These are comments by Archy and Zek J. Evets on the post “Are Porn and Video Games Hurting Young Men?“.
Archy said:
“But we all know that porn is primarily made and consumed for male pleasure first. What does that say about female sexuality too? It’s a very jumbled up confusing issue.”
You’re not giving much agency to these women who willingly look at porn, in fact it’s quite insulting. Ever think that maybe they don’t see it ALL as degrading and they consume porn of a decent nature (that is infact quite plentiful). Who’s to say they are buying into their own sexual objectification? You do realize many adults do see women as more than just sexual beings, and many of those also look at porn?
I fear there are women who are so focused on one aspect of porn that they conflate it to being representative of most/all porn, who feel so objectified and degraded by it that it is biasing their judgment of an absolutely massive medium that can’t be defined by one genre or type. I find it as silly as those who want to ban video games because of the existence of GTA.
I see quite a few of these women who seem to think when men say they look at porn, that pretty much every one of those men is looking at porn that is degrading, violent, and misogynist. But it’s an assumption that judges these men without having a clue as to what they look at. How is that at all helpful?
Zek J. Evets said:
Co-sign Archy.
The anti-porn tone here is extremely discomforting. Porn is not equivalent to addictive substances, nor is it inherently bad. Views of it as such seem to come from places of personal fears and sex negativism than from actual critical analysis of porn and its place in society. Notably, porn has existed FOREVER. And access hasn’t exactly been “restricted” over the greater period of human history, or in most cultures.
Shoot, Romans were drawing explicit sexual organs and acts since at least Pompeii. Many indigenous African societies have families living under the same roof in a single room, thus children will learn about sex by happening upon their parents having sex right next to them. I could go on, but the point is: there’s a lot of talk about the negatives of porn, and very little about the positives.
Maybe we could start with some right now? Like how porn Teaches men (and women) that it’s okay to have sexual fantasies, to look at naked bodies, to masturbate, explore one’s sexuality, be kinky, and to be a sexual being on a regular basis as part of a healthy, normal lifestyle.
These positives stand in stark contrast to the tone I’m noticing in some of the comments regarding porn, tone that sounds almost repressive, almost condemning, as if a 60+ year old man who’s just now opening up his sexuality because he has greater access now is somehow addicted or perverted. Such projections are dangerous throwbacks to the times when people were actually punished for embracing their own sex life, whether it was gay, straight, queer, or what have you.
Photo credit: Flickr / Baddog_
I just wish it was easier to find porn and video games made for women. (Not that it’s stopped me from playing games, I even played GTA as a kid.) That’s my biggest problem with those industries. I don’t believe I’m asexual but when discussing porn with my boyfriend I feel like it is much easier for him to find stuff that turns him on than it is for me to find the same. I don’t know if it is because most porn is made more for male audiences or if I just have weird tastes, probably a little of… Read more »
Well there’d have to be women to pay for it, or women willing to make it. There is probably quite a lot out there but there is so much porn that it might be like looking for 1 fishy in the sea. I don’t mind some of the objections to porn IF the people focus in on the right target, I actually agree with some of them but I just dislike the major generalizations that go unchecked. The “men who like more n more brutal porn” instead of “it seems some men like more n more brutal porn”, it’s an… Read more »
I agree, especially with Zek’s point about new technology. The printing press was often accused of posing a threat to the morality of an entire generation wherever it appeared in Renaissance Europe. It was giving common people (who were all “children,” of course) all sorts of controversial ideas that undermined the proper social order and threatened to destroy proper moral sensibilities. Pornography was one of the first genres of the underground printing presses in Europe during the Reformation. (Some of the most widely circulated anti-pope and propaganda was pornographic in appearance. Shame that we assume that religious works and pornographic… Read more »
Perhaps there really is a wolf this time, but I’ve heard “wolf” cried too many times in false alarm to take this one seriously.