The Problem With Pornography

This is a programme I think every feminist should watch:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/search/?q=Hardcore%20Profits


I've always hated porn, and the reasons have been pretty straightforward - it reduces women to the sum of their orifices and pepetuates the idea that women are mere objects to be used purely for male pleasure. The number of rapes and sexual assaults have risen with every year that consumption of pornography has increased for obvious reasons, and women are never going to be seen as equals, at home or in the workplace as long as men are conditioned to view them as vaginas that talk.

But Tim Samuels' documentary (and I'll warn you, he's a smug git of the highest order) has exposed a darker side to the industry than I knew existed and it's time for us all to face up to some home truths. I won't spoilt the programme for those of you who haven't seen it, but here is a summary of the most shocking points:

*Only one porn production house enforces condom use - the others essentially ban it. The porn industry doesn't give a toss about the sexual health of it's "stars", despite there being an outbreak of HIV just five years ago.

*The invisibility of condoms in porn is fueling the spread of sexually transmitted diseases in Ghana, where there is no sex education, but plenty of western porn. Women are reporting increasing incidences of rape and sexual assualts carried out by men who gather together to watch porn in the village at night.

*Women in porn are rarely happy or willing. A male porn star interviewed for the programme admitted he found it "difficult" to work with girls who were "crying in the toilets between takes" - yet he didn't seem to have any inclination to stop doing so. What a nice man. A female porn star also interviewed said no women in porn were happy and all had "pyschological issues", and yet she was hell-bent on pursuing a career in the industry. It was later revealed that her pimp - whoops, I mean manager - was also her boyfriend, and was shown on camera to be controlling and verbally abusive, at one point dragging her across a room by the wrist.

*Agencies exploit young women who are breathtakingly naeive about what porn involves. Samuels interviewed a 20-year-old actress who had just signed with a porn agency. She watched porn for the very first time a few hours before her first shoot so she would "know what to do".

*There is apparently a market for porn where men ejaculate directly onto women's eyeballs.

*Worse, there is a market for porn where women are forced to perform oral sex until their throats bleed and/or they are sick, and where women are forced to ingest their own excrement.


The last two points in particular make me think more than ever that porn is not supposed to be arousing simply because of the sex, but because of the depiction of the subjugation and degradation of women. That men aren't actually turned on by women vomiting over themselves, but by the violence. And considering how wildly popular pornography is, that makes me really fearful about what so many men actually think about women. It's no surprise that lads mags were a reaction to the sexual liberation preached by women's magazines like Cosmo, and that porn has got more extreme and more violent with every stride women have taken towards equality - it's all about putting women back in their place, letting them know who's really boss, etc etc. Porn is made by people who hate women, for people who hate women. It's really sickeningly scary. I could throw up thinking about it - I hope that doesn't turn anyone on.

the internet is for porn

Ah, feminism and porn. Let the battle begin. I'm throwing some thoughts out there, rather than connecting them to the single Daily Fail article. This piece was actually started by a number of things, including spending time with the other femis at our Fascinator Funday (there are pictures on facebook. It was awesome.), the post about Filament magazine on The F-Word last week, which also linked to Erotica Cover Watch, and me taking on a role as Office Bitch at the gloriously wonderful Coffee, Cake and Kink.

I like porn. There we go. I don't expect you to, although bonus if you do. Everybody has something that turns them on, whether it's naked men, naked ladies, or men dressed up as raptors flapping their "wings" while a cave-lady blows them (I draw the line at the people with a fetish for dragons fucking cars. Dude. seriously. what. the. fuck?).

However, I have noticed this, and you'd be an idiot not to. A lot more men will admit to liking - and watching - porn than women. And the vast majority of porn is made for, and consumed by men. Even the images of naked men are produced, in the vast majority, for gay men. If you go to fleshbot, there is a "gay" filter if you want to look at naked men, and "straight" for naked women (you don't have to choose a filter, though). Why? Both options assume I'm male - despite fleshbot coming from the same group as Jezebel. ECW talk about this issue here. Redtube at least allows me to choose my gender and interest - but all the adverts are aimed at straight males. Pornotube does the same as Fleshbot - gay, straight, all. But once again, the adverts (the facebook of sex! github for lesbians!) are for men. And they're skeezy.

Anyway. There is a point. Feminism, at least for me is - partly at least - about the right for women to control their own bodies. If women make the choice to sell their bodies for money, then I think they should be entitled to - although I also think that women in porn and prostitution need a great deal of support. No woman should ever have to sell her body - but if she wants to, with both eyes open, then ok*. Same goes for porn - if a woman wants to make porn, then sure, why shouldn't she? And if she wants to watch it, hurrah! If, for any person, watching porn is a part of embracing or experimenting with their sexuality, then why the fuck should they be made to feel bad for doing so?

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to wrestle my flowery chick-lit "girl porn" romance off my boyfriend.

*And mandatory health checks and no pimps.

Love Music, Hate Sexism

Apologies first of all, fair readers, that this post is not directly linked to the Fail. Oh, I know it's a great read, but my head was turned by baser reading material this week; yes, that's right, I almost bought a magazine about a genuinely interesting topic, instead of which skin cream will bag me a bachelor but give me cancer if I don't cook for him.

Almost, but not quite. You see, I do like bands. But I also like being a girl.

I remember quite vividly the first time it occurred to me that these two things could be incompatible. I was fourteen, we'd just got the internet, and a whole new world of fandom was opening before me. And then there it was; a scan of Kerrang magazine, Davey Havok and Dexter Holland sharing the cover with the headline, "ROCK IN THE DOCK: is rock music sexist?" I never did track down the article, but I even neverer forgot its title.

Those words have come back to me a lot over the years, most times I've read about Courtney Love or Brody Dalle, and every time I've flicked past yet another male-targeted advert in a music magazine. (Yes, I sometimes read the NME; no, that does not mean I aspire to style my manly hair into so improbable a quiff that women will dance on tables in its honour thus allowing me to look up their skirts, Shockwaves haircare). But this week really took the balls-up biscuit. Shipped out to Marylebone because Euston thought it might perhaps possibly be on fire and with a four-hour train journey ahead of me, I trudged into WHSmiths for something to read. Oh look, a new Q! But oh wait, it's shrink-wrapped to FHM.

Er, what the fuck? I stared at it for a moment, processed the fact that one of my favourite magazines had just turned to shit before my very eyes, and walked out of the shop.

I don't care how much it comes down to publishers' alliances, I don't care what snivelling little marketing strategy is behind it, I don't care if some girl whose face has started popping up in the London Lite has taken her "hippy chic" clothes off, but I am fucking livid that a magazine I really respected precisely because it was so much more interesting, well-written, and generally grown-up than its peers has done that for which every successful band risks crucifixion in the music media; sold out.

Well, I'm not buying it. I'm not sure what I'll buy instead (the NME's too flimsy, no-one at Artrocker can spell... maybe Clash will fill the gap) but Q can stick it; I'm sure FHM can tell them where.

And so we have the overprotective mother...

Hokay so it’s my turn to write a blog post, bit late I know. And while the issue about France’s recent ban on burkas has got me thinking about the imposing of clothes on women by state and/or religion, I found that writing as a white, atheistic-secularist male I wouldn’t really be able to comment much beyond that of wtf. So instead this post is about three articles by Penny Marshall, Middle-England’s defender from sex and pornography.

Anyway, there are three articles in the Daily Fail archives to choose from. The most recent is about lipstick lesbianism and how it is an evil and corrupting force that destroys young girls, the next is about the TV and how it is an evil and corrupting force that destroys young girls, and finally an article about teenagers making their own porn (which actually is disturbing, but the scapegoat of TV returns as the evil and corrupting force that destroys young girls). And from these three articles I got the picture that Penny Marshall is conservative and over-protective and elitist. Three properties of an individual I consider diabolical and unnerving.

The first article, that is the one about lipstick lesbians, I got the feeling that the writer was not only homophobic but also shocked at the type of culture her conservative upbringing never allowed. However in trying to defend her way of thinking, that sexuality should be like a binary labelled object such as a consumer product might have, and pointing to the problems of peer pressure that occurs in youth culture, she comes off as sounding a wee bit homophobic and sounding more like Mary Whitehouse. Pointing at famous lady liplockers (horrible phrase I know), whose lip-shtick whatever shenanigans are more likely to appeal to lonely male divorcees than teenage females; it hawks more of Edward Woodward’s Sergeant Howie screaming at the Wicker man than a serious article about the connotations of association from the media-infused culture delegating the practices of young women.

But then the problem, that they are doing it for the sake to appeal more attractive to potential mate, is surely a problem about the current media obsessed necessity in coupling, pregnancies, marriage and the alienation of people being single for the sake of being single. Shoot if two girls are kissing to appeal more attractive to males then surely the problem is not the kissing but the apparent necessity to be non-single. But we can’t be blaming the press can we?

As to article two, the TV viewing, this is just hilarious. ‘PARENTS YOUR CHILDREN ARE WATCHING FILTH’ to paraphrase the humour. I’m not sure whether I’m a prime candidate to criticise, having watched the likes of Monkey Dust, Neco Z Alenky, the Godfather, the Shining, Alien, South Park: the Movie and series and Trainspotting before the age of fifteen, I’ve supposed to be a mass-murdering, cynical junkie with a deeply dark sense of humour. Well the last bit is true but as of twenty I haven’t murdered anyone yet and in being a very moderate drinker I don’t think diving into the filthiest toilet in Scotland for a hit is going to happen anytime soon. But it is funny the angst the author has about what the teenage girls are watching. It is like seeing a nervous breakdown in typographical form. See as TV shows are lined up and criticised for being corrupting and wrongly influential (as opposed to say the popular press pushing criticisms of any famous women who are not married, with children, without a strong voice, within a certain body image, and are not Kelly Brooks).

But then that worried mother screaming “Won’t somebody please think of the children!?” (as Helen Lovejoy would cry) is just what suites the Daily Fail. That is, cheap criticism on modern culture (that doesn’t feature ITV) and the degradation of youths, and the collapse of morals. This brings me onto the third article, the actually mildly disturbing article.

This article’s content is mildly alarming. Not because what is happening, that teenagers are making their own porn and distributing it among their peers (this is more disturbing than alarming and has a whole range of problems not least that the Daily Fail is probably the culprit), but the way that this article insists that this thing is a problem because it has ‘infected’ middle class girls. For the sake of Pete I cannot abide by this elitist bullshit any more than I can abide the Daily Mail itself. Because what it is saying is that it is okay for teenagers to make porn of themselves so long as they are of what was once called the working class. Hence because some prissy private (dick-)eds and grammar girls are doing it it is now a moral decadence that must be stopped for “Won’t somebody please think of the children?”.

In closing I look forward to more Penny Marshall articles, as she strives to defend teenage girls from reality, as they’re nothing short of stereotypical wailing that can never be taken seriously.