TFIFI: Porn!

To quickly get the "porn vs. erotica" argument out of the way, before we even start: I have never heard any definition of "erotica" that didn't translate to "the porn that I happen to like." (Or worse, soft fuzzy wuzzy vaseline-lens porn that's all about cunnilingus and spooning. Because rough sex is evil and all women hate it.)

So, in a post that is apparently rocking the Internet or whatevers, Twisty Faster vs. Porn. Oh, and also science, a little bit.

The setup: a scienceblogger proposes a mostly-tongue-in-cheek "experiment" in which he watches a shit-ton of porn, then reports whether his view of women has changed. Not really scientific, but as a silly little blog-project, seems unobjectionable to me--he also discusses a lot of more real research on the effects of porn.

Hahaha! An experiment where you have to watch tons of porn! That’s a funny joke! It reminds me of real sexology experiments. Like the ones where subjects are naked and “invasive probes and electrodes” are inserted into their vaginas. Those researchers are, of course, totally objective professionals when it comes to getting grant money to make porn right in their own labs.
It would be better to never study what goes on inside vaginas, and leave them as enigmatic, untouchable mysteries forever. To do otherwise is undoubtedly both sexual and wrong.

Also, everyone doing vagina research must be a straight man, because science is like totally a dude thing, right?

You know, the usual. Pornography is “free speech.” Pornography is only harmful to the user when he is a deviant perv to begin with. Male aggression is associated with buttloads of porn use only in a select few previously-messed-up douchebags. ‘Normal’ porn consumers, i.e. ‘most’ men (fully 98% of all men, apparently, and 80% of all women), are happy, healthy, well-adjusted, and brimming with contentment. It’s the kook-and-psychopath minority out there who get all compulsive on your ass, or who act out all rapey, giving well-adjusted exploiters a bad name.
Well... yeah. Exactly. Repeating a valid argument in a snotty voice hasn't counted as a counterargument since fifth grade.

(What I did above was a penetratingly revealing rephrasing, okay? Sssh.)

Goldman cites no research on the effects of pornography on the pornulated women themselves, or of porn culture on women’s status within the sexbot continuum.
This is the great paradox of Twisty Faster: the insistence that women should never be viewed as sexbots, combined with continual annoyance that so many dumb sluts go around being sexbots.

What if--I'm just blue-skyin' here--there was a woman who had been photographed naked but was not a sexbot? What if this woman liked to read old science fiction, grew tomatoes on her balcony, had been photographed naked, was afraid of sharks, and loved the smell of the earth after a summer rain? Is calling her a "pornulated sexbot" really an insult to our culture--or to her?

Second question: does updating "been photographed naked" to "been photographed covered in welts and tears with one man's cock in her ass and another's fingers in her cunt" change a goddamn thing above?

In fact, he seems to suggest that there are but two possible stances on porn. You’re either for it, or you’re for banning it. He omits to consider other, more elegant schemes. Such as the solution we advocate here on Savage Death Island, wherein pornography is made, not illegal, but obsolete, via elimination of the sex class, which may be accomplished by feminist revolt. There is a difference between banning porn and eradicating the demand for porn, a delicate nuance that no dude ever seems able to contemplate.
Yes. The difference is that the former is possible but ill-advised, and the latter is completely fucking impossible. Because the desire for porn is, essentially, the desire to masturbate. I don't get off if I don't fantasize. Why is borrowing someone else's fantasies different? Certainly porn can be unethically produced and often is, but that's not a fundamental problem--the concept of filming consenting adults fucking and then jerking off to the film seems dandy to me.

Anyway, what the hell kind of revolt is this going to be where people won't masturbate anymore? I know, I know, that's twisting the argument, after the revolution people will masturbate strictly to thoughts of cuddles and frank emotional discussions. (Wait... is cuddling exploitative? Like if the woman is only a cuddle object to you? Problematic.) Or while facing a blank wall.

Like all men who claim to have a bunch of sex-poz feminist BFFs and who consider that access to porn is guaranteed under the Global Accords Governing Fair Use of Women,
"Claim to?" What am I, chopped liver? Oh, that's right, I'm the wrong sort of woman, thus removing my voice and vote is best for society. FEMINISM!

Hey, another question: what about gay porn? Like, with two dudes? Would two-dudes porn be okay? I can usually get off to that.

And a serious question: is it the specific porn actress that we're worried about being used, or the general idea of women? Because if it's the specific actress, the answer is to only watch ethically made porn where you can be reasonably sure that everyone involved is sober and giving informed consent and not paying off a pimp or something. (Yes, this exists. I think.) And if it's the latter, I feel like Twisty is confusing sexual attraction with use. As long as sex isn't the only way someone interacts with femininity, I frankly enjoy it when it's one of the ways.

Goldman doesn’t appear to grasp that patriarchy — a social order predicated on the oppression of women as a sex class — is actually real, and that as such, ours is a culture of domination wherein the ‘art form’ known as pornography is the graphic representation of rape.
No. It's the graphic representation of sex. There's so much footage of so many different kinds of sex out there in Pornland, that saying "all porn is rape" is equivalent to saying "all sex is rape." At which point there is no such thing as sex, at which point we are no longer on Earth-1218.

There's some back-and-forthing about the comments to someone else's blog that I'm going to skip over because at some point it's just not worth it to metametametametablog everything, but what Twisty considers the money quote is:
Paying for a luxury item with such an immense human cost is deplorable. No porn is worth it, and I don’t think people should be free to buy something that causes the rape of women. What is crazy is that the rape of a woman can become speech if someone takes a picture.
But how does the sex life of a woman become rape if someone takes a picture?

Look. I'm not going to wear myself out defending Max Hardcore and Joe Francis here. Sectors of the porn industry--I'm not sure how dominant those sectors are, but they're not small--are sleazy as fuck and treat women like shit. (There are also producers like NoFauxxx and Pink & White that maintain excellent reputations for operating in above-board and decent fashion.) But let's talk about the very concept of porn here, not the execution. I'm naked right now, as I type this, and I'm kind of playing with a dildo, just idly. (My writing process is very complex.) If I take a picture right now and sell it, am I--necessarily, intrinsically, 100% of the time--getting raped?

And don't tell me that isn't porn, unless you want to explain exactly where the line is. If the answer is "it's porn when it's rape!" that would actually be awesome, because then we can still have lots of videos of people fucking! Whee, we all agree now, let's go home.



Comments next! Oh I do love the comments.


POSTSCRIPT: After I wrote this, I went and jerked off to some porn. (Don't worry, I only use organic free-range artisanal porn.) I'm not trying to be difficult or whatever by mentioning this, I just think it's funny. And now I'm much more relaxed. Ahhh.