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Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Are men the problem with porn?


posted by bitchphd
Okay, time for the porn discussion, part two: what about the guys--who are, after all, the usual producers and customers of the stuff. Personally, I'm less interested in discussing whether or not mainstream, presumably man-focused porn is aesthetically revolting (no duh) than whether or not the simple fact that men control the industry as both suppliers and consumers is the major problem, and if so why and what does this mean? Do y'all think that men = "the patriarchy"? Is it that men, by and large, fear/dislike women's "control" of sexuality and this expresses itself in gross misogynistic imagery? Is it theoretically possible for porn to be "woman friendly," or is porn's indivisibilty from the patriarchy a function, as the blessed Twisty would say, of the fact that "sex, in our culture, is about the sublimation of the male boner"? (Here's another good Twisty post about strip clubs, by the way.)

For the record, I think Twisty is a damn good analyist of patriarchy as cultural construct, and though--in the end--I am not the radical feminist she is, I agree with her intellectually about a lot of things, though I differ from her primarily, I think, in terms of being more realistic (pessimistic? defeatist?) about the false consciousness gap. Which is to say, while strictly speaking she's right that sexuality in the world as we know it is irretrievably compromised by sexism--so much so that imagining a brave new world of feminist sexuality is probably beyond our abilities, at least for us straight chicks--I'm usually more interested in the ways that we negotiate this state of affairs more than I am in pointing it out. Which is to say, no bashing of feminists, radical or otherwise, as sex-phobic or any of that nonsense, please.

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