babble home
rabble.ca - news for the rest of us
today's active topics

Topic Closed  Topic Closed


Post New Topic  
Topic Closed  Topic Closed
FAQ | Forum Home
  next oldest topic   next newest topic
» babble   » walking the talk   » feminism   » Crackdown on *violent* pornography

Email this thread to someone!    
Author Topic: Crackdown on *violent* pornography
kuri
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4202

posted 15 August 2005 06:27 PM      Profile for kuri   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Violent porn sites face government crackdown (Guardian)

quote:
Websites which glamorise sexual violence are to be targeted by the government, it was revealed today, following the murder of a teacher by a man addicted to violent internet porn.

Methods similar to those deployed against child pornography are being considered as part of an international initiative.


I believe the idea is to try to shut down sites that depict violent, illegal acts. I was immediately reminded of the story of Natel King.

It's probably impossible to fully implement, I realize, and sometimes it will be hard to tell what's real violence and what's "fake violence". Too vague and muddy to be done fairly or a good idea?

P.S. note the forum this is in - that doesn't mean no disagreement, but I'd really like to have discussion on this that *doesn't* disrespect women and insult victims of sexual violence... please?


From: an employer more progressive than rabble.ca | Registered: Jun 2003  |  IP: Logged
Maritimesea
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8953

posted 16 August 2005 06:03 PM      Profile for Maritimesea     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I don't see, from the viewing perspective, the difference between real and faked violence. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure that most of it is faked, as that would simply be easier to produce. Of course actual sexualized violence against women(or anyone, for that matter)should be removed as a source of viewing "pleasure" online, but I don't think the government should waste its time trying to figure out if it is "real" or not, they should remove all of it.

The biggest challenge will be to get websites outside the sphere of western governments power to intervene shut down.


From: Nova Scotia | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged
raccunk
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 9151

posted 16 August 2005 07:29 PM      Profile for raccunk     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I understand why people want violent pornography banned. It is perverse and disrespectful to the individuals portrayed. However, I worry about giving the government the power to censure material that was presumably produced consensually. No one was actually hurt, right? What is to stop the police from censuring other kinds of material? Other, non-obscene possibly political info? It is a slippery slope kind of argument but I think it is a legitimate concern.

I can't imagine that such offensive material is actually that popular. I know someone has to be buying it but I don't think it is as big as other, less disturbing porn. Am I being naieve?


From: Zobooland | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged
Yst
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 9749

posted 16 August 2005 07:36 PM      Profile for Yst     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I'm curious what would constitute the characteristic case of 'violent pornography' that they might be looking for. There are a plethora of BDSM and fetish niches out there many of which in some sense are violent, but it's hard to pin down a simple definition. Pornography depicting something that would appear closer to domestic violence or a common sex crime, on the other hand, seems to be extremely rare in the world of straight porn.

Frankly, the one episode I ever watched of Fox's Fear Factor looked to be pushing itself far into the violent fringes of the pornography market (scopophilia, humiliation and torture). So I'm not sure what to designate unacceptable violence in more conventional pornographic terms. Prime time TV seems to be right up there with the really far-out fetishism on the web.

As far as extremely obvious cases go, well, maybe there's a market for men re-enacting real-to-life rape situations or domestic abuse out there, but I haven't seen it.


From: State of Genderfuck | Registered: Jun 2005  |  IP: Logged
kuri
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4202

posted 16 August 2005 07:41 PM      Profile for kuri   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Yst:
Prime time TV seems to be right up there with the really far-out fetishism on the web.

As far as extremely obvious cases go, well, maybe there's a market for men re-enacting real-to-life rape situations or domestic abuse out there, but I haven't seen it.


That's a good point about TV. I understand there's been some actual violence on episodes of Big Brother in the UK, and while there was controversy, the show wasn't stopped or anything.

I've recieved spam e-mails in the past advertising rape porn and the like. I didn't follow the links, but I took that as an indication that it exists and they think that it is something that will draw people to their site.


From: an employer more progressive than rabble.ca | Registered: Jun 2003  |  IP: Logged
Publius
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8829

posted 17 August 2005 02:00 PM      Profile for Publius     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
The problem is that it's not against the law to portray illegal actions, jsut to actually commit them. I can't kill someone, but I can make a movie in which actors portray a murder. I can't steal a car but can make a video game in which car theft is the objective. I think we're going down a very slippery slope if we start curtailing free speech based on what we find offensive and harmful.
From: Toronto | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged
Mr. Magoo
guilty-pleasure
Babbler # 3469

posted 17 August 2005 02:10 PM      Profile for Mr. Magoo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I can easily picture a brave new world where you can be jailed for showing a photo of someone being spanked, but you can make millions of dollars making a movie where a guy gets his ear brutally cut off while another man painfully dies of a gut-shot.

Put Tarantino in jail first or don't waste my time with it.


From: ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø, | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
jas
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 9529

posted 19 August 2005 01:35 AM      Profile for jas     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
This issue brings into the same question laws around child pornography (I really didn't want to have to start a new thread on this, as it seems directly relevant.)

I have been surprised lately to read or hear of cases where people have been arrested for accessing child pornography on the internet. (One in the paper recently, can't remember name). I can understand the criminalization of producing child porn, but I can't understand the criminalization of accessing it, creepy and sick though it may be. Did I miss something in these stories? It seems frightening and just plain wrong to me that police could, on anyone's tip, come and raid my hard drive, and if they see pictures they don't like, arrest me. I use the first person here for example only - I don't generally collect porn except for a few erotic pictures I come across that I like (and that are not of children, nor look like children, nor violent, just for the record).

But where do you draw the line? We find many examples of borderline pedophilia in everyday popular culture like movies and advertising. We certainly see lots of other examples of unwholesome (in my opinion) sexuality such as bondage, SM, violent sex, torture and sexualized death in all kinds of images and texts these days. I am not supporting consumers of child porn, but I don't know that just because they have a sick obsession justifies their being singled out over all kinds of other sick obsessives.

What if someone draws sexual pictures of children and keeps them in a closet in their home? Should police be able to arrest them as well, on a tip? What actually is the offense in these cases, besides creepiness?

I'm playing devil's advocate here. I don't wish to upset anyone, since this is obviously a very touchy subject. But this is going to be an issue in years to come. Where do we draw the line? Who decides what's unacceptable? Producing child porn is unacceptable, I'm sure most of us would agree. But consuming it? When did that become illegal? And how do you enforce it?


From: the world we want | Registered: Jun 2005  |  IP: Logged
Maritimesea
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8953

posted 19 August 2005 03:07 AM      Profile for Maritimesea     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Well making consumption of child pornography illegal would of course mean that no demand=no supply. No consumption means no more children forced to participate in pornography. Seems fairly straight forward to me.

One of the reasons, I would assume, that child pornography takes a much higher precedence for law enforcement compared to other types of pornography is because children are the most vulnerable among us and need all the help they can get.

I don't know much about the law but if someone draws sexual images of children and does not display them anywhere publically, then I fail to see what that person could actually be charged with. Although, ensuring that person is not in a situation, personally or professionally, whereby they are alone with children would be a good thing. Wasn't there already someone in western Canada, years ago I think, that was charged with drawing sexualized pictures of children. Robin Cook, or something like that.


From: Nova Scotia | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged
anne cameron
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8045

posted 19 August 2005 03:40 AM      Profile for anne cameron     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
The Telus strike certainly shows how easy it is to shut down internet access...Telus has gone way way over the line in blocking the union web site, etc. They've blocked some 700 sites...by me the company executives should all do time in jail...but...the dull point I'm trying to make here is that it is amazing to me that Telus can do something like that the the police forces keep whimpering that they can't "do anything" about widespread dissemination of what is, if you really think about it, hatred. It isn't "hate literature" but it is hatred.

At the risk of sending Magoo into orbit here... a number of years ago the CBC provided me with a researcher who made contact with "Project P" in Toronto. I walked into that place with the usual "what people do in the privacy of their own homes is none of my business" small-l liberal attitude and came out still nauseated, and feeling as if I had a target on my back because I was female and had just seen the handbook on how to make war against women and children.

Do not believe me. Find out for yourself. Take plastic bags, you will heave. And I only saw stuff which was seized but had NOT resulted in a conviction. I was told about the "community standards" rule, and that one made me livid with fury because what the fuck kind of community could find it not violation of their standards to see women fucking pigs, or children being raped. However...those images did not result in a conviction.

A huge problem is that most of this crap is produced outside our borders. This means our first line of defence is Canada Customs and after the debacle of many years which came down on Little Sisters Book Store in Vancouver I'm not about to volunteer to allow such decisions to be made by people who get paid to paw through our underwear in our suitcases and backpacks.

Why would possession of those images be deemed dangerous, harmful, or...
well, it's quite well known that what was entertaining and titillating on Monday is old hat on Tuesday and by Wednesday the creep is looking for something "more". By Thursday it is old hat and by Friday he wants more more more and as the obsessions escalate the crud gets increasingly ugly and violent and so does the creep.

Someone mentioned Tarantino. Gag. What to me is worse than Tarantino are the absolute arstles who try to convince me and the rest of the world the man is an artistic genius.

He's an uglyfaced fuckin' freak! He didn't get a brain, he got a sewer. The guy was stood up and put outside before the glue was dry and I will never watch his "work" again.

Am I a fanatic. Oh you bet your bippy I am. I've had to listen to too many people prattle on about "pornography" without having taken the time and trouble to go to Project P to see what it really is!

We seem to have lost the difference between freedom and license. There is nothing erotic in images of a woman doing a mouth job on a Berkshire hog.

Pornography is hatred of women. Pornographic images are the training method and dead women and children are the reality.

It is not erotic, it is not artistic, it is not anything defensible. It is grot. It is shit. It is TACKY and do not believe me. Ask Project P if you could please just have a half hour look at what they have seized.


From: tahsis, british columbia | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged
MasterDebator
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8643

posted 19 August 2005 04:42 AM      Profile for MasterDebator        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by anne cameron:
At the risk of sending Magoo into orbit here...


...And I only saw stuff which was seized but had NOT resulted in a conviction. I was told about the "community standards" rule, and that one made me livid with fury because what the fuck kind of community could find it not violation of their standards to see women fucking pigs, or children being raped. However...those images did not result in a conviction.

A huge problem is that most of this crap is produced outside our borders. This means our first line of defence is Canada Customs and after the debacle of many years which came down on Little Sisters Book Store in Vancouver I'm not about to volunteer to allow such decisions to be made by people who get paid to paw through our underwear in our suitcases and backpacks.

...

Am I a fanatic. Oh you bet your bippy I am. I've had to listen to too many people prattle on about "pornography" without having taken the time and trouble to go to Project P to see what it really is!

We seem to have lost the difference between freedom and license. There is nothing erotic in images of a woman doing a mouth job on a Berkshire hog.

Pornography is hatred of women. Pornographic images are the training method and dead women and children are the reality.

It is not erotic, it is not artistic, it is not anything defensible. It is grot. It is shit. It is TACKY and do not believe me. Ask Project P if you could please just have a half hour look at what they have seized.[/QB]



Bravo Anne!!! I really feel that we are in very, very strong agreement on this issue. It's so encouraging to hear from someone else who isn't buying into the neo-liberal Third Wave BS about "agency" (whatever the hell that pompous little term is supposed to mean, ... I guess you have to be one of the self-appointed urban sophisticates to be trusted with a copy of the translation key) and empowered strippers and hookers, and liberating porn, etc.

My one question is this, it relates to your disucssion of customs and the Little Sisters seizures. With all that in mind, how would you stem the tide of porn pouring over the US border?


From: Goose Country Road, Prince George, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
voice of the damned
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6943

posted 19 August 2005 06:57 AM      Profile for voice of the damned     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Wasn't there already someone in western Canada, years ago I think, that was charged with drawing sexualized pictures of children. Robin Cook, or something like that.

Robin Cook was a British politician I believe.

I think you're conflating two cases: John Robin Sharpe was a Vancouver writer who got himself arrested for writing pornographic stories about minors. Eli Langer, I believe, was the name of the Toronto(?) artist who produced drawings and paintings of children in sexual situations, eventually getting arrested by the aforementioned Project P.


From: Asia | Registered: Sep 2004  |  IP: Logged
The Baboon
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8558

posted 19 August 2005 08:40 AM      Profile for The Baboon        Edit/Delete Post
First of all, the issue here is not "is it wrong to look at violent pornography." My personal feeling is that it's not wrong, but that's not relevant. The issue is, by what right does the state seek to determine what is and is not fit for our consumption? By what right does the state seek to determine what acts two consenting adults may engage in, on camera or otherwise? I'm an adult, and I'll make my own choices in those areas, thanks.

Second, if pornography is hatred of women, what about porn that does not feature women? What about those whose fetishes lean more towards fantasies about being on the receiving end of the act? Maybe they hate themselves?

Third, arguments about supply and demand don't make much sense when most porn one downloads on the internet is probably obtained for free.

Fourth, the point the whole thesis rests on:

quote:
well, it's quite well known that what was entertaining and titillating on Monday is old hat on Tuesday and by Wednesday the creep is looking for something "more". By Thursday it is old hat and by Friday he wants more more more and as the obsessions escalate the crud gets increasingly ugly and violent and so does the creep.

Prove it. You could just as easily say that a healthy imagination and a healthy fantasy life serves as a release. There's no evidence I know of to support either position, in fact. They're both just opinions, and certainly not something to base laws on.

Fifth, my hard drive is my goddamned hard drive. Period. No ifs, ands, or buts. The day my computer is subject to inspection is the day I buy a gun - and I just reformatted the thing, there isn't even anything on it. It's a matter of principle. Searching a hard drive, now that's rape. That's absolutely a rape act. Search someone's hard drive and you're reading their diary, searching their house, rooting through their possessions, accessing their financial info, you name it.

There is just no entity on this Earth that I trust with this kind of power, you bunch of statists.

[ 19 August 2005: Message edited by: The Baboon ]


From: Interior British Columbia | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
Crippled_Newsie
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 7024

posted 19 August 2005 09:01 AM      Profile for Crippled_Newsie     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I recall reading an essay many years ago (like 20) that described the breach that most activist gay men have with their lesbian allies-- and it's all about pornography.

At the time (and perhaps still), the majority of activist lesbians (and str8 women, for that matter) see porn as Anne sees it. That is, as unvarnished evil. And for roughly the reasons Anne laid out.

Many gay men, on the other hand, found that pornography of whatever legal sort was a positive boon. Not because it's fun to masturbate to-- well not just because of that-- but because they believed that much of the oppression of homosexuality was tied in with sexual Puritanism, and anything that served to challenge that societal view was a good thing.

So now, all these years later, has anything changed? To my mind, oppression of LGBT people is still connected with Western society's sexual Puritanism. I can understand why women oppose porn, but I just cannot agree.

[ 19 August 2005: Message edited by: Tape_342 ]


From: It's all about the thumpa thumpa. | Registered: Oct 2004  |  IP: Logged
Reality. Bites.
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6718

posted 19 August 2005 09:22 AM      Profile for Reality. Bites.        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Tape_342:
So now, all these years later, has anything changed?

I think that there is a larger segment of the lesbian population today that sees porn the way many gay men do, particularly porn produced for and by lesbians.

In reference to Magoo's spanking photo, last Saturday night I was watching the gay travel show "Pink Planet" on Citytv Vancouver, and they had a segment on San Francisco's Folsom Street fair and its spanking booth. 20 years ago a video depicting what they showed would have been seized at the border (still might, for all I know). Today it can air on broadcast (not cable) television, interspersed with commercials for United Furniture Warehouse's "Back to School" sale.


From: Gone for good | Registered: Aug 2004  |  IP: Logged
Nam
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3472

posted 19 August 2005 12:25 PM      Profile for Nam     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by The Baboon:
Fifth, my hard drive is my goddamned hard drive. Period. No ifs, ands, or buts. The day my computer is subject to inspection is the day I buy a gun - and I just reformatted the thing, there isn't even anything on it. It's a matter of principle. Searching a hard drive, now that's rape. That's absolutely a rape act. [ 19 August 2005: Message edited by: The Baboon ]

I've never been raped. I hope you have never been raped. I know people who have been raped, and to compare someone searching your hard drive to the act of rape is, ...well, I don't know what it is except profoundly offensive and over the top. Please rethink your comments.


From: Calgary-Land of corporate towers | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
MasterDebator
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8643

posted 19 August 2005 01:57 PM      Profile for MasterDebator        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Tape_342:
I recall reading an essay many years ago (like 20) that described the breach that most activist gay men have with their lesbian allies-- and it's all about pornography.

I think you're right about this. I wish I had a ready link, I will try to find one, but Andrea Dworkin and John Stoltenberg wrote about this quite extensively.

As for some the pornography freedom fighters who have unburdened themselves in this thread, I don't care for libertarian arguments about pensions and health care, why should I respect them when it comes to porn?


From: Goose Country Road, Prince George, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
Mr. Magoo
guilty-pleasure
Babbler # 3469

posted 19 August 2005 02:07 PM      Profile for Mr. Magoo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
I don't care for libertarian arguments about pensions and health care, why should I respect them when it comes to porn?

Because you respect them when it comes to other rights, like your right to peaceful assembly or your right to speak your mind?

Anyway, if I recall correctly, the only "porn" argument you give any credibility to is your own, or any other that says we must purge the earth of nudie mags, so I guess the Libertarians are in good company with pretty much everyone except Andrea Dworkin, Jerry Falwell and you.


From: ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø, | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478

posted 19 August 2005 02:36 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
I don't care for libertarian arguments about pensions and health care, why should I respect them when it comes to porn?

Um. Yes. Problem.

"Libertarian" and "civil libertarian," or more properly, just someone who cares about our civil liberties -- those are two entirely separate categories.

As a committed democrat and also as a student of literature (and thus of the history of censorship), I have a lot of trouble with any law proscribing expression (including artistic expression) or thought.

I am willing to make really minimal concessions, the classic ones -- incitement, eg, or direct threats.

anne, I am moved and worried by your description of what Project P has collected, and I want to see the people who make and distribute such stuff investigated, since it sounds as though other laws may have been broken in the process.

But as someone else notes above, it was Project P that went after Eli Langer and his drawings.

Some of us have just got to keep narking away about the classic defences of civil liberties. It stuns me sometimes to see how seriously eroded public commitment to the citizen's own natural liberties has become.


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Tommy_Paine
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 214

posted 19 August 2005 09:09 PM      Profile for Tommy_Paine     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
There are those in the gay community in London who insist that then Chief Jullian Fantino used a crusade against child porn to attack the local gays. And I think there is creedence to that viewpoint. And it's obvious that Canada Customs used our existing porn laws to persecute the lesbian book store mentioned above.

We've been around this bush many times on babble with no small amount of accrimony. In fact, I'm thinking posting on it yet again must reveal some deeply hidden latent steak of masochism in me.

It's contentious because like many things, there are people who can use things or act in a responsible way, and those that choose not to.

For the most part, it's the minority that choose not to, and cause no small amount of human misery in doing so. The effort to contain those few brings us into conflict with the responsible people who really don't need anyone else's two cents worth on their personal habits.

Sexual violence. I guess that would include the 50's bondage photo's featuring Betty Page. Which I happen to like on several levels. And I could give a rat's ass what anyone thinks of that.

But it doesn't include "True Crime" shows on T.V. featuring crime scene photo's of raped and murdered women. Which I find deeply, deeply offensive and humanity destroying.

Strange dichotomy? I don't think so. One is fantasy involving consenting adults. The other is reality that depicts the savage destruction of innocent people. And I put it to you that those who make and those who watch that kind of main stream T.V. programing have not much more regard for those dead women in the crime scene photo's as the person who abused and killed them.

But yeah, let's round up those few Betty Page photo's that survived the first Congressional Hearings on Porn in the 50's-- less heard about because they ran along side that other great crusade, the McCarthy Hearings-- and we'll all be healthier.

Then pass the popcorn, and the crime scene photos of real victims of violence.

We have to be the most fucked up variety of Ape on the planet. I wish I was a Bonobo.


From: The Alley, Behind Montgomery's Tavern | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
MasterDebator
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8643

posted 20 August 2005 01:44 AM      Profile for MasterDebator        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by skdadl:
"Libertarian" and "civil libertarian," or more properly, just someone who cares about our civil liberties -- those are two entirely separate categories.

As a committed democrat and also as a student of literature (and thus of the history of censorship), I have a lot of trouble with any law proscribing expression (including artistic expression) or thought.



When I say libertarian I am thinking of people like Wendy McElroy who can write some very learned sounding defences of the rights of pornographers, and in the same vein denounce every aspect of the welfare state. Why should social democrats pay any attention at all to that kind of thing?


From: Goose Country Road, Prince George, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
MasterDebator
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8643

posted 20 August 2005 01:46 AM      Profile for MasterDebator        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:
Anyway, if I recall correctly, the only "porn" argument you give any credibility to is your own, ...


Oddly enough, that sounds to me like a letter perfect description of how you approach the subject, Mister Magoo.


From: Goose Country Road, Prince George, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
jas
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 9529

posted 20 August 2005 02:55 AM      Profile for jas     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by skdadl:
It stuns me sometimes to see how seriously eroded public commitment to the citizen's own natural liberties has become.

This is the crux of the argument, for me. Child porn is a convenient target to use to start taking away personal privacies and self-determination. Few would object to hounding out rapists, pedophiles, child pornographers and other sexual creeps and publicly stoning? drawing & quartering them?...whatever. So somehow the methods of hounding these people out get justified by the righteousness of the cause.

quote:
Originally posted by Tommy_Paine:
And I put it to you that those who make and those who watch that kind of main stream T.V. programing have not much more regard for those dead women in the crime scene photos as the person who abused and killed them.

Thank you for articulating this. It seems so hypocritical to me that so many will vilify sexual creeps in our society without any comment on the everyday sickness and - I can't even think of a word for it... sludge? crap, puke...American mainstream television, (it makes me feel the way Anne Cameron described feeling at Project P)... This severely fucked-up psychological diarrhea that passes as 'normal' television viewing, that MILLIONS of Americans (I guess I should say North Americans, but I don't want to) watch every day, munching chips and mentally masturbating themselves. Sorry, but this is just as creepy to me - if not MORE so by its sheer insidiouness - as the sick shit that sick, sad fucks wank off to on the internet. (say that ten times fast)

In fact, I'm sure we could see a marriage of these two trends in the very near future: True Crimes meets 'True Justice'... American vigilantism - on TV! Watch our boys as they hound out all the sick fucks in our society and give 'em what they deserve! YeeeeeHAW!

[ 20 August 2005: Message edited by: jas ]


From: the world we want | Registered: Jun 2005  |  IP: Logged
The Baboon
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8558

posted 20 August 2005 03:11 AM      Profile for The Baboon        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
When I say libertarian I am thinking of people like Wendy McElroy who can write some very learned sounding defences of the rights of pornographers, and in the same vein denounce every aspect of the welfare state. Why should social democrats pay any attention at all to that kind of thing?

I'm no libertarian, at least not in that sense, but I do believe that people have natural rights that are not granted to them by any higher authority, and a state which does not grant rights may not revoke them.


From: Interior British Columbia | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
voice of the damned
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6943

posted 20 August 2005 05:09 AM      Profile for voice of the damned     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by skdadl:
"Libertarian" and "civil libertarian," or more properly, just someone who cares about our civil liberties -- those are two entirely separate categories.
As a committed democrat and also as a student of literature (and thus of the history of censorship), I have a lot of trouble with any law proscribing expression (including artistic expression) or thought.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


When I say libertarian I am thinking of people like Wendy McElroy who can write some very learned sounding defences of the rights of pornographers, and in the same vein denounce every aspect of the welfare state. Why should social democrats pay any attention at all to that kind of thing?


I have in fact read Wendy McElroy's book on the subject of pornography. And I agree that if the basis of the anti-censorship argument is taken to be "people have an absolute right to private property"(which I think it is for McElroy), then that isn't the type of thinking that social democrats can embrace.

However, there are other arguments against censorship which, while they touch on notions of individual freedom, aren't predicated on an absolute right to private property. My own reasons for opposing censorship are twofold:

1. The individual reader is more qualifed than the state to decide what he or she would enjoy reading, and...

2. Whatever the original intention, any powers of censorship granted to the state are likely to be used disproportiantely against powerless and marginalized groups(the Little Sisters case comes to mind here).

I don't think that holding either of the above positions commits one to a whole-hog embrace of libertarian notions of the sanctity of private property. Nor does it preculde recognizing whatever inequities may exist in the sex industry, and seeking non-coercive solutions to said inequities.

I do agree that classical libertarian arguments can have a "trojan horse" apsect about them, when embraced uncritically by the left. Judith Jarvis Thomson's "dying violinist" argument, which is popular among some pro-choicers, comes to mind in this regard. The premises behind Thomson's argument might also be used by those who want to argue that no one has any binding obligation to offer assistance to anyone else.


From: Asia | Registered: Sep 2004  |  IP: Logged
Tommy_Paine
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 214

posted 20 August 2005 09:00 AM      Profile for Tommy_Paine     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
We already have laws on the books that can be used to protect victims of violent, non consetual pornography.

What censorship of the expression of people's consentual fantasies does is attempt to change the cause by eliminating the effect.

Not to mention providing a new field of play for busy bodies of the left and right.


From: The Alley, Behind Montgomery's Tavern | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478

posted 20 August 2005 09:14 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
MD and votd, thanks for the thoughtful responses. I admit that I have never read either McElroy or Thomson -- you've given me a good idea of what McElroy is on about, but votd, can you expand a little on Thomson? The "dying violinist"?

I agree with you both that it is abhorrent to link human liberty to something as banal and anti-human as doctrines about "private property" -- at least, that is how I would put it. The liberties I am concerned with are of the mind and then of the person, and I think of those in relation to the state pretty much as cranky neurotics and hermits like Rousseau, eg, always have.

My notion of the social contract is that human freedom is the default position. We need the state and laws to help us negotiate among ourselves, but we create that state and those laws out of our belief in liberty -- it doesn't work the other way around. (Well, in fact and in practice it mostly has, but I am describing the ideal that I think we should still be fighting for, you understand.)

Doctrines in defence of "private property" have mostly been rationalizations for exploitation and theft. If they have made a tiny few very "free," they have certainly enslaved the rest of us.

I do believe in distinctions between the capitalist use of "private" and the more humane notion of the "personal," however, including personal property. I think that we all need our space and our nests and our free minds, and any attempt to invade those, including state invasions, is illegitimate.


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
voice of the damned
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6943

posted 20 August 2005 10:02 AM      Profile for voice of the damned     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
votd, can you expand a little on Thomson? The "dying violinist"?

Sure. Thomson is a moral philosopher, and the "dying violinist" is an argument in favour of a woman's right to choose abortion. It goes roughly as follows:

Suppose you wake up one morning and find that a group of music lovers have taken a comatose violinist who suffers from kidney failure, and hooked him up to your body in order to keep him alive by sharing your kidneys(obviously, that's not how dialysis works in the real world, but whatever). He will be hooked up to your body for nine months, at which point a kidney will become available for him.

Thomson's question is: do you have the right to demand that the guy be disconnected from your body? And she assumes that the vast majority of people are going to answer yes. I think her point is pretty obvious: a woman facing an unwanted pregnancy is in the same situation as the unwilling human dialysis machine, forced against their will to keep another human being alive for nine months. If you support the guy's right to be disconnected from the violinist, then you must also support the right of a woman to be disconnected from a fetus.

Anyway, that's the argument. I don't think it's without merit, but I also think that in some ways it raises more questions than it answers, and gets us into a whole swackload of issues about just how far we want to take the idea of bodily autonomy. And as I mentioned earlier, I could see it being used by neo-liberals to undermine notions of social responsibility. Okay, the guy doesn't have to support the violinist, the woman doesn't have to support the fetus, why does the father have to support the baby after it's born? I'm not saying that these arguments are a legitimate application of the Thomson argument, just that they are likely to be advanced by the Right if her argument holds sway, and leftists therefore should approach her argument(and those like it) with caution.


From: Asia | Registered: Sep 2004  |  IP: Logged
voice of the damned
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6943

posted 20 August 2005 10:06 AM      Profile for voice of the damned     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
I do believe in distinctions between the capitalist use of "private" and the more humane notion of the "personal," however, including personal property. I think that we all need our space and our nests and our free minds, and any attempt to invade those, including state invasions, is illegitimate.


Bingo.

But then I guess the dilemna becomes just what exactly the distinction is between "personal property" and "private property".

I'm basically a utilitarian, so I tend to view "private property" as a good thing, but only as a means to an end, not as the end itself. I suppose the end itself would be human happiness.


From: Asia | Registered: Sep 2004  |  IP: Logged
voice of the damned
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6943

posted 20 August 2005 10:09 AM      Profile for voice of the damned     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Oh, here is the Thomson argument, in its entirety. The saga of the violinst begins in the fourth paragraph.

http://tinyurl.com/9dhr8

[ 20 August 2005: Message edited by: voice of the damned ]


From: Asia | Registered: Sep 2004  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478

posted 20 August 2005 10:10 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Goodness. I don't believe that Rousseau ever conceived of that situation.

Thank you, votd. I'll have to think about that quandary. In some ways it seems too narrowly logical to me -- ie, at each step of the way, tangential questions may be raised. But I'll think.


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
bigcitygal
Volunteer Moderator
Babbler # 8938

posted 20 August 2005 10:22 AM      Profile for bigcitygal     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Little Sister's, despite its name, is not a "Lesbian bookstore", but a Gay and Lesbian bookstore. And if you've ever been there, you would know that it's more like 70% gay content. This is not a criticism of LS, as I love them, just a mild correction.

As for the pornography debate, a reminder that kurichina began this as a thread specifically about violent pornography.

Let's just look at the mainstream and not at porn at all for a sec. In general, our puritanical sexually repressed society has always had more problems with depictions of sex than depictions of violence. Graphic violence, in movies, tv, advertising and books is everywhere, it's a huge market, and the impact on our society is immense.

Remember the film Philadelphia? Wouldn't even show the 2 main characters kissing FFS! But tons of car chases and bloody dead bodies are on CSI and Law and Order every week.

Sexual explicitness gets linked with violence because of the "taboo" "adult" "mature" nature that we give it. "No, children can't see that movie, it's too violent" is said with the same emphasis as "No, children can't see that movie, there's nudity (which sometimes is and sometimes isn't related to sex) and/or sexual content in it."

My opinion is that violence in media is more damaging to our culture and to individuals than sex in media. I say this as a feminist.

This debate has degenerated into "either you are pro-porn or you are pro-censorship" which I find is not accurate. I can be pro-porn, which I am, and still be pro-some-sort-of-state-legislation, but I also know that the state legislation is used to target marginalized sexualities.

So what can we do? Nothing? Is it better to have no laws than flawed laws? Is it about my usual way of fixing social issues, which is educating ourselves and others, as well as children and teens? I don't know.


From: It's difficult to work in a group when you're omnipotent - Q | Registered: Apr 2005  |  IP: Logged
MyNameisLeo
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 10172

posted 20 August 2005 10:56 AM      Profile for MyNameisLeo     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
This is a really tough issue. I'll have to think this over before I tell you what I think (I don't even know what I think).

For now, though, I do think there's a distinction between child pornography and any other kind. I also think violence generally and pornography should be approached the same way. I also think you could make a credible argument that pornography in some cases prevents sexual abuse and assault. There seems to be a vast array of pornography and I don't know who we could trust to distinguish the legal from the illegal.

On another note, I despise people using the word rape to refer to their computer hard drives (as was done earlier in this thread) or high interest rates on their mortgages, etc.

[ 20 August 2005: Message edited by: MyNameisLeo ]


From: SWBC | Registered: Aug 2005  |  IP: Logged
kuri
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4202

posted 20 August 2005 11:35 AM      Profile for kuri   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Thanks, bcg, for reminding us of the specification that this thread is about violent pornography specifically. Although I've never been that offended by thread drift (Hell, I cause it quite often!) I did intend for the violent aspect to be front and centre rather than the sexual aspect. I haven't tended to this thread very well, as I've been too busy to try to collect my thoughts on this issue and they are indeed flung far and wide.

I was also vague in my opening post because I, myself, am not decided on what's the appropriate response. Like Anne expresses so well above, it is truly horrifying to contemplate the sort of mind that is turned on the pain and suffering of others. I think there must be things done to address that risk and that the status quo isn't enough.

But I also have to disagree vehemently with MasterDebator here:

quote:
who isn't buying into the neo-liberal Third Wave BS about "agency" (whatever the hell that pompous little term is supposed to mean, ... I guess you have to be one of the self-appointed urban sophisticates to be trusted with a copy of the translation key) and empowered strippers and hookers, and liberating porn, etc.

I don't think this is a second wave/third wave debate at all. I don't actually have a problem with non-violent sexual expression by consenting adults, and that's also why I highlighted violent in my opening post. I do claim my agency as a human adult from any kind of discourse that claims that because there are certain realities in the world that I am incapable of making choices myself without somehow taking men's desires into account automatically. I don't feel that description that some versions of feminism have presented is at all accurate and I resent the implied mental incapacity label of that. That's not neo-liberal, that's me proclaiming my right to describe my own experiences as I see them.

That off my chest, the subject were discussing, *violent* pornography, (and also violence as entertainment as bcg, Yst, and Tommy Paine refer to in the parts of their posts about television) actually has very big bearing on agency: that is, it sexualizes and glamourized the very theft of someone's agency, their dehumanization and the total animalization of the human body. Yes, it may not be very popular here, but I feel that gratuitous depictions of rape and assault does that and encourages violence as something that makes the perpetrator strong and glamourous. That is where the risk from violent media comes from, IMHO, and it is justified for us as a society to do something about those thoughts. We red flag children who torture animals, don't we?

That said, I can appreciate the fear of state authority as well. I believe I've expressed that many times previously here. I certainly don't want to put an unchecked power on police forces or the criminal justice system, although I do have a much higher level of trust in the parliament. So, I don't know what exactly should be done either. Maybe I should try to look more into the psychology of someone who finds gratification in the pain of others. But I'm not quite sure I'm prepared for what I might learn from that exercise.


From: an employer more progressive than rabble.ca | Registered: Jun 2003  |  IP: Logged
anne cameron
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8045

posted 20 August 2005 12:32 PM      Profile for anne cameron     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Today is my birthday. I am 67. What I saw in Project P has haunted me for years. The celebration of violence and degredation and the glorying in the power to inflict pain was then and still is a horror.

I am only addressing violent porn. I have a copy of "The Joy Of Lesbian Sex" and while I do not consider it "porn" I know most others in my immediate family and a host of others out there would, and would gladly burn the book. That book is in one of my bookshelves, it is not hidden, if a grandchild wants to look through it, Grandma is fine about that. My grandchildren can also look through certain medical books I have, or through any other book on the shelves. They are not allowed to scribble in those books!

I don't watch porn of any kind, soft, hard or.. whatever. I've never watched "Deep Throat" and have no idea what any of the "stars" look like. I doubt they can look any more artificial than some of the plastic boobs on daytime TV.

I do not want Canada Customs deciding what is and isn't acceptable, I do not want the RCMP to censor our book shelves and I do not want the Vancouver City Police who couldn't even bother to investigate the disappearance of 60 people to be in charge of deciding what I may or may not read , write, or publish.

But if I were given the opportunity to put my hands around the throats of the ones who produced some of that shit I saw in Project P I would squeeze until they were stiff and cold.

Where I lost it was a magazine published in Germany, seized in Toronto. The article was on how to hold, position, and penetrate a girl of no more than four. She and the perp were both dark skinned, "looked" to be possibly Pakistani or Indian. She was screaming and that was real blood. So much of it I'm sure that baby died.

To entertain and amuse some sick fuck.

And if you prate on about your right to think what you want, see what you want, etc., I might lose it on you, too. "Fantasize", yes, but within the confines of your own brain, not while wanking off at that picture. Because that baby had no choice.

I don't think it's any of my business what images dance like sugarplums in your head while you sit staring at a blank wall or go to the river to wool gather and listen to the water. Most of the time Grandma doesn't care what you think about anything you care to name. That's your brain.

But when there is an entire section of a magazine given over to a series of still photo's so it appears to be a "comic book", and the story line is a step by step detailed explanation of how to kidnap a schoolgirl (she was wearing a school uniform and the school looked to be a private one), take her to a pre-chosen remote cottage, and beat and rape her, then I suggest it's time to stop maundering on about freedom of expression and just get fuckin' real here, okay? Because some sick prick somewhere is going to study that the way he never studied the lineages of the kings and queens of britain and some kid is going to wind up held hostage for days of horror while a penis in a hood amuses himself.

Saying that most people who obtain this grot won't act out the ugliness and only a few sick ones will be a threat is like saying most people who have guns will never use them to kill, only a sick few will...jesus, you could say that about nuclear weapons! Anthrax powder..

I don't even watch the "love scenes" in movies because I get the giggles and ruin the show for others watching. When you think of it, the physical mechanics are really hilarious. They add nothing to a movie for me. Extended love or sex scenes in books make me flip ahead, pages unread, until we get back to "action". There is an incredibly protracted description of sex in Clan of the Cave Bear and I just kept flipping ahead, scanning only the bottom lines of each page until I got to where they were doing something else. Masturbation never featured much in my life, if you want to do that go right ahead but do not DARE to even look at my grand babies while you are doing it or I vow to all the spirits of Creation I will rip off your equipment and ram it either down your throat or up your ass. "consenting adults" can do whatever they agree to do with and to each other and it is none of my business. I do not care. I do not give a rats ass what you and your adult partner agree to do together. But don't ogle my daughters and start festering, and leave the kids alone.

Those of you who are close enough to Tarana to request a visit to Project P should do it. I can't guarantee they can take the time to show you around.

They had more than one room. My researcher and I saw the room where the shit did NOT result in a conviction. That room had shelves up two walls. We started on the bottom shelf..the stuff got stronger as you went up...I didn't make it waist high and I had to grab the waste basket and hurl.
I have worked the "aggressive" ward at the provincial mental hospital in B.C. I was a medical assistant with the RCAF and I worked the ambulance run. My stomach is usually made of cast iron. But I hurled at that article and the pictures of that agonized child.

I don't watch Big Brother or "reality" shows like Fear Factor or such, they bore me. I do watch CSI Las Vegas and Miami, but not New York... I watched a couple of 48 hours and then ignored it because I didnt' like the semiology or the politics of it.

What you do to your body is your business ONLY if what you do to your body remains YOUR business and doesn't involve children or adults who have not had a choice and given their permission..and kids can't choose or give permission.

I hate pretty much all politicians and you might have guessed I don't have a lot of use for cops or prison guards, either.

I dont' want them deciding what my grandbabies can or can't read. I think most of them are as stupid as a sack of anvils and mean to boot.

One of my grandchildren was flirting around with "gang" images and talking about wanting to move where he could be a "homeboy" and join a gang and...so Grandma arranged it so that on Friday nights he and I would watch OZ. Horrible piece of violent prison stuff...actually based on real incidents in maximum security...and each episode Grandma said THIS is what is waiting for the homeboys, THIS is where gang membership takes you.....

it worked. "Scared straight" !! Rough? yes. Harsh? yes. We Scots raise our kids to face it all head on. If there's a war we want "our ain folk" to survive it. Jam tarts, pantywaists and gormless knobs won't survive.

And there's a war, and violent pornography is both the training method and the weapon and the war is aimed primarily at women and children and MY ain folk are going to survive. If that means grandma has to break the law, get an unregistered handgun and let some fucker "rapture" to heaven (or hell) well, violent porn convinces me that's what I'll have to do.

PLEASE do not believe one word of this lengthy birthday card I'm sending myself. FIND OUT. Please do not talk philosophically from only the eyebrows up...FIND OUT what violent porn is.

Pornography is a huge industry. In B.C. it is said it involves more money than both the timber and fishing industries. Not all of it is violent. Much of it is. And your kids are targets.


From: tahsis, british columbia | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged
Stargazer
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6061

posted 20 August 2005 12:56 PM      Profile for Stargazer     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Anne that was an excellent post but that imagine of that little girl.....it's too terrible for words. I don't think that after seeing that type of stuff I would ever be capable of having a good thought about humans again.

I'm not into censoring porn, but I will admit without hesitation that child porn and rape fantasy porn and rape/incest porn disturbs me greatly. Especially as a survivor of rape and incest. I couldn't care less if some sick and twisted person could no longer view his pictures of pre pubescent children. I also couldn't care less if the same cretin was caught and sent to his 10 days in jail. Yeah that's what these crimes get you, but rob a band and you're in for an automatic 3.5 years (I think that's still correct). To me this says the obvious, police, courts and the system place more value on money and next to nothing on human lives.

Violent porn, such as what I described above, IMO, serves no one any good except the people who get off on it, and IMO their right to get off on child porn is canceled out by the rights of the people who are directly effected by this porn. Children, women...

I have zero issue with porn - gay or straight. I personally find it boring and amusing but not erotic. But that's me. I would not want to see this censored at all. I am however, highly disturbed by these videos in which it is clear the video is meant for men who enjoy the degradation of women through violence, scat, pissing on women's bodies, simulated rape, etc. To me, men and women who watch this harbor some serious issues about how they see themselves and how they see females.

Tommy Paine. I saw the Betty Page photos you speak of. I have zero issues with those. I want to make it clear that the issue I have with violent porn is the brutal rape, pissing on women, and molestation of children type of porn. I honestly cannot come up with a single reason why this type of porn is good or should be valued as a freedom of expression and therefore a right.

Damn that was a long rambling post. I hope I don't sound like too much of an ass.

[ 20 August 2005: Message edited by: Stargazer ]


From: Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist. | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged
MasterDebator
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8643

posted 20 August 2005 01:52 PM      Profile for MasterDebator        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by The Baboon:
I'm no libertarian, at least not in that sense, but I do believe that people have natural rights that are not granted to them by any higher authority, and a state which does not grant rights may not revoke them.

The notion that people have rights not granted by the Crown is a romantic American concept. No one takes it seriously.

If every one in society had, since time immemorial, possessed a clear and undebatable set of rights, why would countries of every type all over the world have seen struggles over the centuries to enlarge and expand those rights? From the abolition of slavery to the extension of equality to women and to gays and lesbians, it's clearly a case of new rights granted by the state.

Pretending otherwise may be good bar room talk for the gun vote in rural Utah, but all it really does, if taken seriously, is to delude people about the both the rights of the individual and the powers and responsibilities of government.


From: Goose Country Road, Prince George, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
kuri
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4202

posted 20 August 2005 01:56 PM      Profile for kuri   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Oh, and btw, Happy Birthday, Anne!
From: an employer more progressive than rabble.ca | Registered: Jun 2003  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478

posted 20 August 2005 02:04 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
First, from me too, anne: Happy Birthday! And many, many happy returns. The best is yet to be.

However:

quote:
Originally posted by MasterDebator:

The notion that people have rights not granted by the Crown is a romantic American concept. No one takes it seriously.

If every one in society had, since time immemorial, possessed a clear and undebatable set of rights, why would countries of every type all over the world have seen struggles over the centuries to enlarge and expand those rights? From the abolition of slavery to the extension of equality to women and to gays and lesbians, it's clearly a case of new rights granted by the state.

Pretending otherwise may be good bar room talk for the gun vote in rural Utah, but all it really does, if taken seriously, is to delude people about the both the rights of the individual and the powers and responsibilities of government.


I disagree with this post utterly and profoundly.

We make the state, not the other way around, and that has nothing to do with American romanticism. As in NOTHING.

There's no point in my even trying to take that post apart -- it would take years.

All I can do is return to first principles, which much much pre-date the puny American Revolution: human liberty is the default position.


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
MasterDebator
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8643

posted 20 August 2005 02:08 PM      Profile for MasterDebator        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by skdadl:
I admit that I have never read either McElroy or Thomson -- you've given me a good idea of what McElroy is on about, ...

I agree with you both that it is abhorrent to link human liberty to something as banal and anti-human as doctrines about "private property" ...

My notion of the social contract is that human freedom is the default position. We need the state and laws to help us negotiate among ourselves, but we create that state and those laws out of our belief in liberty -- ...


Doctrines in defence of "private property" have mostly been rationalizations for exploitation and theft. ...

I do believe in distinctions between the capitalist use of "private" and the more humane notion of the "personal," however, including personal property....


Thank you skdadl for taking what I believe and feel seriously, unlike some others here who have belittled and ridiculed my intense detestation of pornography. These people claim to be so smart, so sophisticated.

I can recall being called an imbecile and a silly prude becuase I objected to the practice of one of our local magazine shops here in Prince George of placing all the "men's" magazines (Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, Club, ... and worse, if that's possible) on a rack that, while thankfully located in the very rear corner, was also located directly opposite another rack full of all the how-to magazines on violence. Martial arts, guns, ammunition, mercenary "adventures", "extreme sports", major muscle building (i.e. in reality, major steroid consumption), etc., etc. How obvious can it get? On one rack the means, ... on the opposite rack the target!

I do have a question for you, skdadl. From the quotes I selected from your post, I do wonder, does it matter which argument is used or does it matter what the final policy recommndation is? To me, it doesn't matter if it's a right wing Wendy McElroy property rights argument or a left wing social contract and human rights argument, if it leads in the end to a free reign for all manner of pornography I for one am not going to be at all happy. I want this stuff policed and stopped, and again, I don't care if that's justified on the basis of private property rights or human rights, I just want this dangerous and degradinig stuff stopped cold.

Finally, I have a small confession to make. I have not actually read McElroy's books, but I have read lenghty reviews of them in various publicatoins.


From: Goose Country Road, Prince George, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
MasterDebator
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8643

posted 20 August 2005 02:15 PM      Profile for MasterDebator        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by skdadl:
I disagree with this post utterly and profoundly.

We make the state, not the other way around, and that has nothing to do with American romanticism. As in NOTHING.

There's no point in my even trying to take that post apart -- it would take years.

All I can do is return to first principles, which much much pre-date the puny American Revolution: human liberty is the default position.


Skdadl, I must confess to not being much of a political theorist. However, the notion that the general public, ordinary people if you like, construct the state is too romantic for me. And I believe it is a distinctly American idea, from their constitution (or was it the independence declaration) the catchy but silly phrase about "inalienable rights". Rights have been alienated from most people throughout history, and still are today in countries with billions of people.

The rich and powerful make the state, and it takes centuries to persuade them to agree to limitations on their powers. They usually do so only becuase fundamental changes in technology and the economy are altering the landscape in any event, and they have to go with the flow or end up being passed by.

[ 20 August 2005: Message edited by: MasterDebator ]


From: Goose Country Road, Prince George, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478

posted 20 August 2005 02:25 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
MD, as I say, to me this is too big a topic to deal with fairly in this thread, where it really is drift.

The contribution of the American Revolution to modern democratic theory is, to me, very late, indeed romantic, and minuscule, as in Not Very Relevant. It certainly has nothing to do with me. And that's my last word on the topic in this thread.


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Cueball
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4790

posted 20 August 2005 04:53 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by MasterDebator:

Skdadl, I must confess to not being much of a political theorist. However, the notion that the general public, ordinary people if you like, construct the state is too romantic for me. And I believe it is a distinctly American idea, from their constitution (or was it the independence declaration) the catchy but silly phrase about "inalienable rights". Rights have been alienated from most people throughout history, and still are today in countries with billions of people.


I kind of like the idea that the notion of having rights is actually part of the process of denying the ones you don't have. But that is another story.


From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
Crippled_Newsie
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 7024

posted 20 August 2005 08:35 PM      Profile for Crippled_Newsie     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by kurichina:
That is where the risk from violent media comes from, IMHO, and it is justified for us as a society to do something about those thoughts. We red flag children who torture animals, don't we?[Emphasis mine.]

True, we do red flag kids who torture animals. That's an act.

When society starts to consider criminalizing thoughts-- any thoughts, however sick, vile, or violent-- that's where I get off the trolley.


quote:
That said, I can appreciate the fear of state authority as well. I believe I've expressed that many times previously here. I certainly don't want to put an unchecked power on police forces or the criminal justice system, although I do have a much higher level of trust in the parliament. So, I don't know what exactly should be done either. Maybe I should try to look more into the psychology of someone who finds gratification in the pain of others. But I'm not quite sure I'm prepared for what I might learn from that exercise.

I'm not sure what is to be done either. It seems to me that the sort of horror that Anne describes perhaps isn't even pornography. It's something else. And the only word I can think of is 'incitement.'

For example, in oratory there is the effort to move an audience to action, and then separately there is the crime of incitement to riot. It seems to me that the sort of depictions that Anne describes are the pornographic equivalent of the latter.

PS: BTW, there does exist a vast difference between child pornography and plain, ole ordinary porn in my mind. Question is, with adults depicted, where do we draw the line between depictions of good, clean fun featuring a wooden spooon to the backside, and violent porn that must be stamped out?

[ 21 August 2005: Message edited by: Tape_342 ]


From: It's all about the thumpa thumpa. | Registered: Oct 2004  |  IP: Logged
anne cameron
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8045

posted 20 August 2005 09:13 PM      Profile for anne cameron     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Tape 342 wrote "when society starts criminalizing thoughts..."...thoughts are one thing, photo's, drawings, magazines, books, movies, video's...are not "thoughts", they have become concrete, not abstract , and can be used as training manuals in a war against women and children.

I don't have an answer, or even several answers, or even half-assed answers. Violent porn has nothing to do with eroticism and everything to do with hatred. Someone wrote something about it couldn't be thought to be such if what was depicted showed men only... that's just dumb. We all understand the link between "vulnerable" and "female", between "passive" and "woman" and getting semantically cute is juvenile. Hatred is hatred. Pictures of a pool cue inserted up someone's basic fundament are inciting, not insightful.

Violent porn brings so many questions and so few answers and everyone winds up very disturbed by and because of it.

My own personal violent fantasy involves a hit squad of women who visit child abusers and rapists at night and trash their cars, pound the snot out of them, cut the phone lines, then use crazy glue on all the locks so they can't go outside to phone for the ambulance they most certainly need. That's my violent fantasy. So far I haven't made a video of it. And that's one of the differences...


From: tahsis, british columbia | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged
MasterDebator
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8643

posted 21 August 2005 04:05 AM      Profile for MasterDebator        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by anne cameron:
My own personal violent fantasy involves a hit squad of women who visit child abusers and rapists at night and trash their cars, pound the snot out of them, cut the phone lines, then use crazy glue on all the locks so they can't go outside to phone for the ambulance they most certainly need. That's my violent fantasy. So far I haven't made a video of it. And that's one of the differences...


It's too bad more women don't have dreams like this. It could help to unite them in opposition to the degradation of pornography.

Do you remember how you felt when you heard that some of the Red Hot Video outlets in Vancouver had been firebombed? I was persaonlly shocked, and yet I had to admit to feeling a certain thrill knowing that this time it was the other side that had good reason to be fearful.


From: Goose Country Road, Prince George, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
jas
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 9529

posted 21 August 2005 08:49 AM      Profile for jas     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Happy birthday, Anne Cameron. May the stars shine bright in Tahsis tonight. I too was unable to read the more graphic sections of your earlier post. I know this stuff exists (get hints of it online, and have certainly seen Not a Love Story), but I don't wish to accommodate those mental images in my head.

I would just add to the other comments that yes, the thread is about violent pornography, but to me child pornography has a de facto element (basis, in fact) of violence in it, and so is relevant to this discussion. Also, although I'm sure no one intended to offend, the term 'kiddie porn' to me kind of trivializes what that content is. I get the feeling the term was coined in the porn industry itself.

[ 21 August 2005: Message edited by: jas ]


From: the world we want | Registered: Jun 2005  |  IP: Logged
Tommy_Paine
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 214

posted 21 August 2005 10:01 AM      Profile for Tommy_Paine     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Tommy Paine. I saw the Betty Page photos you speak of. I have zero issues with those. I want to make it clear that the issue I have with violent porn is the brutal rape, pissing on women, and molestation of children type of porn. I honestly cannot come up with a single reason why this type of porn is good or should be valued as a freedom of expression and therefore a right.


Yes, you and I may believe this, but there are many who would see it differently, I'm sure. But then, while it wouldn't bother me a bit not being able to access photo's of people engaged in urinating on each other in a consentual context, I see no harm in it, and wouldn't ban it. Tollerance isn't a measure of allowing things we like or understand. It's measured by the allowance of things that aren't our cup of tea.

So before anything else, we need to scream and argue for a decade or so about what exactly constitutes violence, and how we define consent.

Here in London, there's a bill board at York and Wellington designed to make women insecure about their appearance so a "Doctor" can slice open perfectly healthy faces and breasts and shove stuff in, cut stuff out and stitch them back up again.

I worry about this stuff a lot more than I worry about wierd consentual stuff on the web or in magazines.


From: The Alley, Behind Montgomery's Tavern | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
Crippled_Newsie
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 7024

posted 21 August 2005 02:52 PM      Profile for Crippled_Newsie     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by jas:
Also, although I'm sure no one intended to offend, the term 'kiddie porn' to me kind of trivializes what that content is. I get the feeling the term was coined in the porn industry itself.

Legitimate point. I will edit that term out of my post.


From: It's all about the thumpa thumpa. | Registered: Oct 2004  |  IP: Logged
Yst
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 9749

posted 21 August 2005 05:20 PM      Profile for Yst     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by anne cameron:
Tape 342 wrote "when society starts criminalizing thoughts..."...thoughts are one thing, photo's, drawings, magazines, books, movies, video's...are not "thoughts", they have become concrete, not abstract , and can be used as training manuals in a war against women and children.

I don't have an answer, or even several answers, or even half-assed answers. Violent porn has nothing to do with eroticism and everything to do with hatred.


So if I dig gay kink, does this count as queer self-hatred? I really have no way of figuring the word hatred into my interest in kink. Much less do I find it possible to assert that I dig it out of hate. For whom? For what?

Here's a pic of me and a guy a dated a while back before a trip to a fetish party:

I've got a collar and leash on and some bondage gear. Don't we look hateful?

Maybe straight fetishism frequently has a different psychology, but I'm just not willing to accept the idea that this is a universal thing and man+woman kink has nothing to do with eroticism and everything to do with hatred while gay kink is just all in good fun and totally non-analagous.


From: State of Genderfuck | Registered: Jun 2005  |  IP: Logged
kuri
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4202

posted 21 August 2005 06:21 PM      Profile for kuri   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Yst, I think you're being disingenuous. This discussion is about images of rape and violence, not about what consenting adults do at parties. So if you and your (ex)partner go around raping and assaulting other men and publishing the results then, yeah, it's applicable to this discussion but I think (I hope!) that's not the case. To make those kinds of facile comparisons really trivializes the whole thing.
From: an employer more progressive than rabble.ca | Registered: Jun 2003  |  IP: Logged
The Baboon
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8558

posted 21 August 2005 07:19 PM      Profile for The Baboon        Edit/Delete Post
Actually, the thread seems to be about violent pornography in general, which would seem to include movies and images featuring consenting adults engaged in acts that could be categorized as "violent."
From: Interior British Columbia | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
kuri
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4202

posted 21 August 2005 07:26 PM      Profile for kuri   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
If you read the original article, you'll see it's more clearly limited than that. Perhaps not limited clearly enough, but still, it's not everything anyone would characterize as 'violent'. It's

quote:
illegal violence

which, I understand it is rape, assault and other generally non-consentual activities.


From: an employer more progressive than rabble.ca | Registered: Jun 2003  |  IP: Logged
MasterDebator
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8643

posted 22 August 2005 01:17 AM      Profile for MasterDebator        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Yst:
I've got a collar and leash on and some bondage gear. Don't we look hateful?

Don't you understand that SM rituals are a stylized representation of the real violence that goes on in many relationships? Would you make fun of other forms of violence? I doubt it.


From: Goose Country Road, Prince George, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
voice of the damned
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6943

posted 22 August 2005 01:30 AM      Profile for voice of the damned     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
If you read the original article, you'll see it's more clearly limited than that. Perhaps not limited clearly enough, but still, it's not everything anyone would characterize as 'violent'. It's

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
illegal violence
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

which, I understand it is rape, assault and other generally non-consentual activities.


Kurichina:

In your original post, you wrote:

quote:
I believe the idea is to try to shut down sites that depict violent, illegal acts.

I think your use of the word "depict" might have led to a certain amount of confusion about what you were talking about. The on-line dictionary I consulted defines "depict" as "to represent in picture or sculpture". And I don't think that the common usage of the word is always meant to convey the idea that the events shown actually took place(eg. "Salvador Dali's painting depicts a melting watch"). I think many of the posters on this thread(myself included) concluded that your definiton included fictional photographic representations of illegal acts. But of course your reference to the Natel King case might have indicated what you had in mind.

Confining ourselves to photogrpahic depictions of illegal acts, that does SEEM like a no-brainer, at first glance. However, I guess the argument ad absurdum could be applied here as well. If it should be illegal to possess or display photographic depictions of actual rape and sexual abuse, what about similar representations of other crimes? Like, say, the 9-11 plane crashes, or the Zapruder film? Those are just the most famous examples I can think of, I'm sure we've all seen footage on the news of someone commiting one violent crime or another. Should the newsmen all be locked up for showing us this?

Of course, you could argue that no one is gonna be inspired to go out and blow away a politician because of the Zapruder film(actully that's debatable, but let's assume), whereas violent pornogrpahy can lead to people acting out the fantasies they see. However, that argument could also apply to fictional represntations of sexual violence, even those not intended as pornogrpahic.

My own view, and I realize that it could be construed as extreme libertarian, is that while commiting violent acts should be punishable by law, possesing photographs etc. of those acts should not. In the case of child pornography, I would argue that since children cannot consent to sexual activity, each act of distributing or viewing child pornogrpahy should constitute an unlawful violation of the child's privacy. But I'm not sure how that would work legally. If I secretly take a photo of two adults having sex, and then turn around and make copies of it for sidtribution, can I be prosecuted for the distribution, or just for going onto the couples property in the first place? I admit my legal expertise is not sufficient to answer this question.


From: Asia | Registered: Sep 2004  |  IP: Logged
Crippled_Newsie
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 7024

posted 22 August 2005 01:32 AM      Profile for Crippled_Newsie     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Yst:
I've got a collar and leash on and some bondage gear. Don't we look hateful?


quote:
Originally posted by MasterDebator:
Don't you understand that SM rituals are a stylized representation of the real violence that goes on in many relationships? Would you make fun of other forms of violence? I doubt it.

I don't think you can say that BDSM is making fun of real forms of violence in all instances, or even necessarily in most of them.

Since we're admitting personal things: I have some bondage gear, too. It doesn't see much use anymore, but it did when I was younger fella.

I also am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I don't connect consensual BDSM with real abuse. I know the difference.

Now you could decide that one has everything to do with the other and I'm just a fairly sick puppy. Sure doesn't feel that way, though.


From: It's all about the thumpa thumpa. | Registered: Oct 2004  |  IP: Logged
voice of the damned
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6943

posted 22 August 2005 01:33 AM      Profile for voice of the damned     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Would you make fun of other forms of violence?

Would you like a list of poems, novels, books, films, etc. that make fun of violence? Just off the top of my head:

A Midsummer Night's Dream...


From: Asia | Registered: Sep 2004  |  IP: Logged
kuri
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4202

posted 22 August 2005 12:44 PM      Profile for kuri   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by voice of the damned:
I think your use of the word "depict" might have led to a certain amount of confusion about what you were talking about.

That's fair enough. I should have framed the discussion better.


From: an employer more progressive than rabble.ca | Registered: Jun 2003  |  IP: Logged
Doug
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 44

posted 22 August 2005 04:31 PM      Profile for Doug   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by MasterDebator:

Don't you understand that SM rituals are a stylized representation of the real violence that goes on in many relationships?


Not really - because there's something important separating BDSM from domestic violence, which is consent. That makes a big difference, even if the scene were all about acting out "typical" domestic violence situations - which it isn't.


From: Toronto, Canada | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
Mr. Magoo
guilty-pleasure
Babbler # 3469

posted 22 August 2005 04:38 PM      Profile for Mr. Magoo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Don't you understand that SM rituals are a stylized representation of the real violence that goes on in many relationships?

That's like criticizing Fencing because it harkens back to the days of swordfights.

Surely the idea of consensuality changes things for you? Adults, choosing?


From: ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø, | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
thwap
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5062

posted 22 August 2005 04:41 PM      Profile for thwap        Edit/Delete Post
I don't like S and M [he cried from the pit in the dungeon floor].
From: Hamilton | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged
Doug
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 44

posted 22 August 2005 05:36 PM      Profile for Doug   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by thwap:
I don't like S and M [he cried from the pit in the dungeon floor].

Shut up, slave!

Yeah, the fencing analogy is a good one. Unlike a sword attack, it's consensual, and the intent isn't to cause (lasting) injury.


From: Toronto, Canada | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
Yst
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 9749

posted 23 August 2005 05:24 AM      Profile for Yst     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
One rather crucial observation I have to make about BDSM culture is that it strikes me there's, if anything, an inverse correlation between controlling behaviour in the larger relationship context and control and dominance as fetishistic bedroom play in comtemporary BDSM.

That is to say, submissives tend to call the shots, on the whole, more than do doms, and submissives tend to be the instigators of BDSM play more than do doms. I've always encountered a fairly strong concensus amongst straight and gay folks alike to the effect that lovers with submissive tendencies pressuring their partners into being doms is a far more widespread phenomenon than is the reverse. And it's just general wisdom that in all circles, doms are always in higher demand.

I was at the fetish fair on Church street yesterday with a couple of straight female friends. The topic of conversation was the present excess of annoying submissive straight boys who want girls with no particular interest in dominating them to do so. And I had to laugh and identify, as I know my ex-boyfriend was probably sick of me pressuring him to be the dominant party in the bedroom. What does one make of submissives who dominate the sexual decision making process? Where's the connection between sexual dominance and social dominance?

See, I just don't see that there's any sort of direct, meaningful correlation between control in bed and power politics within a reationship. The ways the two relate is just all over the map from one couple to the next, and, as I say, is frequently quite emphatically reversed. And so I don't think asserting a direct, causal political relationship between kinky sexual behaviour and violence defined as an aspect of gender power politics is helpful.


From: State of Genderfuck | Registered: Jun 2005  |  IP: Logged
Melsky
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4748

posted 23 August 2005 06:46 AM      Profile for Melsky   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I can relate YST! When I was dating I used to joke I had a weeding out factor for guys:

I won't spank you.
You can't wear my clothes.

Seriously, going back over it in my head there was only three guys like that, and I didn't go out with them for very long.


From: Toronto | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
CMOT Dibbler
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4117

posted 23 August 2005 05:33 PM      Profile for CMOT Dibbler     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Pornography depicting something that would appear closer to domestic violence or a common sex crime, on the other hand, seems to be extremely rare in the world of straight porn.

It's more common in gay porn? I feel extremely uncomfortable accepting that assertion.


From: Just outside Fernie, British Columbia | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
Sharon
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4090

posted 23 August 2005 05:59 PM      Profile for Sharon     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Do not believe me. Find out for yourself. Take plastic bags, you will heave. And I only saw stuff which was seized but had NOT resulted in a conviction. I was told about the "community standards" rule, and that one made me livid with fury because what the fuck kind of community could find it not violation of their standards to see women fucking pigs, or children being raped. However...those images did not result in a conviction.

anne, you wrote an article in Broadside about your visit to Project P, did you not? I'm pretty sure I still have it -- yellowed and faded -- in my files. I have used it many times (always attributed) in panels, speeches and columns. The images in the article are images that one can't get out of one's head.


From: Halifax, Nova Scotia | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
anne cameron
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8045

posted 23 August 2005 06:42 PM      Profile for anne cameron     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
How did I feel about the Red Hot Video thing?

Angry.

I was living in Nanaimo; a place which at one time had the highest reported child abuse, spouse abuse, rape and incest stat's in the country...and because a porn shop got firebombed the local police (RCMP) had an all-night guard on the Red Hot Video outlet in Nanaimo.

A rampant drug problem..and they had Officer Chuckles down there for the entire night shift, doubtless watching videos...

not enough protection for vulnerable women and kids but Officer Friendly could be put in the video store in Nanaimo because ONE shop in Vancouver got torched...

so I did some neighbourhood dog grooming...(if the cops come to my house tonight I will deny this and claim it was just thread drift and fiction!). I drained the anal glands of every dog I could get hold of, onto pieces of waxed paper..went to the local porn outlet, and made sure the gut churning anal gland stuff got well and truly ground into the carpeting... let Officer GoodChum sit in THAT all night!!

And someone used crazy glue on their locks so they had to have them drilled out and replaced...

a particularly grotty "sex aids shop" opened in a neighbourhood in Nanaimo, with truly ugly plastic penises, etc., in a window display. This was on a route the kids took to elementary school. The volunteer fire department visited the store and had a look around then told the owner they were sorry to hear he was going to have a massive fire because they wouldn't be available that night to fight it for him... first he put a curtain in his window, then he closed up shop...

If you and your sweetie want to wear dog collars and leashes I guess that's up to you. I don't get the attraction in it, I don't see any eroticism in it, and I can only hope you buy a license to dangle off it. I think it is in poor taste considering humanities long sad history of slavery but hey, "semiology" isn't something everyone has studied.

If you want to ram a fish hook through your eye ball I guess that's fine by me. I'm not sure I'll appreciate having to pay taxes to buy you a glass eye but that's my own personal stinginess.

Just don't go near my grandchildren because the health care system isn't in good enough shape to save your ass if you do.

I'd like to be a more "open minded" person. I try. But I've been to Project P. I spent a dozen years on the board of directors of a transition house, I have worked with battered children ever since I was one myself.

I guess some of the finer points of sophisticated amusement have passed me without a ripple.

I get particularly tetchy when someone trivializes what is a matter of life and death to too many children. While you are amusing yourself with dog collars children around the world are sold into sexual bondage and used by men who do not seem to me to be worth the powder to blow them to hell.

I agree the term "kiddie porn" is a trivialization. I would ask you to consider the term "child prostitute" and then explain to me how a child can be deemed a prostitute and not a victim of sexual abuse.

So sorry if I can't see the amusement, the entertainment, the FUN in it all. But party on, son, tempus fugits, and most of us, whether we want it to happen or not, do attain some small measure of maturity.


From: tahsis, british columbia | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged
voice of the damned
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6943

posted 23 August 2005 08:29 PM      Profile for voice of the damned     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
I would ask you to consider the term "child prostitute" and then explain to me how a child can be deemed a prostitute and not a victim of sexual abuse.

Umm, I don't think anyone on here has argued that child prostitutes aren't vicitms of sexual abuse.

quote:
I was living in Nanaimo; a place which at one time had the highest reported child abuse, spouse abuse, rape and incest stat's in the country...and because a porn shop got firebombed the local police (RCMP) had an all-night guard on the Red Hot Video outlet in Nanaimo.

A rampant drug problem..and they had Officer Chuckles down there for the entire night shift, doubtless watching videos...


If the only people getting hurt by the bombings were porn merchants and their customers, well, I guess I could understand how people who don't like pornogrpahy might find that acceptable.

But you see, when you blow up a building, the bricks and concrete chunks that go flying through the air aren't programmed to hit only porn merchants and their customers. Since, according to what you wrote, children were walking past some of these places on their way to school, I can kinda see how preventing further bombings might be something we want the RCMP to do.


From: Asia | Registered: Sep 2004  |  IP: Logged
CMOT Dibbler
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4117

posted 23 August 2005 09:02 PM      Profile for CMOT Dibbler     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
a particularly grotty "sex aids shop" opened in a neighbourhood in Nanaimo, with truly ugly plastic penises...

Just to clarify. Is it sex toys you despise or just that shop you mentioned?

Your the same age as my dad, and you've probably witnessed more suffering then I ever have or likely ever will, and I don't like the idea of bondage( I find it creepy) but I have to say that I don't think the rightous fury appoarch is particularly helpful in making sound public policy, or creating enlightening discussions on message boards.

[ 23 August 2005: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]
Just editing to get to the point I don't really want to imply that Anne said things she didn't say.

[ 24 August 2005: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]


From: Just outside Fernie, British Columbia | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
MasterDebator
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8643

posted 26 August 2005 01:12 AM      Profile for MasterDebator        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by anne cameron:
How did I feel about the Red Hot Video thing?

Angry.

...


Anne, thanks for this posting. I really support your sentiments.

It's one thing to be "open-minded" but it's another thing to allow material that vividly portrays the sexual subjugation of women, and strongly encourages the violent sexual abuse of women by men. Pornography trains men to expect a huge load of submissive sexual services from women, and a man trained to expect that, over and over again, is going to be in little mood to take no for an answer, especially when he's drunk and horny.


From: Goose Country Road, Prince George, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
voice of the damned
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6943

posted 26 August 2005 01:59 AM      Profile for voice of the damned     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Pornography trains men to expect a huge load of submissive sexual services from women, and a man trained to expect that, over and over again, is going to be in little mood to take no for an answer, especially when he's drunk and horny.

Well if, as you say, alcohol is such an important factor in turning men into rapists, why not ban THAT?


From: Asia | Registered: Sep 2004  |  IP: Logged
rasmus
malcontent
Babbler # 621

posted 26 August 2005 02:27 AM      Profile for rasmus   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
The feminist I line up with 100% on this debate is Pat Califia -- see her (now his) essays, "Among Us, Against Us -- The New Puritans: Does Equation of Pornography with Violence Add Up to Political Repression?" and "See No Evil: An Update on the Feminist Antipornography Movement". As Pat points out, all laws against pornography are used overwhelmingly to target queers and queer bookstores. Period. It's therefore hard for me not to see feminist anti-porn crusaders as my oppressors.
From: Fortune favours the bold | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
anne cameron
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8045

posted 26 August 2005 02:33 AM      Profile for anne cameron     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Voice of the Damned:

I object to the sex toys, graphic and exaggerated, being deliberately displayed in a window for school children to see.

If you enjoy looking at a twelve inch long plastic penis with vividly coloured plastic veins, engorged of course, then by all means buy one and enjoy whatever it is about it that you enjoy.

Don't put it on public view less than three blocks from an elementary school.

I do not believe any Red Hot Video outlets were blown to smithereens, complete with flying bricks and other debris during the day when children were nearby. The Red Hot Video outlet was FIRE bombed..burned...at night...(well, after all, it advertised itself as "red hot", right? And for a brief time it was exactly that)

I know it isn't possible to "legislate good taste", but when someone deliberately flaunts what he knows is objectionable material he can hardly expect the neighbours and the parents of the kids to just blow it off and accept the deliberate insult and the deliberate provocation.

Deliberate provocation might possibly be something of which you are yourself well aware.


From: tahsis, british columbia | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged
kuri
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4202

posted 26 August 2005 02:44 AM      Profile for kuri   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Well, this topic has taken quite a winding road.

[annoyed sarcasm]
I *love* the false binary that keeps reasserting itself. If you're against violence, you must be a "puritan" against all forms of sexual expression and teaming up with the religious right or any other fashion of repugnant characters to get your way. If you're for some porn, you must accept all of it, because apparently rapists and child molesters have been elevated to the status of a actual sexual minority when I wasn't looking. No shades of grey allowed! [/annoyed sarcasm]


From: an employer more progressive than rabble.ca | Registered: Jun 2003  |  IP: Logged
rasmus
malcontent
Babbler # 621

posted 26 August 2005 03:01 AM      Profile for rasmus   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Well I guess the challenge for you is to provide a definition of violent porn that WON'T be used primarily to target gays and lesbians. Because so far no one has been able to (and the heritage of this debate is that anti-porn theorists like Dworkin have defined the essence of ALL porn as the eroticization of murder). I don't have a problem with banning photographic/video depictions of acts that could in no way be consensual (i.e. child pornography), even though such laws ALSO are used to target queers more than straights. It's when you have porn that only depicts adults that I have a problem. Because I don't see how you can write a law that WON'T, in practice, be used to target gays and lesbians.

[edited to add:]

Sorry kurichina I completely misread your post.

[ 26 August 2005: Message edited by: rasmus raven ]


From: Fortune favours the bold | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
voice of the damned
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6943

posted 26 August 2005 03:03 AM      Profile for voice of the damned     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
I do not believe any Red Hot Video outlets were blown to smithereens, complete with flying bricks and other debris during the day when children were nearby. The Red Hot Video outlet was FIRE bombed..burned...at night...(well, after all, it advertised itself as "red hot", right? And for a brief time it was exactly that)


I assume here that "firbomb" means something like "tossing a molotov cocktail at the target". If so, point taken, no that's not likely to injure kids walking to school during the day.

But of course even non-bomb fires have a habit of spreading from one building to another, and assuming Southwesterrn BC is like the rest of the country, it's likely that there are people there who visit their workplaces at night for whatever reason. So, yeah, I can still sorta see why the cops would want to prevent further acts of arson.


From: Asia | Registered: Sep 2004  |  IP: Logged
raccunk
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 9151

posted 26 August 2005 03:14 AM      Profile for raccunk     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Are anti-obscenity laws really used more often to target gays and lesbians? I mean, a lot of porn which is marketed to heterosexual men contains images of lesbianism.
From: Zobooland | Registered: May 2005  |  IP: Logged
kuri
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4202

posted 26 August 2005 07:16 AM      Profile for kuri   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I wasn't only responding to your post earlier, rasmus. Just a lot of posts I saw as leaning towards black and white on both sides. As for a law that won't target queers, I don't know. I thought your proviso "clearly non-consensual" was pretty straightforward, but since I'm not a consumer of porn, I'll willing to believe that it might not be as simple as that.

Furthermore, I'm not sure it's the best idea for a straight woman to draft such a law all by herself, just as a law drafting entirely by a white, rich, straight man might be not a good idea. I don't really agree with the Dworkian heritage, but I think something has to be done to address violence, in all its forms. While I didn't specify it (because I didn't want to perpetuate the idea that only straight porn could be violent), I was really only thinking of straight porn, and specifically of the "rape tape" spam e-mails I used to receive.

[ 26 August 2005: Message edited by: kurichina ]


From: an employer more progressive than rabble.ca | Registered: Jun 2003  |  IP: Logged
CMOT Dibbler
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4117

posted 26 August 2005 08:40 PM      Profile for CMOT Dibbler     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
even though such laws ALSO are used to target queers more than straights. It's when you have porn that only depicts adults that I have a problem. Because I don't see how you can write a law that WON'T, in practice, be used to target gays and lesbians.

How could child porn laws be used to harm gays?

From: Just outside Fernie, British Columbia | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
CMOT Dibbler
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4117

posted 26 August 2005 09:03 PM      Profile for CMOT Dibbler     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
If you enjoy looking at a twelve inch long plastic penis with vividly coloured plastic veins, engorged of course, then by all means buy one and enjoy whatever it is about it that you enjoy.

Unattractive though some of them maybe, sex toys are damn useful.
Besides, it's only a dong.


From: Just outside Fernie, British Columbia | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
CMOT Dibbler
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4117

posted 26 August 2005 09:44 PM      Profile for CMOT Dibbler     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
What kind of porn did red hot video sell exactly?
From: Just outside Fernie, British Columbia | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
Doug
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 44

posted 27 August 2005 05:28 AM      Profile for Doug   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:

Unattractive though some of them maybe, sex toys are damn useful.
Besides, it's only a dong.


Quite so. Watch and learn! It's dildo, it's dildo!


From: Toronto, Canada | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
voice of the damned
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6943

posted 27 August 2005 11:08 AM      Profile for voice of the damned     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
What kind of porn did red hot video sell exactly?

According to most of the on-line sources I've consulted, some of the material sold by RHV contained scenes of rape and other forms of violence.

Here is one source I found:

http://tinyurl.com/9nqww


From: Asia | Registered: Sep 2004  |  IP: Logged
CMOT Dibbler
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4117

posted 27 August 2005 12:45 PM      Profile for CMOT Dibbler     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Okay. in that case, Rock on you crazy grandma! I do think however, that firebombing is the worst possible solution they could have come up with.

Anne, couldn't you have organized a massive rally in front of the shop, and got the mayor to shut the place down?

[ 27 August 2005: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

[ 27 August 2005: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]


From: Just outside Fernie, British Columbia | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
anne cameron
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8045

posted 27 August 2005 02:51 PM      Profile for anne cameron     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
The place which got burned was in Vancouver, I was in Nanaimo, two hours away by ferry...I didn't set fire to anything...I did the anal gland draining thing and did a couple of TV and radio things about pornography, hatred of women, etc.

I don't watch porn of any kind...and having written that am immediately struck with the thought that isn't true because I DO watch TV and most commercials depend on some level of "porn" to sell everything from vaginal deodorants to expensive cars...and I watch CSI Miami and Las Vegas where you get to see the medical examiner open someone's chest and haul out the heart and lungs..which is a bit much but... so yes, I guess I do watch "porn". I do not object to eroticism but find most "sex scenes" either boring or hilariously funny so mostly I don't watch (I usually have a book at hand and read while the grope scenes unwind) because it bothers other people when Grandma bursts into gales of laughter...

my objection is with VIOLENT porn, and I include pornography which depicts children as violent...and would include bestiality, as well because animals, like kids, do not have any choice...

Appeal to the mayor? I guess you have a more reasonable and intelligent mayor than most of the ones I've encountered, they seem to be more apt to listen to the real estate and used car contingent...

I am not aware of any porn outlets in Tahsis...there are several places we can rent videos or CD's but I haven't seen any violent crap on the shelves..maybe if a person were to ask, specifically, it would be available, I don't know, but it isn't out where kids would be able to see lewd, suggestive, or violent cover images...mind you, some of the "action" stuff is pretty ugly, bits of bodies falling like confetti from blast-red skies...

I try, sometimes with less sucess than I would wish, to be "open minded". I try hard not to judge people. I try every day to follow the teachings of Big House. I do not always manage to behave as I wish I could. I'm Scottish and we raise our kids to meet everything head on, to survive and to do that the best way possible... I also come from a nightmarish childhood of physical abuse and enforced fundamentalist religious brainwashing...and I would not be the least bit surprised if a shrink could have an absolute field day picking through the sack of snakes I have accumulated in 67 years... I know I am capable of dreadful violence and I know if anyone moves against my grandbabies in any way I am apt to reside "at the pleasure of the Queen" for a number of years. And I suspect I would go to jail quite happily for defending my grandchildren..or anybody else's... because they didn't make this world nor did they choose to come into it so the very least we can do is be NICE to them.

God, you'd think it was difficult to be nice to kids! The way this society treats them is shocking. And if there is such a thing as "sin" our lack of protection for the babes is just that, an unforgiveable sin.


From: tahsis, british columbia | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged
Vigilante
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8104

posted 27 August 2005 08:57 PM      Profile for Vigilante        Edit/Delete Post
The red hot video thing does show that things can get shut down. In Edmonton there was some pretty heavy direct action against fur shops in the early mid 90s. They actually shut one of them down.

In Britain Huntington life is one the verge of going bankrupt. The ALF is strongest in Britain of course.

For those who have a problem with bdsm I would simply say that "the world", ala mass society as we know it and enjoy in certain areas is based on violence unimaginable. Everything within the text can be traced by to violence and war.


From: Toronto | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Rev. Phoenix
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5140

posted 27 August 2005 08:59 PM      Profile for Rev. Phoenix     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Perhaps instead of forcing legitmate S&M or even forced sex roling/stories into hiding by violating thier human rights, which would be disaster(I mean they can't even control child porn for fucksakes, hate that stuff), is to set up a far none judgemental registery with a symbol they can put on thier website showing that no one is being really raped.Most sites I'm been too have a warning that rape is wrong and nothing real on the site as far as that goes.
My friend's a willing slave who likes being degraded. don't cut it till you try it

From: Bradford | Registered: Mar 2004  |  IP: Logged
MasterDebator
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8643

posted 28 August 2005 03:36 PM      Profile for MasterDebator        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by rasmus raven:
Well I guess the challenge for you is to provide a definition of violent porn that WON'T be used primarily to target gays and lesbians. Because so far no one has been able to (and the heritage of this debate is that anti-porn theorists like Dworkin have defined the essence of ALL porn as the eroticization of murder).

Given what has happened with the Little Sisters bookstore in Vancouver, I can understand your concern. But I don't agree that the discriminatory practices of unseen, unaccountable CRA bureaucrats should completely negate any action against violent pornography.

We need responsible, accountable officials and a legimate process for determining when erotic materials cross the line and become violent or abusive or an incitement to sexual violence.

As a gay man, how would you position yourself on this subject if it came to your attention that violent gay bashing was becoming a standard plot line in some hetero films/mags?


From: Goose Country Road, Prince George, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
MasterDebator
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8643

posted 28 August 2005 03:40 PM      Profile for MasterDebator        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by kurichina:
Furthermore, I'm not sure it's the best idea for a straight woman to draft such a law all by herself, just as a law drafting entirely by a white, rich, straight man might be not a good idea. I don't really agree with the Dworkian heritage, but I think something has to be done to address violence, in all its forms.

Just a reminder, kurichina, that Andrea Dworkin was a lesbian. He colleague in the anti-porn movement, Catherine MacKinnon, was hetero. So there was a kind of dual background involved.

Also, and I noted this when Andrea died a few months ago, so many people were in a hurry to get with the new "third wave" stuff that they were basically relieved they would no longer have to deal with her angry, uncompromising voice.


From: Goose Country Road, Prince George, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
MasterDebator
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8643

posted 28 August 2005 03:41 PM      Profile for MasterDebator        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:

Unattractive though some of them maybe, sex toys are damn useful.
Besides, it's only a dong.


Useful for what? Helping gangs of abusive men to drug up some naive young women and then start violating them with the help of some plastic "toys"? You know, a campus panty raid, with some drugs and sex mixed in so the boys can have a great time?


From: Goose Country Road, Prince George, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
MasterDebator
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8643

posted 28 August 2005 03:44 PM      Profile for MasterDebator        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Rev. Phoenix:
Perhaps instead of forcing legitmate S&M

What is "legitimate S&M"? Would that be the kind of lifestyle portrayed in the novel "The Story of 'o'" by Pauline Reage? Is this legitimate?


From: Goose Country Road, Prince George, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
Crippled_Newsie
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 7024

posted 28 August 2005 03:45 PM      Profile for Crippled_Newsie     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by MasterDebator:
We need responsible, accountable officials and a legimate process for determining when erotic materials cross the line and become violent or abusive or an incitement to sexual violence.

Wouldn't that be best handled by legislation and prosecution, rather than by a regulatory body?


quote:
As a gay man, how would you position yourself on this subject if it came to your attention that violent gay bashing was becoming a standard plot line in some hetero films/mags?

Fair point.

quote:
Useful for what? Helping gangs of abusive men to drug up some naive young women and then start violating them with the help of some plastic "toys"? You know, a campus panty raid, with some drugs and sex mixed in so the boys can have a great time?

I own a couple, and have thus far managed to resist the temptation to use them in the manner you describe.

[ 28 August 2005: Message edited by: Tape_342 ]


From: It's all about the thumpa thumpa. | Registered: Oct 2004  |  IP: Logged
kuri
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4202

posted 28 August 2005 04:52 PM      Profile for kuri   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
MD, I was referring to myself in the post of mine that you quoted not Dworkin, just to clarify.

I really think the whole intergenerational putdowns of "third wave" is unneccesary here, too. Perhaps I'm sensitive to this because of my youth, but I feel as if the frequent (negative) references third wavers is some kind of roundabout insult. As I said earlier, if our discussion is restricted to *violent* porn (as I had intended), the third wave/second wave conflict really seems besides the point. Looking back over this thread, I really see no correlation between generation and the positions taken.


From: an employer more progressive than rabble.ca | Registered: Jun 2003  |  IP: Logged
Yst
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 9749

posted 28 August 2005 05:21 PM      Profile for Yst     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by MasterDebator:

Useful for what? Helping gangs of abusive men to drug up some naive young women and then start violating them with the help of some plastic "toys"? You know, a campus panty raid, with some drugs and sex mixed in so the boys can have a great time?


What the...hell? Is this truly the only use you can imagine for a dong? Or indeed, the first thing that comes to mind when you think of one? If so, I dare say you have some issues to deal with.

It's like a sort of verbal Rorschach Test:

Q: "Dong"
A: (quote) Helping gangs of abusive men to drug up some naive young women and then start violating them with the help of some plastic "toys"


From: State of Genderfuck | Registered: Jun 2005  |  IP: Logged
CMOT Dibbler
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4117

posted 28 August 2005 07:27 PM      Profile for CMOT Dibbler     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Mr. Falwell...is that you?

ooooooookay....
Sex toys are useful because they provide
sexual pleasure to people who:
1)are engaged in meaningful relationships but who aren't getting enough sexual pleasure during intercourse.(vibrator anyone?)
2) people who are not engaged in a meaningful relationship and just want to whack off.
3)People who are engaged in meaningful relationships and want to try something different in terms of sexuality

quote:
Useful for what? Helping gangs of abusive men to drug up some naive young women and then start violating them with the help of some plastic "toys"? You know, a campus panty raid, with some drugs and sex mixed in so the boys can have a great time?



From: Just outside Fernie, British Columbia | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
CMOT Dibbler
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4117

posted 28 August 2005 07:45 PM      Profile for CMOT Dibbler     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
What the...hell? Is this truly the only use you can imagine for a dong? Or indeed, the first thing that comes to mind when you think of one? If so, I dare say you have some issues to deal with.

It's like a sort of verbal Rorschach Test:

Q: "Dong"
A: (quote) Helping gangs of abusive men to drug up some naive young women and then start violating them with the help of some plastic "toys"



Priceless!
I don't know what struck me as funny about this post. I think I just find the word "Dong" amusing. God! I'm sooo imature.

From: Just outside Fernie, British Columbia | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
MasterDebator
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8643

posted 28 August 2005 09:12 PM      Profile for MasterDebator        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by kurichina:
I really think the whole intergenerational putdowns of "third wave" is unneccesary here, too. Perhaps I'm sensitive to this because of my youth, ...

And I am sensitve to it from the other side of the age spectrum. I find it really stressful to be accused of Victorianism and intolerance when all I am trying to do is maintain the awareness about porn and harassment that was, in terms of my life, a major breakthrough of the feminist movement. That only twenty years late it is being discarded is tragic to me.

I have to admit that I react emotionally when I see younger feminists embracing porn and the sex trade as though it were not the least bit problematic. It's a though the advance of knowledge and real human rights were being turned backwards.


From: Goose Country Road, Prince George, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
MasterDebator
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8643

posted 28 August 2005 09:14 PM      Profile for MasterDebator        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Yst:
What the...hell? Is this truly the only use you can imagine for a dong? [/i]

No, but it's one of the uses I am sure it gets put to. At least according to violent porn, that's one of the uses for them.


From: Goose Country Road, Prince George, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
MasterDebator
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8643

posted 28 August 2005 09:19 PM      Profile for MasterDebator        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
Mr. Falwell...is that you?

ooooooookay....
Sex toys are useful because they provide
sexual pleasure to people who:
1)are engaged in meaningful relationships but who aren't getting enough sexual pleasure during intercourse.(vibrator anyone?)
2) people who are not engaged in a meaningful relationship and just want to whack off.
3)People who are engaged in meaningful relationships and want to try something different in terms of sexuality


Mr Hefner, ... is that you???

1)are engaged in meaningful relationships but who aren't getting enough sexual pleasure during intercourse.(vibrator anyone?)

"aren't getting enough". Who isn't getting enough? The frustrated man of the house whose porn films and mags set the standards he expects the little woman to live up to???

2) people who are not engaged in a meaningful relationship and just want to whack off.

Why do these people need to have their suppliers show off the product in show room windows? Does this increase the pleasure they can experience in private? How?

3)People who are engaged in meaningful relationships and want to try something different in terms of sexuality

"Something different", such an innocuous phrase. Which can then morph into kinky and then into anything the man wants. And if she says no, she can be ridiculed as a prude, a follower of Falwell.


From: Goose Country Road, Prince George, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
voice of the damned
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6943

posted 29 August 2005 02:02 AM      Profile for voice of the damned     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
1)are engaged in meaningful relationships but who aren't getting enough sexual pleasure during intercourse.(vibrator anyone?)

"aren't getting enough". Who isn't getting enough? The frustrated man of the house whose porn films and mags set the standards he expects the little woman to live up to???


Yes, that could be ONE type of potential customer for a vibrator. There could also be many others.

quote:
people who are not engaged in a meaningful relationship and just want to whack off.

Why do these people need to have their suppliers show off the product in show room windows? Does this increase the pleasure they can experience in private? How?


Aren't you moving the goal posts a bit here? As far as I can tell, CMOT wasn't defending the public display of vibrators.

quote:
People who are engaged in meaningful relationships and want to try something different in terms of sexuality

"Something different", such an innocuous phrase. Which can then morph into kinky and then into anything the man wants. And if she says no, she can be ridiculed as a prude, a follower of Falwell.


I usually drink soda pop in bars. But sometimes I want something different, so I have a beer before going home to sleep.

Now, for SOME people, "something different" means getting totally shit-faced on ten beers and a few shots of Vodka, then going home and beating their wife and kids senseless before choking to death on their own vomit in the bathroom.

So, I guess I should really stick to soda pop.


From: Asia | Registered: Sep 2004  |  IP: Logged
Doug
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 44

posted 29 August 2005 08:07 AM      Profile for Doug   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by MasterDebator:

What is "legitimate S&M"? Would that be the kind of lifestyle portrayed in the novel "The Story of 'o'" by Pauline Reage? Is this legitimate?


That's obviously a fictional extreme. I have my doubts myself about how far it's possible to maintain conditions of free consent in the context of a 24-7 "lifestyle" of submission, so no, I don't really consider that legitimate BDSM when that happens in the real world. Fortunately, hardly anyone really does this.

quote:

"aren't getting enough". Who isn't getting enough? The frustrated man of the house whose porn films and mags set the standards he expects the little woman to live up to???

You might have missed that the main buyers and users of sex toys are, in fact, women.

quote:

Why do these people need to have their suppliers show off the product in show room windows? Does this increase the pleasure they can experience in private? How?

The same reason any other shop owner usually has a large front window with product displayed in it. You attract browsers and get impulse purchases that way. I agree that with a sex shop, that's not necessarily appropriate in all neighbourhoods, so I fully support the right of local government to determine where they can and can't open. As long as there is some place for them.

quote:

"Something different", such an innocuous phrase. Which can then morph into kinky and then into anything the man wants. And if she says no, she can be ridiculed as a prude, a follower of Falwell.

Since when is the man always the kinky one? Or for that matter, the dominant one? I know some women who would disabuse you of that idea pretty quickly. Even if they are, well, no means no, doesn't it? If someone's going to ridicule their partner that way, I suppose there's not much future in the relationship anyway. That sort of abuse could happen in a relationship over anything, from what to have for dinner to what movie to see.


From: Toronto, Canada | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478

posted 29 August 2005 08:11 AM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
As I said earlier, if our discussion is restricted to *violent* porn (as I had intended), the third wave/second wave conflict really seems besides the point. Looking back over this thread, I really see no correlation between generation and the positions taken.

That dichotomy bothers me too, although I've maybe been getting so used to seeing my own life and experience caricatured in "wave" discussions that I've given up intervening much.

My position has so far been pretty isolated, both from the critical views of the other feminists here of my vintage and from the various defences of porn that anyone else has mounted. But there have always been feminists like me -- of the McKinnon-Dworkin generation -- who remained either civil libertarians or porn enthusiasts, so the oversimplified polarizing by age isn't working for me.

That said, I don't think that anyone here has nothing of value to say.

You want to remind us, kurichina, of your opening qualification -- you were thinking specifically of violent porn. If by that you mean that we can tell (more or less certainly?) that crimes were committed in making the porn, then of course, in my knee-jerk civil-libertarian mode I would argue that we start by tracking down the producers of the real rot-gut.

I recognize how hard that has been to do historically. That's one of the provocations for civil libertarians: since the producers of the real rot-gut tend to be anonymous, it is usually next to impossible to find them ... and therefore zealous enforcers will use anti-porn legislation to go after anybody who has a higher public profile. Historically, that has meant (in)famous people and artists (not always overlapping categories).

But it remains any crimes that were committed in production that are the legitimate crimes to pursue. Much that goes on at the consumption end remains a matter of speculation. It is my understanding, eg, that pedophiles can be set off by any kind of picture of children, the most innocent stuff imaginable. We can't control for that (except by thinking about how to prevent pedophilia in the first place).

I don't think that MasterDebator deserves to be ridiculed for her concern over the universal abuse and manipulation of women, especially young women. I'm concerned too. I just don't see that criminalizing porn should be the main turf that we struggle on.


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
anne cameron
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8045

posted 29 August 2005 12:52 PM      Profile for anne cameron     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I suspect we'd need to find a way to draw a line between what is "erotic" and what is grot. I wouldn't want to be the one to do that. And "porn" is not the same as "violent porn".

I, for example, do not like the way fundie Xians brainwash their kids... but I'm not going to deny them the right to pass on what they believe is the word of the one true God... I personally think much of what they teach is child abuse but we know I'm a bit bent on the subject.

Similarly, I am a bit bent on "violent porn". In that term I include anything which sexualizes children.

It was the article and photographs of the four year old girl had me heaving. I had seen and not puked at pictures of a gorgeous young adult male strung from a ceiling by ropes passed through large hooks embedded in his bleeding flesh. He, too , was screaming. I do not know why I could "accept" that image and then hurl violently at a later image of a child being raped. Both are human, both were in agony, and I doubt either of them WANTED to be so treated.

Mixed with my rage there is a profound and lasting sense of sadness that something which can be one of the most beautiful acts in which humans can participate can also be such absolute shit. It doesn't really say much for our mental state.


From: tahsis, british columbia | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged
MasterDebator
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8643

posted 29 August 2005 03:27 PM      Profile for MasterDebator        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by skdadl:
I don't think that MasterDebator deserves to be ridiculed for her concern over the universal abuse and manipulation of women, especially young women. I'm concerned too. I just don't see that criminalizing porn should be the main turf that we struggle on.

Thanks so much skdadl. It's good to know that there are at least a few people out there who don't think my concerns are invalid.

I have been quite taken aback that many babblers don't see the horror I do when I tell them about the local magazine store we have in Prince George where the "men's adventure magazines" (guns, martial arts, muscles, etc.) are on a shelf directly opposite to all the porn magazines. To me, it's a shocking sight, and so very telling. Yet I have been called a prude for bringing this up.


From: Goose Country Road, Prince George, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
Bacchus
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4722

posted 29 August 2005 03:34 PM      Profile for Bacchus     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
To me, it's a shocking sight, and so very telling.

I dont see it as telling so much as marketing. Same reason the fashion magazines are beside the food magazines. Its sexist grouping of genres; "lets put all the men stuff in the same place, lets put all the female stuff in the same place". Im sure the sports magazines are close to the porn and/or 'adventure' magazines


From: n/a | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
Crippled_Newsie
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 7024

posted 29 August 2005 03:47 PM      Profile for Crippled_Newsie     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by MasterDebator:
I have been quite taken aback that many babblers don't see the horror I do when I tell them about the local magazine store we have in Prince George where the "men's adventure magazines" (guns, martial arts, muscles, etc.) are on a shelf directly opposite to all the porn magazines. To me, it's a shocking sight, and so very telling. Yet I have been called a prude for bringing this up.

And here we are back on the subject of (apparently) garden-variety porn (as opposed to the rot-gut others have referenced).

If the newsstand's porn magazines were interspersed with so-called 'women's publications,' wouldn't that also be somewhat offensive?

[ 29 August 2005: Message edited by: Tape_342 ]


From: It's all about the thumpa thumpa. | Registered: Oct 2004  |  IP: Logged
CMOT Dibbler
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4117

posted 29 August 2005 03:50 PM      Profile for CMOT Dibbler     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
I don't think that MasterDebator deserves to be ridiculed for her concern over the universal abuse and manipulation of women, especially young women.

I can understand opposing the abuse of women a children, but opposing the use of sex toys under all cercumstances? It strikes me as odd.


From: Just outside Fernie, British Columbia | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
Mr. Magoo
guilty-pleasure
Babbler # 3469

posted 29 August 2005 04:15 PM      Profile for Mr. Magoo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
I don't think that MasterDebator deserves to be ridiculed for her concern over the universal abuse and manipulation of women, especially young women.

Skdadl, did you hit your head very hard and thus become disingenuous?

MD has persistently refused to even consider any point of view that does not demonize pornography or recreational sex. Like, no budging. Not even an inch.

Sorry, but that's worth a mocking, if you ask me. We're all here to learn, right? Maybe it's time MD learned that plastic penises aren't weapons of mass destruction.


From: ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø, | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
CMOT Dibbler
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4117

posted 29 August 2005 04:42 PM      Profile for CMOT Dibbler     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
MD has persistently refused to even consider any point of view that does not demonize pornography or recreational sex.

Correction, she's demonizing certain kinds of recreational sex. However, i think she's making a huge mistake attacking the people she has been attacking. Not all kinky fetishes involve rape or pain and not all people who use sex toys are predators (80 year old grandmas use them for god sakes! You can buy them at Kmart!)

[ 29 August 2005: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]

[ 29 August 2005: Message edited by: CMOT Dibbler ]


From: Just outside Fernie, British Columbia | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478

posted 29 August 2005 04:51 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Sorry, fellows, but MasterDebator is a woman and a feminist, and we are in the feminism forum.

Not that I think that she is abjuring all recreational sex, but even if she were, I would consider that to be a legitimate position to maintain here. I would listen to arguments for a-sexuality here -- I've listened to them before, and taken them very seriously.


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Mr. Magoo
guilty-pleasure
Babbler # 3469

posted 29 August 2005 05:02 PM      Profile for Mr. Magoo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
It sometimes strikes me as ironic just how much time you spend at a discussion board urging everyone to be quiet.

Well, fellows, since we lack a uterus, we should probably be moving on. Anyone up for some hockey talk or something?


From: ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø, | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
CMOT Dibbler
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4117

posted 29 August 2005 05:02 PM      Profile for CMOT Dibbler     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I understand. I still find the thing about the sex toys baffeling though...
From: Just outside Fernie, British Columbia | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478

posted 29 August 2005 05:04 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Do you mean me personally, Mr M? Moi?

I think I am usually quite inviting.


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478

posted 29 August 2005 05:07 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Oh! I see I missed such a delicious opportunity.

Mr M, a uterus had better not be the qualification to post in this forum, because I don't have one either.

Interesting metonymy there, Mr M. It's the uterus that makes the woman? Hmmmn?


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Bacchus
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4722

posted 29 August 2005 05:07 PM      Profile for Bacchus     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
but MasterDebator is a woman and a feminist, and we are in the feminism forum.

Wasnt she also the one telling everyone (women too and here in this forum) how to think and act? And what feelings or thought were 'right' and what ones werent and who was brainwashed? Not very feminist and in the same place
Like this thread

or this one

[ 29 August 2005: Message edited by: Bacchus ]


From: n/a | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
Mr. Magoo
guilty-pleasure
Babbler # 3469

posted 29 August 2005 05:08 PM      Profile for Mr. Magoo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Sure, if by "inviting", you mean "inviting babblers to shush".

I'll RSVP with regrets on that one.


From: ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø, | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478

posted 29 August 2005 05:09 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
No more than anyone else was.

Most people who've posted to this topic have argued pretty forcefully for one view or another. And I repeat: I think MD's position is perfectly legitimate. I don't share it, obviously, but then hardly anyone else shares my position.

C'est la vie, guys.


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Bacchus
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4722

posted 29 August 2005 05:17 PM      Profile for Bacchus     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Hmm I checked over the old threads and while women and men piled on MD, Skdadl was not one of them. So I withdraw any shadow of accusation against her for her stance

Still think MD isnt really being pro-feminist tho


From: n/a | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
Mr. Magoo
guilty-pleasure
Babbler # 3469

posted 29 August 2005 05:25 PM      Profile for Mr. Magoo   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
And I repeat: I think MD's position is perfectly legitimate.

So are lots of positions that get ridiculed on babble.

I think the general idea is, if you don't want to be ridiculed, don't:

- propose that we abolish taxes
- suggest that Big Business is capable of policing its own ethics
- say "Harper in 2005"
- suggest that any and all images of naked adults are, de facto, harmful to just over half of the population

Besides, MD led with the dismissive tone:

quote:
As for some the pornography freedom fighters who have unburdened themselves in this thread, I don't care for libertarian arguments about pensions and health care, why should I respect them when it comes to porn?

Apparently, by not agreeing with her, we're "Porn Freedom Fighters".

If she suddenly doesn't care to play that game anymore, I'd say an apology to us Porn Freedom Fighters would be in order. Otherwise, welcome to babble, where it's ok to make ridiculous comments, and ok to ridicule such.


From: ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø, | Registered: Dec 2002  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478

posted 29 August 2005 06:01 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Oh, well: I am happy to argue back against that characterization of a civil-libertarian position, Mr M -- why would you not be happy just to argue back against it? I mean, the defence is obvious. But that doesn't mean that MD shouldn't be able to make her criticism in the first place.

She puts it her way; I put it back to her that that's not the way I characterize it, not as "porn freedom fighting."

This is so terribly difficult?

Please note: I have yet to write my response to her characterization -- I've just been talking process here.


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Rev. Phoenix
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5140

posted 29 August 2005 06:20 PM      Profile for Rev. Phoenix     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by MasterDebator:

"aren't getting enough". Who isn't getting enough? The frustrated man of the house whose porn films and mags set the standards he expects the little woman to live up to???

2) people who are not engaged in a meaningful relationship and just want to whack off.

Why do these people need to have their suppliers show off the product in show room windows? Does this increase the pleasure they can experience in private? How?

.


OMG. Now I understand. Your under the mistaken impression that men are hornier then woman, when dispite what porn sales and conventional wisdom it is the opposite way around.

I'm going to tell you the story me when I was about 13 so you know what being degrade really means.

I was shy, no friends in the area, when this girl knocked on my door and invited to come play with the local kids, innocent enough right?

After a few days she smacks one of the guys on the ass so I smack her on the ass in retailation.

This evolved into a tag like game in which guys chased the girls smacked them on the ass and took them to the girls shed to "hump."

Sounds caveman on my part no?

If I didn't want a pacticular girl and didn't smack her on the ass I'd get in shit from the girl.

Now once we got into the shed we see who really held the power.

The girls set the rules, not us guys, well really it was just the twin girls setting the rules the others girls followed the dominate females.

They'd have me drop my underwear, while they only pulled down the back half of thiers.

This had the effect of stimulation they're clits to orgasm, while I on the other hand got only rug burns on my penis for my efforts.

After this came the revenge of the ASD(anti slut defence) in which they'd blame me for thier desires, because of course they couldn't possibly be responsible for them they're good girls after all, calling me pig, teasing me, stealing my hat and other cruelities upon my person for the crime of getting them off.

Pull, while I don't concider myself raped really because I was reluctant rather then unwilling in one incident one of the twins held my hand, even after I had requested to leave because my mom was expecting me home for dinner, and she would not let go until I humped her(ironically when she argeed to be my girlfriend, a prank to humiliate me, that lasted a weekend, she wouldn't touch me, yet had no promblem when I was nothing more then a sex object to her.)

So you see girls are total sexual predators.


From: Bradford | Registered: Mar 2004  |  IP: Logged
rasmus
malcontent
Babbler # 621

posted 29 August 2005 06:36 PM      Profile for rasmus   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
A crude sketch of the assumptions driving most anti-porn and pro-porn feminists.
From: Fortune favours the bold | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
MasterDebator
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8643

posted 29 August 2005 06:36 PM      Profile for MasterDebator        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Rev. Phoenix:
OMG. Now I understand. Your under the mistaken impression that men are hornier then woman, when dispite what porn sales and conventional wisdom it is the opposite way around.

Obviously, you're not being serious. Well, I am.

I find Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler and all of that genre to be degrading to women and I don't think I need to apologize for that.

I also wonder about people who say the "need" sex toys. If real sex isn't good enough for them how are "toys" going to help? Why do they need to be publicly displayed? What useful social purpose is served by that? We don't allow liquor stores to show the actual product in display windows because of a certain sense of discretion and propriety. Why should sex toys be different?


From: Goose Country Road, Prince George, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
MasterDebator
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8643

posted 29 August 2005 06:44 PM      Profile for MasterDebator        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:
Apparently, by not agreeing with her, we're "Porn Freedom Fighters".

If she suddenly doesn't care to play that game anymore, I'd say an apology to us Porn Freedom Fighters would be in order. Otherwise, welcome to babble, where it's ok to make ridiculous comments, and ok to ridicule such.


I don't see why I need to apologize. People who believe strongly that porn should be free available take a position I just as strongly disagree with. I think porn of all kinds is dangerous stuff leading almost inevitably to abuse and violence.

As for the telling juxtaposition of skin and martial arts and gun magazines, I think maybe you might be more nervous about that if you lived in a smaller community where hunting and hunting while under the influence of alcohol is more common, and where it's common practice for the men to share sexcapade stories during the hunting trips while drinking.


From: Goose Country Road, Prince George, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478

posted 29 August 2005 06:59 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Forgive me, rasmus, but that is indeed a crude summary.

I cannot see how measured opposition to censorship, opposition to most legislation against freedom of thought and expression, is "pro-porn."

It is a ... different position, IMHO.

MD, I hafta tell you, while I will defend your right to argue the line you are arguing, I don't agree with you. Why on earth do you care whether other people have fun with plastic? I mean: why? Lots of people have lots of reasons to want something other than the heterosex missionary position, and that probably includes most women.

Me, I prefer roasted red-pepper salsa from Bulgaria, but that's personal, eh?

The arguments you have made that I take seriously are those wherein you talk about, or hint about, consumerism, and about the pressure that women often feel to perform as though they were porn stars ... and, by implication, could make their men feel like porn stars.

I know that that happens. I can't see that censorship is the way to cure that social poison.


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478

posted 29 August 2005 07:08 PM      Profile for skdadl     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
About the civil-libertarian position (which is not necessarily the missionary position): I'm too tired to argue this tonight.

But it means neither pro- nor anti-porn. It means a defence of the human mind, free and creative. It means faith in the human spirit. It means suspicion of the will of any other -- and that includes ourselves, others among ourselves, pretty obviously a number of voices on this thread -- to stomp on the freedom of another spirit through legislation.

That many stomp on other spirits and other bodies in fact, in life, in flesh and blood reality ... that is what MD is talking about and fearing, and wishing that legislation could address.

I don't agree with her solutions, but I think she is not wrong to see the problems.


From: gone | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
anne cameron
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8045

posted 29 August 2005 07:16 PM      Profile for anne cameron     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I guess a certain contingent are about to roll on the floor laughing their guts out but I'm 67, and have never used a "sex toy".

I do not live behind convent walls. I have never made a practise of masturbation, and I do not feel I have been in any way deprived of sexual satisfaction. I was married for seventeen years, and profoundly bored for much of that time, but usually not in the bedroom. Then I off-loaded him and became involved with women. Not one of the women suggested we had any "need" for a sex toy. I would probably have fallen out of bed in paroxysms of laughter had one been produced. I've seen the plastic penises, remember they were in the window of the sex shop where kids on their way to elementary school could see them. They were ugly, they were exaggerated, and while I found them disgusting, I also, on reflection, cracked up laughing at what the size and depicted engorgement really said about the people who would be using them.

They were so UNreal I could only suppose they were a real slap in the face and an insult to most males.

"It ain't the size of the dancer, it's the poetry in the dance"...

I've seen the kind of displays MD objects to; I find them objectionable, too. I guess my confusion is why so many men do not object to the common perception that such mindless violence and grot is considered to be "men's magazines" or of interest to "men"... it seems to me most of the men I know wouldn't waste their time , money, or their minds on such sad tripe.

You do know that the "stories" and such in Penthouse are not "biographical", eh? They're churned out by professional worldslingers. I've seen the "bible" , the outline of requirements for them, and it's very telling. Those people think their readers are idiots. They deliberately appeal to the lowest common denominator. They seem to expect that the guys who buy the magazines can't even read, and if they can, not above a grade three level.

I've heard young males of my acquaintance when they thought the doddering old woman wasn't listening, I've heard them bragging about absolutely incredible sexual conquests...I didn't believe their stories, their friends didn't believe the stories and the guys bragging didn't believe the stories. But felt compelled to invent and brag and the others felt compelled to listen and I would really appreciate it if some of the guys could explain that compulsion to me.

Magoo, don't get silly, don't demean yourself with cheap shot jokes, let's try to keep this discussion a place we can all learn something. We acknowledge you are the king of the put-down but try to restrain yourself, please.

What I see is that feminism and feminists will one day (not in the near future) contribute analyses which will unburden men, particularly young men, from the need to bluster and brag. I think it terribly sad that societal pressure has made so many feel they have got to be yobbos and blokes just to be, what, accepted?


From: tahsis, british columbia | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged
CMOT Dibbler
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4117

posted 29 August 2005 07:20 PM      Profile for CMOT Dibbler     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Lots of people have lots of reasons to want something other than the heterosex missionary position, and that probably includes most women.

Exactly. According to scarlettteen, the missionary position can actually cause women a shitload of pain.

I find this comforting, it means that I am not abnormal for not really being able to participate in it.
I can engage in atisfying sex without being "on top"


From: Just outside Fernie, British Columbia | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
Rev. Phoenix
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5140

posted 29 August 2005 07:27 PM      Profile for Rev. Phoenix     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I was completely serious. women.are.hornier.than.men it is a simple fact that is rarely known.
From: Bradford | Registered: Mar 2004  |  IP: Logged
rasmus
malcontent
Babbler # 621

posted 29 August 2005 07:27 PM      Profile for rasmus   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by skdadl:
Forgive me, rasmus, but that is indeed a crude summary.

I cannot see how measured opposition to censorship, opposition to most legislation against freedom of thought and expression, is "pro-porn."



I wouldn't have have included the libertarian position as pro-porn, and I would have called the three positions "anti-anti-porn". While I agree with the libertarian arguments, on the whole, I am more in camps 2 and 3 myself, and these ARE "pro-porn". The arguments presented are for camp 2. Not sure why the writer chose to highlight those arguments.


From: Fortune favours the bold | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
MasterDebator
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8643

posted 29 August 2005 07:32 PM      Profile for MasterDebator        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by skdadl:
MD, I hafta tell you, while I will defend your right to argue the line you are arguing, I don't agree with you. Why on earth do you care whether other people have fun with plastic? I mean: why? Lots of people have lots of reasons to want something other than the heterosex missionary position, and that probably includes most women.

If it's any comfort to the Magoos of this world, I happen to prefer doggy style. My husband achieves much better penetration that way and I really get off on it. OKay now?

What I object to, besides the tendency of porn to incite abuse of real women by real men, who have been propandized and brainwashed by porn, is the capitalist commodification of sex, of women's bodies, of the human body.

I cannot see how it's prudish to be opposed to an industry in which multi-millionaires like Hugh Hefner are having a ball making young women into commercialized objects, for his direct gratification and financial enrichment, and for the enjoyment of misguided men who, in consuming Hefner's "product", may easily be turned into criminals when a real woman doesn't give them what they have been trained by Playboy to expect as their "male entitlement".

To me as a social democrat it's no different than being opposed to a system where mining and forestry companies abuse the natural environment in order to make a profit. If there's a need to make a living, and I agree there is, let them do it in a way that doesn't harm nature. Why can't the same approach be taken towards the various sex industries? How is that prudish? Because someone has come to rely on their products for easy enjoyment, and doesn't want their crutch taken away? Is that the problem?


From: Goose Country Road, Prince George, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
kuri
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4202

posted 29 August 2005 07:34 PM      Profile for kuri   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Rev. Pheonix - do you not see that you're engaging in just as much careless generalizing as MasterDebator? While MD's argument and purpose is clearly feminist (even if I don't completely share it), I can't see what your purpose is and how it constitutes a "pro-feminist" point of view?

Skdadl, thank you for injecting some reason and nuance back into this thread.

And Anne: thanks for posting this:

quote:
What I see is that feminism and feminists will one day (not in the near future) contribute analyses which will unburden men, particularly young men, from the need to bluster and brag. I think it terribly sad that societal pressure has made so many feel they have got to be yobbos and blokes just to be, what, accepted?

I think that's a gem of an idea. That will give me a good deal to reflect upon for the rest of the night.

[ 29 August 2005: Message edited by: kurichina ]


From: an employer more progressive than rabble.ca | Registered: Jun 2003  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
Moderator
Babbler # 560

posted 29 August 2005 07:38 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I wonder how much money Hugh Hefner makes off of this place?
From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
CMOT Dibbler
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4117

posted 29 August 2005 07:40 PM      Profile for CMOT Dibbler     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
I've seen the kind of displays MD objects to; I find them objectionable, too. I guess my confusion is why so many men do not object to the common perception that such mindless violence and grot is considered to be "men's magazines" or of interest to "men"... it seems to me most of the men I know wouldn't waste their time , money, or their minds on such sad tripe.

Yes Anne, but Playboy? As I understand it, that's about as softcore as you can get. It has(or so I've heard) decent, intellectually stimulating articles in it, and yet MD puts it in the same category as Hustler. That isn't entirely accurate.
P.S. there is a damand for sex toys, if the merchant isn't allowed to put them in his front window, how is he supposed to sell them?


From: Just outside Fernie, British Columbia | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
Rev. Phoenix
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5140

posted 29 August 2005 07:42 PM      Profile for Rev. Phoenix     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I'll acknowledge that thier are exceptions to this rule, yet in most circumstances where both male and female are sexually healthy, the female is hornier. And not just because thier are far more women capable of multiple orgasms, since reading a book on it in chapters I've become multiorgasmic too.
From: Bradford | Registered: Mar 2004  |  IP: Logged
Rev. Phoenix
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5140

posted 29 August 2005 07:45 PM      Profile for Rev. Phoenix     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I've read some really go political articles in hustler thank you very much
From: Bradford | Registered: Mar 2004  |  IP: Logged
Cueball
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4790

posted 29 August 2005 07:51 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I can't decide train of thought I dislike most on this thread the latent-protestant sex-shaming of those smirking at sex toys, or the idea that porn is not located in traditions of women's opression.

I don't think it can be argued that sex-desires are partly learned behaviour, which directly relates to human social relations, and that a good deal of porn helps recreate the ruling ideology and I think those who have the need to make a big deal about people sticking bits of plastic in themselves might want to examine their own learned behaviour.


From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
CMOT Dibbler
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4117

posted 29 August 2005 08:05 PM      Profile for CMOT Dibbler     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
....and I think those who have the need to make a big deal about people sticking bits of plastic in themselves might want to examine their own learned behaviour.

thank you for that.


From: Just outside Fernie, British Columbia | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
CMOT Dibbler
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4117

posted 29 August 2005 08:09 PM      Profile for CMOT Dibbler     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
or the idea that porn is not located in traditions of women's opression.

Who said that?


From: Just outside Fernie, British Columbia | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
anne cameron
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8045

posted 29 August 2005 08:11 PM      Profile for anne cameron     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
CMOT DIbbler: Does the butcher need to put each and every package of meat in the window? Does the grocery store or supermarket have to have their window jammed with examples?

I don't know how they do it where you live, but out here on the Island people walk into a store to see what is there.

You read the sign "clothing store" and you go in to see the clothing...you read the sign Sex Shop and another sign saying Sexual Aids, Sex toys, and a sign Browsers Welcome and if you're in the market for a rubber dickie, in you go..no need to have explicit and exaggerated dildoes out where little kids can't help but see them...

what you do with your rubber dickie when you get it home is not my particular concern . I do not expect you to use all twelve inches of it on a child, I do not expect you to use it as a blackjack to mug someone. If you use it inappropriately, I sincerely hope someone takes it away from you and shoves it where the sun doesn't usually shine. And if you use it on any of my grandchildren prayer will not suffice.

I don't much care where you whack off, how often, or who you can get to lend you a hand ; until such time as you get offensive, violent, or exploitive. Then I care. Mightily.

As for Playboy, well........yawn. My objection is to violent porn. Much of that has it's roots in Playboy and other such silly mag's. To deny the link is, to me, just a tad lazy.


From: tahsis, british columbia | Registered: Jan 2005  |  IP: Logged
Cueball
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4790

posted 29 August 2005 09:08 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
You have made this point more than once on this thread, and you are agressively and needlessly trying to shame CMOT. He doesn't run a sex shop as far as we know, nor is he a known pedophile, so all of this baggage is your baggage not his --he has simply defended sex toys. I think your post is psychologically abusive, and unecessarily agressive.
From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
Doug
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 44

posted 29 August 2005 09:23 PM      Profile for Doug   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Rev. Phoenix:
And not just because thier are far more women capable of multiple orgasms, since reading a book on it in chapters I've become multiorgasmic too.

I really must spend more time in Chapters.


From: Toronto, Canada | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged
CMOT Dibbler
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4117

posted 29 August 2005 09:31 PM      Profile for CMOT Dibbler     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I don't know that much about porn(or sex toys come to that.) but it's my understanding that "soft core" porn dosen't envolve violence. It just involves heavily airbrushed, unecessicerily skinny woman with overly large breasts, striking provocative poses.
No whips, no chains, no animals.
Am I wrong?
quote:
As for Playboy, well........yawn. My objection is to violent porn. Much of that has it's roots in Playboy and other such silly mag's. To deny the link is, to me, just a tad lazy.



From: Just outside Fernie, British Columbia | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
MasterDebator
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8643

posted 29 August 2005 11:00 PM      Profile for MasterDebator        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:
I don't know that much about porn(or sex toys come to that.) but it's my understanding that "soft core" porn dosen't envolve violence. It just involves heavily airbrushed, unecessicerily skinny woman with overly large breasts, striking provocative poses.
No whips, no chains, no animals.
Am I wrong?

That's probably about it. And that's what I object to, the capitalist objectification and commodification of women's bodies.


From: Goose Country Road, Prince George, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
MasterDebator
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8643

posted 29 August 2005 11:01 PM      Profile for MasterDebator        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Michelle:
I wonder how much money Hugh Hefner makes off of this place?

I don't know, but since it's a place you seem to be familiar with, maybe you can explain where the profits go.

Would that store sell mags like Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler?


From: Goose Country Road, Prince George, BC | Registered: Mar 2005  |  IP: Logged
CMOT Dibbler
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4117

posted 30 August 2005 12:00 AM      Profile for CMOT Dibbler     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Cueball:
You have made this point more than once on this thread, and you are agressively and needlessly trying to shame CMOT. He doesn't run a sex shop as far as we know, nor is he a known pedophile, so all of this baggage is your baggage not his --he has simply defended sex toys. I think your post is psychologically abusive, and unecessarily agressive.

I don't run a sex shop, although I would like the chance to frequent one and possibly buy some sex toys. I am most certainly not a child molesting pervert. I would like to thank Cue for defending me.
I think it's time to shut this topic down. Numurous posters have told us how awful violent porn is, but haven't told us how to satisfactoraly defend our children against predators without trampeling on an idividual's rights. Nor have we really come up with a decent idea of where to draw the line between what is violent, bizaare and unhealthy, and what is ligitimate erotic expression. Some here have said that all porn is nasty, while others say it is only dangerous when children or animals are involved. This debate is very confusing and has made me terribly uncomfortable.


From: Just outside Fernie, British Columbia | Registered: May 2003  |  IP: Logged
voice of the damned
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 6943

posted 30 August 2005 12:06 AM      Profile for voice of the damned     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
it's my understanding that "soft core" porn dosen't envolve violence. It just involves heavily airbrushed, unecessicerily skinny woman with overly large breasts, striking provocative poses.
No whips, no chains, no animals.
Am I wrong?

For awhile in the late 70s early 80s, Playboy's cartoons were starting to take on a tone of making light of violence against women. As well, mainstream porn films from that era(even ones that didn't explicitly portray sexual intercourse) were known to sometimes present eroticized abuse scenarios. This is alluded to in the film Boogie Nights, when the Dirk Diggler character complains about John Holmes "slapping around" the female leads in his movies.

Whatever you think about the anti-pornogrpahy feminists(and I'm certainly not their number one fan), it probably is the case that their campaigns prompted the mainstream porn industry to clean up its act re: eroticized violence. I suspect the looming spectre of government censorship convinced them that self-regulation was the way to go.


From: Asia | Registered: Sep 2004  |  IP: Logged
Michelle
Moderator
Babbler # 560

posted 30 August 2005 12:11 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Oh, I'm sorry, I thought earlier in the thread, that this is what you had to say about sex toys:

quote:
Useful for what? Helping gangs of abusive men to drug up some naive young women and then start violating them with the help of some plastic "toys"? You know, a campus panty raid, with some drugs and sex mixed in so the boys can have a great time?

And you claimed that porn and sex toys are all part of an industry that makes people like Hugh Hefner rich and glorifies rape. Maybe you should start a campaign to get Good For Her shut down because they do terrible things like teach women and their partners how to pleasure themselves with sex toys. Can't be having any of that.

The truth is, I'm actually not all that familiar with Good For Her. I've checked out their web site, and Audra and I were half-seriously talking about going to one of their seminars a couple of years back, but we couldn't coordinate our schedules. I've heard it's a great place, and I've always meant to go there sometime but I haven't yet. But if I ever do, I sure as hell won't be sharing my experience with any judgmental prudes who claim that people who use sex toys or are into consensual BDSM are glorifying rape. Because I think that's bullshit. And I think it's almost as feminist as Jerry Falwell telling me who I can and can't fuck and what activities I can and can't do in bed if I want to avoid sin.

That's all I have to say to you in this thread. I have purposefully stayed out of it up to this point because I thought the kind of prudery and judgmental shaming happening here is absolutely appalling, and it sure as hell doesn't represent any of my feminist principles, or those of any other feminist I know personally.

[ 30 August 2005: Message edited by: Michelle ]


From: I've got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. | Registered: May 2001  |  IP: Logged
Doug
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 44

posted 30 August 2005 12:24 AM      Profile for Doug   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Here's a view from the other side of the camera

quote:
Many people argue that pornography is degrading and exploitative to women. But Michelle Thorne, who has worked in the porn industry for six years, does not agree.

"I have never felt exploited. If anything it's giving you power over men. The only people exploited, if anyone is, are the men who go out and spend their money on porn," says the 26-year-old from Bristol.



From: Toronto, Canada | Registered: Apr 2001  |  IP: Logged

All times are Pacific Time  

Post New Topic  
Topic Closed  Topic Closed
Open Topic    Move Topic    Delete Topic next oldest topic   next newest topic
Hop To:

Contact Us | rabble.ca | Policy Statement

Copyright 2001-2008 rabble.ca