Is Porn Bad for You?

[compared2what?]

It's always wonderful to hear and (sometimes) to learn from you guys. And I really like the tone and direction the discussion is taking, in that it's not just like dosey-doing around the dance down at the county fair where you swing your partner then go around the outside in a series of seemingly infinitely repeating, mildly irritatated bickering circles.

But I so totally knew that after I expended all that effort trying to illuminate a small part of what it feels like for a girl, that I could post it or, if I preferred, I could print it out, rip it into little pieces and use it for confetti at parades, because it would have about as much influence on the thread either way.

I am now complaining a little bit, I confess. Whining like a baby, in fact. Though I'm not distressed in that way, it's not actually really personal. I mean, I know who I am by this point in my life, I wasn't writing out of emotional neediness and the wish to be individually understood. I wasn't even really writing for or about myself, although there is some Me in there, of course.

It just kind of bums me out that there's such an unbreachable disconnect. But whatever. I'd be interested to know whether there's any significant number of girls who also have epiphanic rushes of realization that they're never going to get what they want in early adolescence nowadays. A lot of things have improved in the childraising arena since I was growing up, in some ways just nominally and in some ways dramatically and for real.

But I don't know where on that spectrum whatever systematic efforts anyone make fall when it comes specifically to encouraging little girls to feel that one day, they'll have the same infinity of choices about what area of the world they'll be heroically ascending to the peak of and then reigning triumphantly from when they grow up that most halfway healthy little boys innocently and vaguely (but quite understandably) just take it for granted is the destiny unto which they were born until the onset of puberty shatters their illusions.

So I don't know whether little girls still arrive at adolescence having become so thoroughly accustomed to seeing the prospect of never getting what they want on a daily basis years and years earlier that if they did happen to take some particular notice of it at around that age, it would be more likely to strike them as just another humdrum feature of the landscape than it would something to write home about or not.

There's something to be said for having fully pre-crushed and -demolished expectations, you know. It has some of the same advantages as stability does, in its own little way. Not the really valuable ones, granted. But still.

Whinily yours,

c2-boo-hoo-w

Also, genuinely, thanks for sharing.

[undead]

Yes.

[compared2what?]

Hey!

You know whose work has some genuinely complex and insightful views on how the male psyche is affected by and relates to pornography and/or prostitution and/or sometimes other forms of commercial sex? It just occurred to me?

Paul Thomas Anderson, that's who. And not just in Boogie Nights. In one way or another (or more) that stuff is a key dynamic force in the lives of the the important young male characters in all of his movies.

Except for There Will Be Blood.

But it's an important element in the sexual and emotional lives of various characters in Sidney, Magnolia, and Punch-Drunk Love, all three. Plus, of course, in Boogie Nights. Which also covers women an children to some extent.

Posters (other than Nordic, IIRC, which is fine, there's no arguing about taste) might want to spin a DVD or two of his. Those movies kind of speak to a lot of what's being said here.

[barracuda]

It just kind of bums me out that there's such an unbreachable disconnect.

Of course, I can only speak to the male experience surrounding coming of age with any authority. And as I read your post regarding the destructiveness of the surpluses of male sexual attention universally directed to young women at the beginning of maturity, I felt it might be appropriate to attempt to identify what might be, at least partly, the genesis of the impulse of the oogling construction workers, beyond the obvious impulse of male privilege.

And as you stated, young manhood is often not exactly a walk in the park either. So I attempted poorly, I fully admit, to delineate what I see as a primary difference between how young men and young women experience sexuality from the point of view of the attention given to them in that regard by the world as they encounter it walking down the street - that difference being, in essence, that just as the young woman in the flower of youth is perhaps at what the world at large, for right or wrong, stereotypically envisions as the most desireable moment of her life, at the same moment in his sexual encounter with the world, the young man is at literally his least desirable.

I fully realise that in real terms, no one gets what they want from the world, and everyone must make peace with that, and obviously women get even less than that, having, as they do, the opportunities apportioned to them by the inequalities of a male-centric and unjust patriarchal world. But a man's sexual power is so intrinsically tied to property and power via the same patriarchal mechanism that at the peak of his physical sexuality, he is at the lowest ebb of his sexual attractiveness vis-a-vis his sexual possibilities in the world. And the fact that this is so is a cause for much of men's bad behaviour, including but not limited to the interest in pornography in their youth, and unrosy and unwanted attentiveness to young women in their later lives as construction workers.

As always, I have nothing but sadness that there is any kind of a disconnect at all, much less one which you feel cannot be breached. It is no source of happiness to me that people muct pursue their lives in a world in which women are treated and looked at and dismissed and objectified in the way that they are. It does nothing, really, to enrich my life that this is so, and in fact is recognised, at least by me, as a crippling and debilitating blight on existence, the cause of many, many ills in the world. It would be, by all means, better if we could come together as one, and cast our differences aside. I, for my part, would certainly like to try, and am more than willing to make whatrever efforts might be needed to do so.

Yours in solidarity of pre-crushedness,

-b

[Avalon]

I wish I could answer the question about what my college-age daughters think about whether they'll get what they want when they are older. But they are not interested in discussing anything the least bit sexual with me, and if they can't talk about difficult sexual issues with someone who is comfortable talking about sex, I hope they are not getting in situations where they are having sex without any boundaries or negotiations. As far as I know, they are not sexually active right now.

I don't know that they grew up with any reasonable expectations of what they might want on any level. It was a combination of the pop culture "follow your dreams" bullshit, in conjunction with the desire for the trappings of wealth -- Cinderella, though the prince never seemed terribly important. I think they are maturing out of that, and I'm pleased to see that some of the values I tried to instill sticking.

But who the hell knows, I never did mainstream very well
on any level, and the things I wanted and got and loved in the past few years are not the ones I could have conceived of wanting earlier. Sexually or otherwise.

[brekin]

Some interesting excerpts from the preface of Brave New World:
http://www.wealthandwant.com/auth/Huxley.html

The parallels with porn are I think obvious.

This really revolutionary revolution is to be achieved, not in the external world, but in the souls and flesh of human beings. Living as he did in a revolutionary period, the Marquis de Sade very naturally made use of this theory of revolutions in order to rationalize his peculiar brand of insanity. Robespierre had achieved the most superficial kind of revolution, the political. Going a little deeper, Babeuf had attempted the economic revolution. Sade regarded himself as the apostle of the truly revolutionary revolution, beyond mere politics and economics -- the revolution in individual men, women and children, whose bodies were henceforward to become the common sexual property of all and whose minds were to be purged of all the natural decencies, all the laboriously acquired inhibitions of traditional civilization. Between sadism and the really revolutionary revolution there is, of course, no necessary or inevitable connection. Sade was a lunatic and the more or less conscious goal of his revolution was universal chaos and destruction.

There is, of course, no reason why the new totalitarianisms should resemble the old. Government by clubs and firing squads, by artificial famine, mass imprisonment and mass deportation, is not merely inhumane (nobody cares much about that nowadays), it is demonstrably inefficient and in an age of advanced technology, inefficiency is the sin against the Holy Ghost. A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, news- paper editors and schoolteachers. But their methods are still crude and unscientific. The old Jesuits' boast that, if they were given the schooling of the child, they could answer for the man's religious opinions, was a product of wishful thinking. And the modern pedagogue is probably rather less efficient at conditioning his pupils' reflexes than were the reverend fathers who educated Voltaire. The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects, by lowering what Mr. Churchill calls an "iron curtain" between the masses and such facts or arguments as the local political bosses regard as undesirable, totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have done by the most eloquent denunciations, the most compelling of logical rebuttals. But silence is not enough. If persecution, liquidation and the other symptoms of social friction are to be avoided, the positive sides of propaganda must be made as effective as the negative. The most important Manhattan Projects of the future will be vast government-sponsored enquiries into what the politicians and the participating scientists will call "the problem of happiness" -- in other words, the problem of making people love their servitude. Without economic security, the love of servitude cannot possibly come into existence; for the sake of brevity, I assume that the all-powerful executive and its managers will succeed in solving the problem of permanent security. But security tends very quickly to be taken for granted. Its achievement is merely a superficial, external revolution. The love of servitude cannot be established except as the result of a deep, personal revolution in human minds and bodies. To bring about that revolution we require, among others, the following discoveries and inventions.

* First, a greatly improved technique of suggestion -- through infant conditioning and, later, with the aid of drugs, such as scopolamine.
* Second, a fully developed science of human differences, enabling government managers to assign any given individual to his or her proper place in the social and economic hierarchy. (Round pegs in square holes tend to have dangerous thoughts about the social system and to infect others with their discontents.)
* Third (since reality, however utopian, is something from which people feel the need of taking pretty frequent holidays), a substitute for alcohol and the other narcotics, something at once less harmful and more pleasure-giving than gin or heroin.

As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase. And the dictator (unless he needs cannon fodder and families with which to colonize empty or conquered territories) will do well to encourage that freedom. In conjunction with the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio, it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.

[JackRiddler]

whose minds were to be purged of all the natural decencies, all the laboriously acquired inhibitions of traditional civilization.

Natural decencies or acquired inhibitions? If the words mean anything, they are opposites. Huxley without elaboration lists them as synonyms. Perhaps he picked up the contradiction from de Sade? More likely, he's a product of his barely post-Victorian time, and can't but help laboriously see his inhibitions as natural.

As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase. And the dictator (unless he needs cannon fodder and families with which to colonize empty or conquered territories) will do well to encourage that freedom. In conjunction with the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio, it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.

At around the same time, Orwell was writing it up as the exact opposite. His dictatorship, in its search for cannon fodder and obedient servitude, requires children to join the Junior Anti-Sex League, so that the libido is suppressed and channeled away from the creativity and yearning that sex inspires. The rulers want the people to hate. Winston and Julia rebel by fucking. The state chooses to catch them in the act. It tortures them to break that attachment.

So which is it? How can two writers so brilliant, both towering influences on the world intelligentsia to this day, often mentioned as a pair, and each describing different but related aspects of an emergent techno-dystopia, come down on such seemingly opposite sides of the sex question?

When Huxley at the mid-20th century speaks of a loss of political and especially economic freedom - compared to the immediately preceding century? really? - "in conjunction with the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio," I get a whiff of contempt for the young and lower class that would be familiar to aging curmudgeons of the aristocracy all through time. Freedom is complex enough that different aspects of it can be in decline and on the rise at the same time, as was the case in the Anglosphere where Huxley's life and work played out. Sex is strange enough that it cannot be fit into his highly restrictive scheme.

And what does the empirical have to tell us? Not altogether conclusive, I'd say, but the societies most often associated with totalitarianism made use of sexual repression more often than they encouraged sexual freedom as an outlet. Of course, Madonna and Whore, Puritanism and Pornography, Pillar and Pervert, these keep cropping up as pairs.

For a change, on this question I'd have to say Orwell had it more right than Huxley.

[JackRiddler]

It's always wonderful to hear and (sometimes) to learn from you guys. And I really like the tone and direction the discussion is taking, in that it's not just like dosey-doing around the dance down at the county fair where you swing your partner then go around the outside in a series of seemingly infinitely repeating, mildly irritatated bickering circles.

But I so totally knew that after I expended all that effort trying to illuminate a small part of what it feels like for a girl, that I could post it or, if I preferred, I could print it out, rip it into little pieces and use it for confetti at parades, because it would have about as much influence on the thread either way.

Funny how what we think we saw differs.

What I thought I saw happen after your post was this: Your writing "what it feels like for a girl" was heard loud and clear. It produced a "turn" in the thread. It prompted barracuda to write what it felt like for a boy of the same age, and how this may be related to the behavior of the later man toward the adolescent girl seen on the street. Then other boys responded to that with experiences of their own. In another context the lack of direct discussion on what you wrote might have signified indifference, but here it indicates the discomfort your story raised. Or so I expect.

I know it prompted me to feel my way into the situation you described, and this was unsettling (imagining how girls of that age feel) and brings with it some guilt. Since I'm one of Them. Though I don't act that way. I hope.

I am now complaining a little bit, I confess. Whining like a baby, in fact.

So I wish I could find the way to make you see that otherwise, but it is what it is.

It just kind of bums me out that there's such an unbreachable disconnect. But whatever. I'd be interested to know whether there's any significant number of girls who also have epiphanic rushes of realization that they're never going to get what they want in early adolescence nowadays. A lot of things have improved in the childraising arena since I was growing up, in some ways just nominally and in some ways dramatically and for real.

But I don't know where on that spectrum whatever systematic efforts anyone make fall when it comes specifically to encouraging little girls to feel that one day, they'll have the same infinity of choices about what area of the world they'll be heroically ascending to the peak of and then reigning triumphantly from when they grow up that most halfway healthy little boys innocently and vaguely (but quite understandably) just take it for granted is the destiny unto which they were born until the onset of puberty shatters their illusions.

So I don't know whether little girls still arrive at adolescence having become so thoroughly accustomed to seeing the prospect of never getting what they want on a daily basis years and years earlier that if they did happen to take some particular notice of it at around that age, it would be more likely to strike them as just another humdrum feature of the landscape than it would something to write home about or not.

There's something to be said for having fully pre-crushed and -demolished expectations, you know. It has some of the same advantages as stability does, in its own little way. Not the really valuable ones, granted. But still.

Wow.

Wow.

Thanks.

So. I don't think either experience should, as general models without knowing how it goes for each individual, be viewed as worse, better, more true, or more injust. Just differently lousy? And explaining a great deal, especially as you and barracuda have written it.

I've often wished that my expectations had been pre-crushed, in the manner we all have of imagining another's experience would have been better, even if it would not have been. My expectations, mind you - not my faculties, or my bodymind. Just the friggin' expectations. Because they're still driving me! Over a goddamn cliff. And nowadays I'm big enough to bowl over Holden.

But then I know it wouldn't have been "better," or necessarily worse, and I know there's a great deal I'm leaving out of the picture, and don't even know I don't know.

In matters of what it's like to be female, I'm often fascinated to hear about it, and yet have uncomfortably little to say afterward.

[brekin]

Huxley wrote:
whose minds were to be purged of all the natural decencies, all the laboriously acquired inhibitions of traditional civilization.


Jack Riddler wrote:

Natural decencies or acquired inhibitions? If the words mean anything, they are opposites. Huxley without elaboration lists them as synonyms. Perhaps he picked up the contradiction from de Sade? More likely, he's a product of his barely post-Victorian time, and can't but help laboriously see his inhibitions as natural.

No doubt. Just as we are products or our post-modern time, and can't help but see any inhibitory force as an unnatural shackle on our manufactured passions.

Huxley wrote:
As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensatingly to increase. And the dictator (unless he needs cannon fodder and families with which to colonize empty or conquered territories) will do well to encourage that freedom. In conjunction with the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio, it will help to reconcile his subjects to the servitude which is their fate.

Jack Riddler wrote:

At around the same time, Orwell was writing it up as the exact opposite. His dictatorship, in its search for cannon fodder and obedient servitude, requires children to join the Junior Anti-Sex League, so that the libido is suppressed and channeled away from the creativity and yearning that sex inspires. The rulers want the people to hate. Winston and Julia rebel by fucking. The state chooses to catch them in the act. It tortures them to break that attachment.

So which is it? How can two writers so brilliant, both towering influences on the world intelligentsia to this day, often mentioned as a pair, and each describing different but related aspects of an emergent techno-dystopia, come down on such seemingly opposite sides of the sex question?

When Huxley at the mid-20th century speaks of a loss of political and especially economic freedom - compared to the immediately preceding century? really? - "in conjunction with the freedom to daydream under the influence of dope and movies and the radio," I get a whiff of contempt for the young and lower class that would be familiar to aging curmudgeons of the aristocracy all through time. Freedom is complex enough that different aspects of it can be in decline and on the rise at the same time, as was the case in the Anglosphere where Huxley's life and work played out. Sex is strange enough that it cannot be fit into his highly restrictive scheme.

And what does the empirical have to tell us? Not altogether conclusive, I'd say, but the societies most often associated with totalitarianism made use of sexual repression more often than they encouraged sexual freedom as an outlet. Of course, Madonna and Whore, Puritanism and Pornography, Pillar and Pervert, these keep cropping up as pairs.

For a change, on this question I'd have to say Orwell had it more right than Huxley.

I don't see how they have to be mutually exclusive. Orwell was writing much about what was happening at the time. Catholic Spain going Fascist. Huxley was forecasting what may be coming next. Both regimes harness sexual energy for their cause. Fascism can turn the tap down by redirecting it into other channels or can turn the tap way up to dissipate the energies of the population. It's still a controlling hand on the spout.

Organized religion has used repressive sex for millennium to control the population so that's yesterday's Fascism. Kind of like the advice English mothers would give their daughters for on their wedding night. "Just close your eyes and think of England." On the flip side Arthur Koestler wrote of an acquaintance in the early years of Nazi Germany who while making love to a German woman was shocked for her to give out a "Heil Hitler!" with accompanying salute when she climaxed. She told him that she and her girl friends all did so thinking that at one of the most important moments in a woman's life they should be dedicating it to the Fuhrer!

Not really a surprise then I guess when millions who are climaxing to their flat screen porn altars believe it's the way to liberation and not servitude. The last 15 years I've seen everything steadily degrade; the environment, the economy, the arts, education, world affairs, human relations, etc except internet speed and the web. Your classic succubus.

[JackRiddler]

Just some notes, not a complete response:

I don't see how they have to be mutually exclusive.

Stop. Definitely didn't say that.

Orwell was writing much about what was happening at the time. Catholic Spain going Fascist.

In "1984," more Russia, with predictions about the dynamics of mass societies at war.

On the flip side Arthur Koestler wrote of an acquaintance in the early years of Nazi Germany who while making love to a German woman was shocked for her to give out a "Heil Hitler!" with accompanying salute when she climaxed. She told him that she and her girl friends all did so thinking that at one of the most important moments in a woman's life they should be dedicating it to the Fuhrer!

You know, I'm sure many women of the Reich yelled Heil Hitler at climax, and yet I also suspect Koestler made that up, because he was equally certain and couldn't resist. But this story is not so significant to your point.

Not really a surprise then I guess when millions who are climaxing to their flat screen porn altars believe it's the way to liberation and not servitude.

That is one hell of a leap. The industry's PR may speak of liberation, but who's paying attention? The millions take their porn furtively, compulsively in the hope of immediate relief and brief pleasure, with shame and dismay that they're stuck with porn instead of "the real thing," or that whatever relationship they already have isn't "enough." Porn is a confirmation of loneliness, with little illusion of liberation. How many people have you seen run around telling people they just had a great, liberating wank?

It is not cause but symptom of their servitude, the servitude precedes it. Porn is the sigh of the oppressed, the opiate of the people.

Then the next leap:

The last 15 years I've seen everything steadily degrade; the environment, the economy, the arts, education, world affairs, human relations, etc except internet speed and the web. Your classic succubus.

Because of Internet porn? Remember, I view it as a problem, but how do you figure things would have gone without Internet? And did this degradation really only get going around 1995?

[brekin]

Jack Riddler wrote:

brekin wrote:
I don't see how they have to be mutually exclusive.

Stop. Definitely didn't say that.

That's how I read this:

So which is it? How can two writers so brilliant, both towering influences on the world intelligentsia to this day, often mentioned as a pair, and each describing different but related aspects of an emergent techno-dystopia, come down on such seemingly opposite sides of the sex question?

I'm saying its both. Two extremes that end up touching each other.

In "1984," more Russia, with predictions about the dynamics of mass societies at war.

What's "1984" but an inverted "1948" the time around he was writing the novel. I agree Russia was a huge influence, but he experienced Spain first hand and that no doubt made it in. Most of the technology of the novel existed at the time or he probably thought not far off (like the camera/television thing or I guess what we call an Imac)

You know, I'm sure many women of the Reich yelled Heil Hitler at climax, and yet I also suspect Koestler made that up, because he was equally certain and couldn't resist. But this story is not so significant to your point.

I think the story is significant to my point. It's an example of grafting your passion in a sexual act onto an object of your own servitude. Is online Porn bad for you? Is climaxing to the Fuhrer?

Quote:
Not really a surprise then I guess when millions who are climaxing to their flat screen porn altars believe it's the way to liberation and not servitude.

That is one hell of a leap. The industry's PR may speak of liberation, but who's paying attention? The millions take their porn furtively, compulsively in the hope of immediate relief and brief pleasure, with shame and dismay that they're stuck with porn instead of "the real thing," or that whatever relationship they already have isn't "enough." Porn is a confirmation of loneliness, with little illusion of liberation. How many people have you seen run around telling people they just had a great, liberating wank?

Other then the rare bumper sticker or t-shirt there are few people shouting it from the rooftops. But honestly I'm amazed at how normal and casual online porn practice is talked about. I'm no shrinking violet either but I had a job in the tech sector and dealt with numerous people face to face with their personal (& work) computers and was amazed at the frankness most of them who who almost perfect strangers volunteered about their um habit. Sure some of it was just the normal aided wank but I can tell you for many when their computers went down it was like their electronic concubine was going into the hospital. 10-15 years ago how many people do you know who would bring in their porn dvds, magazine, etc and joke about wanting to get home to get "online".

It is not cause but symptom of their servitude, the servitude precedes it. Porn is the sigh of the oppressed, the opiate of the people.

How many people with compulsions or addictions were driven to them because of a deeper symptom? And never deal with the underlying cause because they get mired in their substitute? You can serve many masters, some can precede others.

Then the next leap:

Was it Nietzsche or Kierkegaard who said they loved the leap between the known and unknown?

Quote:
The last 15 years I've seen everything steadily degrade; the environment, the economy, the arts, education, world affairs, human relations, etc except internet speed and the web. Your classic succubus.


Because of Internet porn? Remember, I view it as a problem, but how do you figure things would have gone without Internet? And did this degradation really only get going around 1995?

I think the internet to a large degree and internet porn in particular has most definitely helped accelerate the degradation. I think things tend to go in cycles, but I'd say in my experience shitty periods have had countering forces. These days people think they are living the summer of love online (or the 68 democratic convention) as the Vietnam war starts to lap up to their door. And the way things look today, 1995 is starting to look like the golden age. I like the internet as much as the next guy. But then if I was in prison I'd probably hang centerfolds on my wall to.

Going to bed now. Like I tell my wife, we can argue about this in the morning.

[Nordic]

Like I tell my wife, we can argue about this in the morning.

Does that work?

[brekin]

Nordic wrote:

Quote:
Like I tell my wife, we can argue about this in the morning.


Does that work?

No, but it doesn't fail as bad as saying other things.

[Nordic]

Nordic wrote:

Quote:
Like I tell my wife, we can argue about this in the morning.


Does that work?

No, but it doesn't fail as bad as saying other things.

I get it.

[Project Willow]

I am late in replying, but here is another thread within I posted about The Gaze: http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=28211&p=336737#p336737

Winston and Julia rebel by fucking.

That to me is the hottest thing yet uttered in this thread.

So which is it? How can two writers so brilliant, both towering influences on the world intelligentsia to this day, often mentioned as a pair, and each describing different but related aspects of an emergent techno-dystopia, come down on such seemingly opposite sides of the sex question?

It's been pointed out already that the two are not exclusive and I would go beyond and say it's both, and any, and all, possibly. We've seen these two pitted against each other before. It's a false dichotomy, both processes are at work, one open, one more hidden.

.......out of the norm material follows (and the norm is poor enough)..........

Rather than speak from my pseudo-assimilated "normative" aspects, which Is usually what I default to in public, I'll speak from my whole experience. Recently I was reviewing an old journal entry when I got to my account of a particular scene, a lab scene from when I was very young. There was a perpetrator quote mentioned, a bit I overheard that stuck in my memory. It read "I've got it, I've isolated it." The scene recounted a phase in my conditioning where a certain alter was trained to respond with heightened arousal to a very specific command.

Some members of the elite exercise this degree of control over their slaves' sexuality. In fact it's one reason why I believe so many male subjects I know can't escape. The controllers literally have them by the balls, their sexual response isolated, and patterned to external manipulation. They can get off under control, but not in the normative world, not with anywhere near the same response level. Certainly their sexuality is divorced from any love or intimate attachment process.
...............


Is the future a giant boot stamping on your face or a hand that's got you by the balls? It depends on the fortuitousness of your birth I suppose, or some other factors.


____________________

I want to say something about the manifestation of most porn in this male dominated society, and please know I am not a consumer of it. I have occasionally watched out of pure curiosity until I was left feeling disgusted. I've searched for woman-centered porn but never found any, not a single example, except perhaps in novel form (erotica). What I wanted to add was a bit of a potential re-frame. I love the example that was publicized of late, more biological of course, of the evolution of mallard duck reproductive organs. So it fascinates (and horrifies) me that male sexual fantasy involves either the perceptual occlusion or complete excision of female choice. Is it radical to assert that species survival is predicated on some form of reproductive choice? I don't think so.

Crow wrote:
The majority of [heterosexual] porn depicts a fantasy world where men are completely dominant and the women perpetually turned-on and servile.

Yeah, but porn in which the men are completely submissive and the women never want to have sex doesn't quite live up to the reputation. At the very least, it's probably a niche market.

I assert that if a female is "turned on" and assenting to sexual activity with a male, she has made a choice, and outside of a slave relationship, and even if circumscribed by culture, that is an active, not a passive or servile activity. No matter how hard the male tries to cover it with visually dominant or mounting displays, that process of choice, within the female, is a very real center of power.

What males really fear is overt recognition of this, in some way that might be codified into culture, and so they fight any female progress. We battle as do the Mallards, but through our social relationships rather than physiology.