who said, "If sex is work, you aren't doing it right?"'
I think it was, 'If sex isn't dirty, you're not doing it right.'
Don't most studies show that women consume about as much porn as men?
Aren't women frequent patrons at strip clubs? Those featuring women as well as those featuring men.
Who were the biggest consumers of hardcore bdsm when told from the woman's (victim's?) standpoint? See story of O, Ann rices beauty series, shades of gray. A lot of so-called "romance" novels a soft porn. A lot are pretty hard porn.
Sorry, I don't buy the idea that porn and kinky sex is strictly a male thing.
Her body, her choice.
John Henry
I don't see how you can have a serious anti-porn movement when main stream entertainment like Outlander, Bridgerton, Game of Thrones and Westworld have scenes that have everything but close up crotch shots. I have respect for Marvin Olasky's rule that if the characters in the movie start doing something you wouldn't watch in person you should turn it off.
Of course there's no need to buy that, John Henry. After all, you've probably dated women who know what they're doing in bed.
And that's a gender-neutral judgment, anyway. Plenty of women I've known who could tell me about previous (male) lovers who had no clue what they were doing in bed. Maybe some were gardeners or lawn manicurists. ;-)
Not that I have anything against gardening. Or against women who pose at an angle with Bill Clinton while wearing a nice sweater, for that matter. Both women and men should take note of that, and not fall for that trick or play it.
Here's the problem with cancel porn: what would you replace it with?
Real life relationship's? Boring!
Guy's want attention from women who in real life wouldn't even notice them. Exciting.
What fun is it watching naked people who look just like you? gross.
What fun is it watching sex just like the average couple? Monotonous.
Porn offers to enable me access of King Solomon's harem of hundreds of the pretties women around.
People fool themselves that images and video's are the next best thing to real life.
Unlimited porn is a novel thing for now that doesn't really fit in to normal life experiences.
It will take a long time, but guy's will eventually figure out porn is just a way for the media to get money from them and leave them empty and unfulfilled.
I know someone who works for Ccbill, the high risk credit card processing company. Guys are using online access to the stuff at 20,000 transactions per hour every day on a global level. Big bucks.
Take the money away, it would not be nearly as addictive.
#NoJudgment #NoLabels. Also, #MeToo #HerToo #SheProgressed. That said, given choice that is voluntary, not subject to superior exploitation, normalize, tolerate, or reject?
Any movement or organization for the betterment of women will ultimately be hijacked and led by man hating diesel dykes.
Masculinists and feminists united in selfiesh cause, serving the best interests of neither men nor women, nor children, nor babies, too. Keep women appointed, available, and taxable.
China normalized prostitution to compensate for the inconvenient choices of one-child. That, and normalizing immigration reform, to manage the local male population and colonize profitable lands.
Didn't a Supreme Court Justice once say:
"I don't know how to define pornography, but I know it when I see it."
LOL
There’s a very large gradient for what defines porn. Note any Beyoncé video, or even her Super Bowl affair. I’d call that porn but others would disagree. Many women want to be just like Beyoncé.
Porn profits through exploitation and degradation. Porn emphasizes function over form. Porn appeals to our sadomasochistic brain. Kneel. Normalize, tolerate, or reject?
but the monumental misogyny problems of pornography are ignored.
One man's cum-swapping Amish girls misogyny is another man's delight.
Here is a list of some of Akamai Technology's customers. They don't list pornhub, though The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is one of their clients.
https://www.featuredcustomers.com/vendor/akamai-technologies/customers
If you are going to shame anybody to stop porn you can start with Akamai's leadership and its clients. But that's not going to happen because there is a far greater constituency in the Democrat party to cancel Dr Seuss than there is to cancel porn.
“ What a thoroughly silly question”
No mockturtle, you are the silly one. The question Althouse asked is why attack this and not that? My answer is that “this” is within the ambit of what the iconoclasts consider sacred and “that” is not.
Your ignorance is showing. Sad.
Porn IS Progressiveism (sic). It's not a flaw, it's a feature
I've liked porn since I discovered a Playboy in my dad's sock drawer at the age of nine. I am now 64 and at no point in my life has porn ever been political.
“This is how men bully women.”
By calling them prudes? I have seen women call men prudes, how does that fit your theory?
What you meant to say was “if you call ME a prude I will act like it’s a sexist attack by men on women”.
John Henry
“Her body, her choice. “
As you have nicely demonstrated, the anti porn anti prostitution feminists never believed that.
"My identity is based on my sex organ, or the sex organ I wish I had"
The same people who delude themselves that Boca burgers are meat are actually real meat are the same people who delude themselves that FTM transexual "meat" is real "meat".
drawing the man's eyes with a dash rather than a dot.
Like this:
https://cdna.artstation.com/p/assets/images/images/027/495/102/original/art-eater-4.gif?1591708489
pornhub does not run on AWS. At least according to Zdnet. They use a private cloud model, which means buying or renting machines, maybe in a generic data center or maybe you build them yourself. Either way, its more expensive than renting cpu cycles and bandwidth from a cloud provider. So, what does Akamai provide to pornhub? Well, they are in the media content delivery business and offer "edge" computing. That means they cache your content in computers all over the world so that someone accessing content from Beijing is being directed to a computer near that city while someone accessing the same content in Hoboken is directed to a server as close to New Jersey as possible. So, pornhub's content is originally held in a private cloud and is cached in edge servers according to where it is being requested. If the guy in Beijing is interested in one kind of kink that gets cached in a server near him. If the guy in Hoboken has a different kink then that content is cached in a computer close to him. If they both have the same kink then the data is cached in both servers. Depending on how often the content is accessed it may be purged from the cache to make room for content that is in demand. AWS also has edge servers, but they are just part of the services that are provided.
• 88 percent of porn contains violence against women.
[citation needed]
Ken B: I called it silly because your knowledge of Cromwell is deficient.
If Howard were here he could provide Althouse with links to a few of his favorite "ballbusting" websites and give her a little something to relieve any tensions or frustrations aroused by the misogyny inherent in pornography with a bit of vicarious participation in a consensual sexual encounter.
What I would expect to see is young people, especially women, staunchly disapproving of people who consume porn and declining to be in a relationship with a porn user. Boycott the users.
ha ha ha.
It's becoming a bigger issue because
porn using boy-men are boycotting real sex with real women
Less teen sex, less college sex, less pre-marital sex.
Fewer kids in marriages.
But internet porn is also reducing wages of live porn stars, and porn movie stars.
Watching porn changes a persons brain; a lot of porn makes a lot of changes.
Free to buy legal drugs and legal porn - the secret Dem-Libertarian way to reduce poverty (not yet working).
It gets better, Akamai's co-founder has degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton and a Ph.D in Applied Mathematics from MIT.
From the companies website:
"he oversaw the creation of the Akamai Technical Academy, an innovative program developed in-house, aimed at training diverse non-technical professionals for technical careers. He also supports numerous charitable organizations dedicated to improving STEM education and opportunities for K-12 students, including The Center for Excellence in Education, the Society for Science and the Public (sponsor of the Intel Science Search), The Mathematical Association of America (sponsor of the Math Olympiad), the Math Competition for Girls, and Girls Who Code."
https://www.akamai.com/us/en/about/leadership/executive-team/management-tom-leighton.jsp
You would think that a smart journalist (I kid) might want to ask him why his company provides services to purveyors of porn. The modern porn industry relies on multi-billion dollar international companies to provide the expertise and facilities to peddle their wares. Its not just some skeezy guys distributing VHS tapes to "secret" rooms in the back of movie rental stores.
"The modern porn industry relies on multi-billion dollar international companies to provide the expertise and facilities to peddle their wares."
You mean like Dell and HP and Asus and Alienware and Apple and Microsoft and Comcast and Starlink and At&T and pretty much everyone who is in the computer or internet business?
I'm not seeing how singling out one aspect of the industry that delivers the internet to my house makes sense.
Ann says: I would encourage women to have their own independent opinions, to not let men intimidate them, and to hold out for a good man.
Great advice!
The way to "hold out" is to be a virgin until you're married.
What pretty college coed today holds out that long?
Ugly - few want to be like that; tho some accept fat and even very fat. Very unattractive to most men.
Too many good college men are horny porn watchers, so if a coed isn't puttin' out, she's too likely to get few multiple dates by the attractive guys.
This is especially true in majority women colleges, which most colleges are becoming .. one of the success of the man-hating feminists (not all fems are, but many of the loudest are).
Porn reduces the value of what women give in age old equation:
Men give love to get sex, women give sex to get love.
Tho, doubly sadly, it also devalues the love given by porn-addicts.
I love porn. No need for professional porn stars anymore. People are now recording themselves having sex. I pop up in a few videos in pornhub and my ratings are quite high.
I lost many close friends after the pornhub purge. I was devastated.
Porn is the black hole to a spiritual life; Cancel Culture likes that.
The way to "hold out" is to be a virgin until you're married.
What quaint advice offered by father and mother. You're worth more than the triad of your holes. The top hole, front hole, and black hole... whore h/t NAACP.
Mockturtle : “Ken B: I called it silly because your knowledge of Cromwell is deficient.”
Don’t believe you. Suspect you don’t even know what a rood is, nor why they smashed them. You just did your know the New Mob
Del Army ever did such a thing.
And I didn’t say they smashed them on his orders. Your knowledge of English is what's deficient.
Ken: I didn't say he didn't smash Papist icons. Of course he did--he was all about anti-Catholicism. But do you really think the market place is a comparable sacred relic? Really?
Althouse wrote: What I would expect to see is young people, especially women, staunchly disapproving of people who consume porn and declining to be in a relationship with a porn user. Boycott the users.
Won't work, Althouse, see: Λυσιστράτη, Lysistrátē, There is no unilateral women win all the time solution. There will have to be compromise.
Boycott the users.
How about boycotting the parents of kids who leave porn out for their kids to find, even if it was just titillating at the time and not "hard core."
Ken B,
OK, I'll bite. My own understanding is that the "rood" was a cross. If you're saying it's in fact a crucifix, as opposed to the simplification that is now standard in the Anglican Communion, my bad. But my understanding is also that most of the iconoclasm took place a century earlier, and involved devotions to saints, not to Christ. Thomas Cromwell, not Oliver Cromwell-by-adoption.
Skippy - "I've liked porn since I discovered a Playboy in my dad's sock drawer"
I discovered my Dad's Playboy in the garage. Mom hid her 'stuff' in the underwear drawer.
Note to Young Parents: Your children are like experienced FBI Agents. Not one inch of your home will not be searched.
Other parents leave the Playboy on the coffee table. Takes all the fun out of the quest.
You mean like Dell and HP and Asus and Alienware and Apple and Microsoft and Comcast and Starlink and At&T and pretty much everyone who is in the computer or internet business?
I'm not seeing how singling out one aspect of the industry that delivers the internet to my house makes sense.
Then you aren't a very strategic thinker. Europe has a lot of coastline. I don't see why invading a particular set of beaches makes any sense.
Have to ask: What is 'pegging'?
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