PORN: Or Part 1 of Why I am Leaving SG

(I'm not leaving the Internet. You can always find me.)
[Written in early 2002]

For those of who know me, you kow my feelings on porn. Porn in theory is fine. Porn in practice: evil. In the words of Foucault it is the "truth about sex" and that truth is, as Catherine McKinnon says "what gives a man an erection." As she notes:

from the testimony of pornography what men want is: women bound, women battered, women tortured, women humiliated, women degraded and defiled, women killed. Or, to be fair to the soft core, women sexually accessible, have-able, there for them, wanting to be taken and used, with perhaps just a little like bondage.


In other words, this seems to be the sexualization of gender inequalities.

While my opponents would remark here that women do watch porn, I would retort that while a growing number are, it is still a small number. Also, I would argue that porn is one way in which sexual desire is manufactured. Like food, we like what we know_what we are taught to know. And like the popularity of the high heel (I recently tried to buy absolutely flat, but still fashionable, boots: ordeal), women (people in general) don't always seem to go with what is best for themselves (nor do I, all I really wanted with these really hot red stiletto boots). They may also ask about homosexual pornography, and I would say that although the participants are of one sex, they often in two gender roles.

I would also add that if a women were bound, gagged, being doubly penetrated with tears running down her face and there was not a camera present_law enforcement officials would be called in rather promptly.

This, of course, is not all porn. It is defiantly a very large chuck (and if you think it's not, please go look_and look not just for the porn you like, but the porn that seems to be popular_especially on P2P [nowadays bittorrent, Ed.] systems). But it's not all porn. And it's certainly, as far as I can tell without paying, not [SG]. The women, as far as I can tell again, do not seem to be in traditional, hierarchal based positions, nor are they traditional representation of "sexy." They also own and control all their images.

But, as many studies have shown, with porn anyway, marijuana does lead to heroin. The more better bigger faster syndrome seems especially problematic with regards to porn. And more better bigger faster defiantly goes the way of degrading more women faster and better. People are desensitized very quickly and very quickly seek more_and even if it is something they first thought was horrific, it only takes a short amount of repeated exposure, in the correct "this is sexy" context, for them to agree "this is sexy."

Which brings me back to sexuality as a manufactured desire.

What do you think? Is there hope for porn? Do I have it all wrong? Should I be listening to Annie Sprinkle instead?

Response to Comments | Part 2