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Re: Another Very long rant! Poss Trigger » gabbi~1

Posted by Tamar on March 29, 2006, at 13:56:54

In reply to Another Very long rant! Poss Trigger, posted by gabbi~1 on March 29, 2006, at 11:28:32

Hi Gabbi,

> As I mentioned before, I too have been 'victimized' in the true sense of the word.
> What makes me angry as H*ll are people who try or tried to take my voice away again by saying "you couldn't really like what you are doing, you might *think* you do, but I don't believe it"

Yes, I can imagine. Do you feel that it’s been happening in this discussion? Do you feel that your voice has been taken away?

> It's something that insults me and perpetuates the victim status under the guise of concern.
> How many people ask, with the same intense pitying concern "I wonder if that married woman with three kids is really happy, does she know what she's doing?"

Maybe they should! Did you know I’m a married woman with three kids? If so, you probably also know that I have no idea what I’m doing!

> "What about that clerk at the gas station?"
> All of us make our choices relative to our circumstance, and who knows if those circumstances were different what we would choose? Or what we would look back on and think, "I guess I didn't really like that as much as I thought"

That’s true. Women are exploited in all kinds of employment and not just in the sex industry. And indeed women are sexually exploited in other kinds of employment too. I think I worry particularly about women’s freedom of choice in the sex industry because of the culture. For one thing, a very high proportion of women working in the sex industry have been sexually abused as children. I am deeply concerned about the possibility that abused girls end up working in the sex industry because their academic choices have been restricted: if they’re experiencing incest they might not do so well at school for example, and don’t have the choice of the range of careers that their non-abused peers have.

And I do believe that women who say they enjoy the work are telling the truth. Perhaps many women with histories of abuse find it healing to be sexually involved in a very controlled environment such as porn, or to have the freedom to choose which sex acts to participate in and at what price. I imagine the self-determination involved is very important to someone with a childhood history of abuse.

However, I have serious concerns about women’s safety. Certainly the vast majority of women who work in prostitution have been subjected to violence at some point in the course of their work. The risk of violence at work is much higher for women working in prostitution than for women in, say, medicine or academia. And culturally it seems that violence against women in the sex industry is viewed as acceptable. For example, I think if a prostitute or porn actress complained to the police that she’d been raped, she wouldn’t stand much chance of getting the guy convicted. I think there’s a huge lack of respect for women who work in sex, and that lack of respect is bad for all women. I’d like to see women in the sex industry treated with much more respect.

> To say a woman is being objectified and denying her claim that she truly enjoys her sexuality is in itself objectifying and infantilizing.

I agree wholeheartedly with the second half of your sentence. Yes, denying a woman’s claim to enjoy her sexuality is infantilizing. The first part of your sentence is something I’d probably agree to with qualifications. If I tell a woman that she is being objectified, then it’s unhelpful at best. On the other hand, when I look at porn I do think women are depicted more often as objects of other people’s desire rather than as subjects of their own desire. But of course it’s not just in porn; I think that it’s simply particularly striking in porn images. I suspect that many women see themselves as objects of desire more readily than as desiring subjects. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being an object of desire. However, woman-as-object seems to be over-represented in porn, in my view.

> Polarizing intelligence and substance and the enjoyment earthy sexuality and the celebration of taste and touch and all things sensual, under the guise of concern, and holding it hostage to intellectualized concepts and theories is sadly repressive, and prejudiced.

I’m not sure I’ve understood you correctly, but if you’re saying that expressions of concern for real women in the sex industry are being used disingenuously in attempts to support theoretical concerns about sexual politics, then I’d probably disagree a little. I think feminist theorists who debate issues about porn and prostitution are often women with some kind of inside experience of the issues involved, so it’s not particularly disingenuous. I also think they’re trying to find ways make things better for *all* women and not just those who work in sex. They often disagree on how to change things for the better, but that’s the nature of theoretical debate. Certainly I think there’s something of a feminist consensus that the sex industry is not a particularly safe place for women to work, based on sex workers’ own reports. So if feminists want things to be different, perhaps it’s not because they’re repressive or prejudiced but because their idea of liberation involves widespread cultural change.

> Women have been abused in various ways long before the advent of porn on glossy paper.
> Abuse is something that will find it's way into any corner of the world, for any reason, and to connect it to one thing, or one area is naive and unrealistic.

If I thought porn and abuse were intrinsically connected, I’d be out campaigning for total censorship. Still, I do think that porn is very influential and I’d like to see it reflect healthier attitudes to sexuality than it currently does.

> The mindset of the abuser exists unto itself and will find it's way of acting on the desire to inflict pain. It existed when women were forced to wear dresses down to their ankles, and when they had to wear chastity belts.

For sure. And it exists when women are paid only 80% of their male colleague’s salary to do the same job. And it exists when women are forced to go back to work two weeks after having a baby because they can’t survive financially otherwise. And it exists when older women can’t get a job because the employers want to hire someone young and ‘attractive’. I think it’s about a culture of inequality rather than about individual abusers. In a culture of inequality abusers know they can get away with it.

> Hugh Heffner was one of the first people to hire women, and hire black people to work in his corporation, (not pose in his magazine)
> Stockholders threatened him, when he hired minorities. He didn't change his hiring practices.
> His attitude was truly about sexual liberation, it wasn't an acceptable way to disguise his desire to abuse and objectify.

I’m not a huge fan of Hefner. His advocacy of civil rights for minorities may be a redeeming quality, and I might even agree with him on other issues. But I find it difficult to see him as a proponent of sexual equality. And I don’t believe that sexual liberation is worth much without sexual equality. I guess I’d share his goal of sexual liberation, but I’d say there are better ways to set about achieving it.

> And yet many institutions that preach love and acceptance and morality are responsible for abuses of power.

Well, yeah. I won’t disagree with that!

> I'm not glorifying the porn industry, or demonizing the latter. What I'm saying is, that a label or philosophy is, not and never has been indicative of the behaviour of all those who are part of it. Abusers and those who respect the integrity of others are found in all aspects of life.

That seems fair enough. I don’t think we’re coming from fundamentally different places. If you interpreted some of the comments in my earlier post as any kind of attempt to silence the voices of women in porn, then I apologise for being unclear and inarticulate. I strongly believe that the voices of women in porn should be heard. And at the same time I think it’s important to explore the influence of porn throughout society and try to determine if there are ways we can improve the things that are holding back women (and men) from being as fulfilled as they could hope to be.

Tamar


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