Virginia Gun Massacre

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I was deliberately trying to avoid mentioning animated or otherwise artificially created pornography because I knew that we would get straight back to the hyper-real, baudrillard etc

And also because cartoon porn is in general far, far *worse* (in terms of perversion/degradation/rape) than real porn, precisely because it doesn't require real people to make it. And let's not even go near what makes the Japanese tick, sexually...
 

dHarry

Well-known member
I've read a lot of bollocks on this forum but DHarry's argument nearly made me fall off my chair!

dHarry said:
"given that women in a patriarchal/mysogynistic society are not equal to men; therefore, like children, indentured slaves or mentally deficient people, women cannot really consent to sex (even though of course we/they act as if we/they do all the time....It's an extreme position, but a very compelling argument given her presuppositions "

In what sense is that compelling? Being members of a society in which they are not treated equally does not place women on a par with children and mentally deficient people in terms of not being able to give consent!! The reason children and mentally deficient people are considered not to be capable of consent is because they don't fully understand what they are consenting to, the same argument clearly does not apply to women. Her argument (as you have described it at least) implies that when I think I want to have sex I (as a woman) am wrong. Is this not mysoginist in itself as it is treating women as if they are stupid, not capable even of knowing what they want or deciding anything for themselves?
I hope you didn't hurt yourself! It's not meant to imply women are stupid or something, but that structurally within a patriarchy they don't have the same status or rights as men, so structurally don't have an equal position from which to consent, they aren't given that position by a society which relegates them to Other and/or inferior.

Also you say

dHarry said:
"therefore all sex is rape until our society is equal and women are safe from the threat of rape, sexual violence/discrimination, etc."

Are you not just contradicting yourself here? If all sex is rape then women will never be safe from the threat of rape as long as there is sex.
No I meant that, according to Dworkin, all sex is rape until our society is equal and until women are safe from the threat of rape, sexual violence/discrimination, etc.

Apologies for my lack of clarity throughout. Maybe you'd be better off reading her words:
 

vimothy

yurp
Apologies for my lack of clarity throughout. Maybe you'd be better off reading her words:

Was going to reply in more detail, but I think I've (finally) lost the will to argue. Just read the customer reviews. And have a good weekened - if that's possible in this world of demented slavery and rape.
 

Louise

Member
No I meant that, according to Dworkin, all sex is rape until our society is equal and until women are safe from the threat of rape, sexual violence/discrimination, etc.

You've missed my point. If all sex is rape until women are free from the threat of rape, then sex will never stop being rape until women stop having sex entirely. In other words you cannot say that all sex is rape and then use the word rape in its more specific, normal sense.
 

Guybrush

Dittohead
If all sex is rape until women are free from the threat of rape, then sex will never stop being rape until women stop having sex entirely.

Not if changes in society free them from the threat of rape. On the other hand, to suggest that the threat ever can be eradicated is absurd. As is this discussion. :D

I note with glee that two out of the five Amazon reviewers are compatriots of mine. Makes me all fuzzy with pride.
 

Louise

Member
Not if changes in society free them from the threat of rape.

NO!!!! You've missed my point too. If all sex is rape then "the threat of rape" includes the threat of actually having sex at all, so removing the threat of rape (if all sex is rape) has to involve removing the threat of actually having sex at all.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
NO!!!! You've missed my point too. If all sex is rape then "the threat of rape" includes the threat of actually having sex at all, so removing the threat of rape (if all sex is rape) has to involve removing the threat of actually having sex at all.

If you want to get anywhere on this board I think you're going to have to adopt a more, er, Continental approach to logic - which is just a patriarchal, phallogocentric construct, anyway. ;)
 

turtles

in the sea
Alright so if we stop throwing the word "rape" around, which seems to have a very polarizing effect on people, surely we can agree that this:
structurally within a patriarchy they [women] don't have the same status or rights as men, so structurally don't have an equal position from which to consent, they aren't given that position by a society which relegates them to Other and/or inferior.
is not a particularly controversial statement? Everyone here seems to agree that there are plenty of inequalities between men and women in our society and that the threat of sexual violence towards women is very real. That these facts will affect how people view and experience sex (and *especially* porn), again, can't be really that hard to understand. The protestations that "all the sex I've had has been perfectly consensual & beautiful" kind of misses the point (besides veering pretty close to the "how can something that feels so good be bad?" argument): whether you've consciously dealt with it or not, these forces exist within the society that we all live in, and they will have an effect on you whether you like it or not.

So does porn involve different levels of consent between the male and female participants, and does a large part of that difference come from overall societal sexism? You bet. Does increased consumption of porn exacerbate and feedback into this? Probably. Yes, these inequalities can be worked around/overcome/ignored or whatever, but they are undeniably always bubbling under the surface, and I would be willing to bet that the "ignore" option is the coping mechanism most often used by viewers of porn.
 

turtles

in the sea
I just want to add that it seems like whenever someone brings up an argument about societal or structural forces, people tend to jump to the conclusion that what's being advocating is that all people are helpless zombies totally under control of "the system", and then often counter with an argument that (in western society at least) people are more-or-less free to do what they want and should be held solely responsible for their actions. I am simplifying here a bit, but anyway it does seem like I keep arguing that, while people are largely free to make their own choices, they aren't free to ignore these structural influences, they will be influenced by porn/violence in the media/racism/etc. and if they don't recognize these influences and try to deal with them in a positive way, they will have an (quite often negative) effect on their behaviour. You can't stop your self from being influenced by society, you can only devise strategies for dealing with it.
 

Chris

fractured oscillations
So does porn involve different levels of consent between the male and female participants, and does a large part of that difference come from overall societal sexism? You bet. Does increased consumption of porn exacerbate and feedback into this? Probably. Yes, these inequalities can be worked around/overcome/ignored or whatever, but they are undeniably always bubbling under the surface, and I would be willing to bet that the "ignore" option is the coping mechanism most often used by viewers of porn.

Yeah, I reckon a lot of the more negative masculine tendencies that inform these inequalities in society are what are being sublimated/expressed in porn. Just look at the highly exaggerated power roles males and females have in it (I'm not talking about S&M, typical hardcore is incredibly degrading of women in itself), and it reveals the unexpressed surplus desires/drives and attitudes of typical men. The extreme, gonzo nature of it probably serves as an overcompensation for unrealized or ignored base instincts and the male desire to exercise power over women/nature/etc. The thing is though, although I find porn cheesy, crass, repugnant, incredibly chauvenistic, unethical, etc despite myself (let's face it, even the most "enlightened" man in the most happy relationship still looks at it sometimes... 'cept me of course... ahem), it probably is "cooling down" some of the more aggressive douches out there who might have taken their cave man tendencies to worse ends.
 
Well, it depends on your definition of porn and rape, doesn't it? I presume HMLT is referring to Dworkin's concept of sex as rape: given a definition of rape as non-consensual sex, and given that women in a patriarchal/mysogynistic society are not equal to men; therefore, like children, indentured slaves or mentally deficient people, women cannot really consent to sex (even though of course we/they act as if we/they do all the time); therefore all sex is rape until our society is equal and women are safe from the threat of rape, sexual violence/discrimination, etc.

Well yes, dHarry, though equating porn with rape is a somewhat modest definition/claim compared to Dworkin's sex as rape formula. But then, Dworkin's reasoning was/is itself somewhat wildly mis-interpreted (more below).

Needless to say, I'm not referring to rape in the (arbitrary) legalistic sense (a horrible crime for which we are all condemned to burn in hell forever, etc, which perhaps is the reason why so many posters here are being so defensive), the anachronistic, free-will denigrating non-consensual copulation, but in the wider, generic sense (and, hey, it's not about gender, but its masculine/feminine constructions, about biopolitics; there's loads of men who have been raped by women and/or men, but how many macho-posturing men in contemporary society could ever possibly admit it to the point of pursuing litigation? Much less be believed? And increasingly for women too. cf Dahl's neo-noir femme fatale from hell in The Last Seduction, or the delirially twisted Disclosure.

The contemporary relevance of Dworkin's sex-as-rape was previously touched on at a Dissensus thread (the Stalking one):

The post-modern sexual narcissist has no need for genuine, real women, what with all their "inconvenient", distracting and "hysterical" demands ... So its Consumerist Pharmacology and [robotic] Prostetics to the rescue: Viagra and a Blow-Up Doll ... [Of course, not forgetting that it works both ways].


"As if one could discuss pornography, even now, without mentioning Andrea Dworkin. The conventional gesture is one of dismissal and disavowal: whatever we are going to say about porn, it will not be what Dworkin said! But it turns out that what we above all do not want to say - for example, that all heterosexual intercourse is rape, and that pornography is the cause of rape and should therefore be forbidden - is not exactly what Dworkin said. There is something suspicious about this situation: what is it about what Dworkin said that we so want to be rid of, but can’t even reproduce accurately when we claim to be refuting it? What was the schibboleth that she pronounced, and we cannot?


The immediate object of Dworkin’s polemics on pornography and intercourse is, necessarily, the hippy glorification of free love and of pornography as the articulation of a wholly novel erotic freedom. In the hippy fantasy of sexual freedom, pornography stands for frankness versus hypocrisy, explicitness versus repression; the pornographer appears as swashbuckling auteur and champion of free speech. Fucking and shooting up are alike posited as paths to transcendence, but the experience sought is in fact one of narcissism without limit, a perpetual immurement in the ineluctably thermodynamic One God Universe of the cosmic self.

Pornography specifically presents a world of unhampered access to perpetually willing and compliant sexual objects, a world in which there is no such word as “no”. In this world, domination achieves its objective but loses its rationale: what is the use of power without resistance? Behind the ever-depreciating erotic valuation of the image, libidinal vacancy: what is the point of desiring someone who cannot fail to desire me back (or whose desire, or lack of it, is as simply besides the point as mine is)?

For Dworkin, pornography was a cover story for domination, a fable in the service of male power, but it was also decipherable as a record of nihilism, the board books of a centuries-old scam: “if the first one is a fake, you can’t underwrite a shithouse”. She chose to call what happens to women (and even men) in pornography “dehumanisation”, but we should not therefore define pornography as the pollution or degradation of a vital human essence by some exterior, death-dealing agency; rather, we should understand pornography as anthropomorphising, as positing an anthropology - an image of human animals doing what is only human - from which the ability to bear the inhuman has been excised. “Of course,” Dworkin wrote, “no biological determinist has yet found the bug, fish, fowl, or even baboon who had managed to write Middlemarch. Humans create culture; even women create culture”. Is an “erotic fiction” possible in which managing to write Middlemarch would not be unthinkable?" --From here.​
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Well yes, dHarry, though equating porn with rape is a somewhat modest definition/claim compared to Dworkin's sex as rape formula. But then, Dworkin's reasoning was/is itself somewhat wildly mis-interpreted (more below).

Wildly 'mis-interpreted'? It's pretty wild stuff as it is, without needing to be 'mis-interpreted'!
She was obviously a very damaged woman, and from what I've heard about her she had some terrible experiences, but that doesn't put her in a position where she can speak for all women; on the contrary, it helps explain why she had such grotesquely distorted views of men, sex and sexuality in general.

Oh, and:
a perpetual immurement in the ineluctably thermodynamic One God Universe of the cosmic self.
WTF? *bullshitometer explodes*

Oh, and and:
there's loads of men who have been raped by women
care to explain this one?
 
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That's a somewhat pointless thing to say. Yes, you can say it, but you would be wrong to do so, I take your pedantically literal attack on my choice of words (as opposed to actually arguing with my point) to be an admission of this.

I was not being pedantic [try the Language thread on Miscellaneous for that]; I simply have some respect for the use of language, and in attempting to think carefully about what such use entails. It was you, after all, who confused "watching porn is rape" with "porn is rape". Are you suggesting that distinguishing between these two statements is just being pedantic? Or take Vimothy's "I love shagging, making love, fucking, whatever, it's beautiful." Would it also be "pedantic" to point out his indifferent use of language here? Does his deployment of "whatever" include rape, given how rapists find such activity "beautiful"?

"Your honour, is the accused innocent or guilty?"
"Innocent, guilty, whatever, who gives a damn!!?"

Finally, all your claims about porn and rape are totally redundant and "somewhat pointless", given that you have now just admitted that you don't know what rape or porn actually are ... ("Oh, but I know what it isn't!")
 

Guybrush

Dittohead
It was you, after all, who confused "watching porn is rape" with "porn is rape".

It was I who made the original misinterpretation, I’m afraid. That being said, Traci Lords has said that her knowing that people still watch her earliest films—made when she was sweet sixteen—feels like being raped again, so you could claim that watching and participating in porn both are a form of rape. I don’t, however. A few obvious exceptions aside, her story being one, most pornography involves consenting people of legal age doing something which may have been forced upon them by various circumstances (poverty, abusive upbringing, etc.), but I would hesitate to call rape—not the least because we need a word to describe what happened to Lords, and others in her predicament. I think we can all agree that there is a world of a difference between someone with a stable background entering the porn industry out of curiosity, age twenty-six, and a sixteen year old heroin addict being bamboozled into earning some ‘easy money’.

That Momus article, mentioned earlier, links to this fascinating website, hosting a fine array of porn stats:

US Adult Video Sales and Rentals
video-sales.gif

video-units.gif


US Adult Internet User Demographics – Age
toptenreviews-age.jpg
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Finally, all your claims about porn and rape are totally redundant and "somewhat pointless", given that you have now just admitted that you don't know what rape or porn actually are ... ("Oh, but I know what it isn't!")

What utter nonsense. Of course Rich knows what porn is and what rape is: what he said was
I don't know what "porn/rape" is because it's two words with different meanings stuck together
which seems reasonable to me. You're making up your own semantics to press your agenda.
 
Thanks for that clarification, Guybrush. [I bet you that looney Eklund's politics will soon be to the right of George Bush, while his sexual practices will be competing with those of Richard Gere for the requisite supply of gerbils straight from India, or maybe Bangkok].

My agenda, as the obsessively sneering Mr Tea cluelessly insinuates?

Oh well, let's just see now ...

The widespread view, the growing "commonsensical" acceptance of internet porn as a healthy "cure" for sexual violence (broadcast everywhere, from Wiki entries to statistics about porn-obsessed Japan with its low level of sex crimes but run-away suicide rates) overlooks one massive, glowing global hypocrisy: paedophilia.

Compare, just for trivial instance, the Wiki entry for pornography [" Porn is vital to freedom" - Salman Rushdie ] with that of child pornography.

Shouldn't these buffoons be actively promoting internet child pornography if they are really fucking serious about the deranged notion of internet porn reducing sexual violence???

Child porn is vital to children's freedom, Mr head-the-ball Rushdie? "Oh, but isn't that illegal!"

No, in their purely ego-driven hedonism, they don't even know what porn is
-----------------------------------------------------

But returning back to the broader topic, K-Punk had an interesting blog-post some time ago, Let Me Be Your Fantasy, where he argued that the question to be posed "is not, then, whether pornography, but which pornography?"

"Desire is construed here in terms of simple appropriation (this equivalence is yet another way in which Kant is in tune with Sade). But what Kant - and those who follow him in condemning pornography because it 'objectifies' - fails to recognize is that our deepest desire is not to possess an other but to be objectified by them, to be used by them in/ as their fantasy. This is one sense of the famous Lacanian formula that 'desire is the desire of the other'. The perfect erotic situation would involve neither a dominance of, nor a fusion with, the other; it would consist rather in being objectified by someone you also want to objectify.

[ ... ]

[Cronenberg's] Crash takes its cues from high fashion magazines, whose images are more sumptuously arty than fine art, more suffused with deviant eroticism than hardcore porn. Would be impossible for there to be a pornography, sponsored by Dior or Chanel, scripted by a latter-day Masoch or Ballard, whose fantasies were as artfully staged as the most glamorous fashion photo shoot? "

I won't argue with that, except to say that his post is actually more about sexuality proper than the industry of pornography.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"I was not being pedantic [try the Language thread on Miscellaneous for that]; I simply have some respect for the use of language"
I said "you cannot say..." and you knew full well I meant that you cannot correctly say it (that is, what you said is wrong), you wilfully misunderstood me to pretend that I meant you were physically unable to say (or write) it. I call that pedantic, not to mention a deliberate attempt to avoid the point.

"Finally, all your claims about porn and rape are totally redundant and "somewhat pointless""
But apart from saying that porn and rape are not the same all my "claims" were simple agreement with what you said - remember? Tell me that you are not now arguing that everything that you yourself said was redundant and somewhat pointless?

"Oh, but I know what it isn't!"
I love the sarcastic addition of the "oh" but it doesn't change the fact that what I said was right "you don't necessarily have to know what something is to know what it isn't". Obviously I know what rape and porn are, the point is I didn't want to get bogged down in some stupid disagreement over definitions. You refused to give a definition too, you also refused to answer when I asked why you thought that rape and porn are the same thing and merely responded with childish attacks and sarcasm as usual. I would have thought that the onus was on you to provide that definition that made the two the same because it's an unusual position. It's a shame because I genuinely wanted to know why you thought that, unfortunately a discussion with you can never get anywhere because when challenged on something you always drop it and move on to something else leaving a few choice insults behind. I can't think of a time I've seen you clarify what you mean or make any attempt to engage with anyone who doesn't immediately agree with you on everything you say.

"Anyway, I don't know why I get dragged in to these arguments with you when we both seem to roughly agree."
I remember now, it's because you're an absolute bell-end.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Alright so if we stop throwing the word "rape" around, which seems to have a very polarizing effect on people, surely we can agree that this:

Quote:
Originally Posted by dHarry
structurally within a patriarchy they [women] don't have the same status or rights as men, so structurally don't have an equal position from which to consent, they aren't given that position by a society which relegates them to Other and/or inferior.

is not a particularly controversial statement?
But surely Dworkin used the word rape precisely to have that polarizing effect on people. I can understand that by stating her - as Dharry noted - extreme position as she did Dworkin generated both publicity and debate which must have been her purpose. As it is actually baldly stated though, I don't believe that anyone really literally believes that "all sex is rape". Dharry certainly doesn't say that, just that she finds some of the arguments compelling, this is what I meant when (not facetiously as HMLT suggested) I said I don't know any "real people" who think along those lines (well, since I went on dissensus one has come to my attention but I think we can disregard him). Just to clarify, Dharry do you honestly, personally believe that all sex is rape?
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
The widespread view, the growing "commonsensical" acceptance of internet porn as a healthy "cure" for sexual violence (broadcast everywhere, from Wiki entries to statistics about porn-obsessed Japan with its low level of sex crimes but run-away suicide rates) overlooks one massive, glowing global hypocrisy: paedophilia.

Compare, just for trivial instance, the Wiki entry for pornography [" Porn is vital to freedom" - Salman Rushdie ] with that of child pornography.

Shouldn't these buffoons be actively promoting internet child pornography if they are really fucking serious about the deranged notion of internet porn reducing sexual violence???

Child porn is vital to children's freedom, Mr head-the-ball Rushdie? "Oh, but isn't that illegal!"

Even by your standards this is idiotic. For one thing, it is impossible to make 'real' (as opposed to drawn/CGI) child porn without actually abusing a child - whereas the women (and men) who appear in 'normal' porn do so of their own volition. As Louise pointed out, the reason we do not consider a child capable of giving consent to sex is that they don't understand what they're consenting to, and are much more vulnerable than adults into being tricked/cajoled/bullied into pseudo-consensual sex.

Secondly, there is the argument that even paedohphilic porn made without directly exploiting children is likely to excite unhealthy desires in latent paedophiles, or make existing paedophiles more likely to act on their urges. In accordance with my first point, the only way an adult is going to get to have sex with a child is either by actual outright rape, or by dishonest, exploitative means that morally amount to the same thing.
By contrast, it is far from clear how porn featuring basically fairly standard sex acts between consenting adults could turn an otherwise normal man into a rapist. The direct analogy with child porn would be "if watcing child porn makes people want to have sex with children, then watching normal porn would make people want to have sex with adults" (which, presumably, most adults do anyway). The difference being, the first is by definition repulsively immoral (not to mention illegal) - no matter how 'consensual' the perpetrator may have convinced himself it to be - whereas the latter is, the vast majority of the time, conducted with mutual consent to the pleasure of both parties.

Of course, there is nasty stuff out there, I'm not denying that - and I'm not denying it could have a detrimental effect on a viewer, especially someone young and impressionable. But that's still a long way from saying "all porn encourages rape", especially when the figures tend to suggest the opposite. Yes, it's a crude conclusion, but in the absence of data to gainsay it, what concrete evidence do you have to dismiss it out of hand?
 
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I said "you cannot say..." and you knew full well I meant that you cannot correctly say it (that is, what you said is wrong)

Firstly, let me just say, Idlerich, that I just so happen to take this issue very seriously indeed, being all too familiar with the impact of pornography on society.

As for knowing "full well", not at all: of course I can say "porn is rape". I DID SAY IT!! :cool: And correctly ... [And as I have already demonstrated in my previous post, it is those who say "porn isn't rape" who are CLEARLY wrong.

you wilfully misunderstood me to pretend that I meant you were physically unable to say (or write) it. I call that pedantic, not to mention a deliberate attempt to avoid the point.

I didn't misunderstand you at all. You want me to pretend to believe something (that porn ain't rape) that I do not actually believe. I'm not, obviously, physically unable to say it [this is now becoming pedantically ludicrous] ...

It is you and other posters here you are avoiding the point. Are you going to argue that, for instance, CHILD pornography isn't rape? Or has the issue now (all of a sudden) become more problematic, much more disturbing than an idiotic "porn isn't rape" dismissal?

What is it that you will now contend, then, "ALL OTHER porn isn't rape"?? [Unless, of course, you wish to claim that child pornography isn't rape]. In which case, it will be a simple matter for me to demonstrate the falsity of such a contention.


But apart from saying that porn and rape are not the same all my "claims" were simple agreement with what you said - remember? Tell me that you are not now arguing that everything that you yourself said was redundant and somewhat pointless?

Not at all, Idlerich. I wasn't challenging anything else that you wrote, just that one contention above. But it's an extremely important one: after all, the Guybrush-linked report that was the point of departure for this discussion is arguing that (internet) porn reduces rape (or more broadly, sexual violence), the implication being that - though acknowledging wider social factors causing sexual violence [and porn itself] - such factors can be overlooked, and, indeed, must be if the reports principle conclusion is to be accepted .


Obviously I know what rape and porn are,

Obviously? Surely you're aware that both of these terms are continuously being disputed and challenged, here as elsewhere, and which is exactly what I'm doing here: questioning peoples easy assumptions about porn and sexual violence.


the point is I didn't want to get bogged down in some stupid disagreement over definitions. You refused to give a definition too

But getting so "bogged down" is what is otherwise called debate and discussion. I stated, axiomatically, that porn is rape, and nobody here has yet provided any evidence or argument (much less convincing ones) to weaken or undermine such a definition.

I would have thought that the onus was on you to provide that definition that made the two the same because it's an unusual position.

It isn't "unusual" at all; what is unusual - and irresponsibly so - is to claim that porn reduces sexual violence, as I stated above (a problem being its own solution).

It's a shame because I genuinely wanted to know why you thought that, unfortunately a discussion with you can never get anywhere because when challenged on something you always drop it and move on .

But I have been doing just that in posts here [the post above, for example, giving direct evidence of porn as rape], and displacing an issue is what I never do: on the contrary, it is what you have now done, veering from the issue into personal abuse [repeated again in your subsequent post ("we can disregard him"); what you are actually saying here is that you can disregard the issue of whether porn is rape, instead ridiculing anyone who claims so. That is what displacement is.]


[Rest of abuse snipped]
 
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