mopgoblin on 30/5/2007 at 05:59
Quote Posted by BR796164
We have to differ between erotica and pornography. Feminism is not opposed to tasteful erotica and erotic material in which partners of both sexes are portrayed as equal, share the same pleasure out of the sexual act and nobody isn't being violently sexually exploited by the other.
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Since female sexuality is less visually stimulated, women often enjoy other forms of pornography - erotic literature, which may of course describe less or more deviant sexual practices too, but fortunately no living human being is usually being practically humilated during it's production.
There are two aspects in here that shouldn't really be mixed together - pornography (visual or otherwise) that depicts violence and exploitation and such does not inherently promote or require real-world violence or exploitation. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with a person desiring a submissive or dominant sexual role, nor with fulfilling such desires, provided consent is given by everyone involved and no one is seriously harmed. This follows quite naturally from the notion that a person should have control over what they do with their own body, which is a pretty strong theme in most varieties of feminism.
I guess it's arguable whether you can consider such pornography to be a depiction of violence etc (the questionable case), or a depiction of a role-play of violence (which I reckon is acceptable; anything which is okay to do in the real world is okay to depict). There's usually an assumption that any actual people involved in its creation were participating of their own free will, at least (while there can be a question of real-world exploitation, there's usually a possibility that none occurs given a specific case, so for now I'll only consider those cases). So I'd say it's down to whether porn intended to depict a real imbalance of power is acceptable. To be honest, I'm not completely sure of the answer, but my instinct is to say anything's okay unless there's solid evidence that it can seriously screw up a significant proportion of sane people. It's roughly the same as the argument I'd make regarding alcohol or other drugs, firearms, cars, violent computer games, and the various other things people tend to consider dangerous - as long as it's <em>possible</em> to use something without causing harm to anyone, then the responsibilities lie with the user rather than with society. The only exception is that society should put a bit of effort into providing accurate and unbiased information about how these things work and how to recognise and avoid any negative effects, so users can make informed decisions. It's also good for all concerned if society is willing to accept and help people who realise they've gone too far and need help with a potential porn addiction and its consequences, but I'm not sure it's morally necessary.
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Porno also portrays various forms of paraphilia as normal acceptable sexual behavior.
I'd be careful with that word, even if you're using it in the technical sense. There's plenty of debate over what should constitute a paraphilia, and indeed whether it's a meaningful notion at all in relation to consensual behaviour. Go back about thirty years, and homosexuality would generally be considered a paraphilia.
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It deforms developing opinions of young people who, despite all adult efforts to keep porn from adolescents, can easily access it on internet[...]
Yeah, you can't really stop people from getting at porn if they're sufficiently determined. I'm not sure it's a good idea to try too hard in any case. Best bet is probably to make sure the "tasteful erotica" you mentioned earlier is somewhat more readily available than the nastier stuff (so they'll discover the tasteful stuff first), and to provide decent sex education that covers all aspects of sex, rather than just a few hours explaining contraception and STDs.
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[...]and of course the mass media are presenting them (but also to everyone) fake, stereotypical portraying of human sexuality : abnormal sexual excesses of celebrities, sexual stereotypes dependent on physical looks currently "in fashion"[...]
I agree that this isn't ideal, but I'd say most of the harm would be negated if society's disapproval of discussing sex had actually diminished to balance out the increase in those portrayals of sexuality in the media. As it is, we're stuck with this weird situation in which the imagery is all over the place, but people generally don't feel comfortable discussing it, which is a particularly bad combination.
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[...]attractivity of sexual turism and side-jobs based on various forms of prostitution (easy money - how addictive that can be?).
I don't think prostitution is a particularly common outcome of using pornography (if so, there'd be a lot more prostitutes around). Besides, I'm not sure prostitution is inherently bad when it's legalised and properly regulated to minimise abuse. Sex tourism seems rather more abusive, but again I'm not sure it's a common consequence of pornography.
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And of course more or less subtle appeals to make profit from sex, teaching us that making your body a product with certain financial price per coitus or "performance" is actually cool. Mass media make the society oversexualized.
As I said before, I reckon the problem is that discussion of sex hasn't been able to keep up with the media's oversexualised portrayals. I don't think much of bullshit celebrity culture or the tendency to use sex to advertise just about any product ever devised, but they're only part of the problem, and I don't really see any strong connections/similarities to porn.
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Dependance on pornography is sometimes referred as pictophilia. There is still a big discussion among the psychiatrist crowd, whether this can be really defined as proper disorder, since cases of porn addiction contain many variables. Some even hold opinion that dependance on pornography is a form of chronic voyeurism. Which presents a problem of acceptability of voyeurism - what level of voyeurism can be socially tolerated and where is the healthy border?
Well, the "socially tolerable" level is exceeded by watching someone who does not consent to being observed (assuming they're in a situation where they can have a reasonable expecation of privacy, of course) - any porn that's created in a remotely ethical manner is okay in that respect. I'd say the healthy border is more or less in the same place - when a person is willing to ignore issues of consent or serious harm arising from their actions, they have a problem. But if they're not a danger to anyone and not asking for help, it's not really anyone's business what they do with their own bodies or their consenting partners, or why they do it, no matter how odd or unpleasant it might seem to others. Again, look for the patterns that underlie historical perceptions of homosexuality.
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Ideology? Ideology is just an opinional package. Any collection of opinions and concepts is basically an ideology, a set of personal opinions on certain matter shared with group of similarly thinking people.
Yeah, I have no problem with ideology in general. Ideologies are important and necessary, but thay can become a problem when no attempt is made to reconcile them with actual observations, or when they influence the gathering of evidence. That's one of the reasons I'm a bit suspicious of some of those psychological definitions - sometimes there seems to be a bit too much cultural bias regarding what is considered normal behaviour.
