> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > If sexuality is as important as education for women in particular
> > and human beings in general, we ought to demand a reform of the
> > straight porn market, so that there will be equality in porn
> > production and consumption.
>
> I am completely bewildered by this discussion--and I don't just
> mean the
> fragment from Yoshie above. I am hearing the following from the
> various
> threads
>
> 1. Sexuality = porn.(This would follow from the position that being
> anti porn or critical of porn is the same as being anti-sex.)
>
> 2. What's wrong with porn is that it objectifies only women, not men.
I take it for granted that human beings are interested in producing and consuming portrayals of human beings having sex with other human beings. Whether human beings call such portrayals "porn" and treat it as an independent genre (separate from the rest of entertainment, religion, and so on) is a matter of history. It is my view that men and women should equally participate in production and consumption of such portrayals and that lack of equal participation in the current straight porn industry is a problem.
> 3. Anyone who objects to porn is anti-sex and puritannical. It's
> not conceivable that a critique of porn coming from the left would
> in any way be different from a critique of porn coming from the
> right. (And somehow that's not essentialist.)
It seems to me that a critique of porn from the left is essential to reform of it, but constructive criticism of porn is hard to come by. Some leftists are too uncritical, while others are abolitionist. Few take it seriously.
> 4. Our current insistence that we shield children from porn is just
> as wrongheaded as our former insistence that we shield women from
> porn.
Notice a resounding silence on this topic. A combination of children and sexuality, let alone pornography. is a Big Taboo. It can't even easily rise to the level of controversy. Children are not recognized as sexual beings who have sexual needs of their own, the right to sexual expression, etc. Hence a big deal of money wasted on abstinence-only "sex education"; "Forty-four states have laws on the books requiring parental consent or notification prior to a minor's abortion" (at <http://www.plannedparenthood.org/pp2/portal/files/ portal/medicalinfo/abortion/fact-parental-consent.xml>); and other problems.
> 5. An objection or critique of porn is equivalent to censorship.
I don't believe that is necessarily the case. It depends on the nature of objection and criticism.
> 6. Porn is no better or worse than any other form of exploitation
> or objectification, and to pay especial attention to it is to fall
> into the error of an essentialist view of sexuality or gender.
It seems to me there is a great deal of difference in degree of sexism practiced by various social institutions. The porn industry is probably better than very conservative brands of religions, but it's much worse than higher education, to take just two points of comparison.
> 7. Sex workers freely choose to do this kind of work.
Excepting those who are held in slavery, sex workers choose their line of work as "freely" as any other kind of workers who come from roughly the same social and economic backgrounds as they do. See my response to Doug on "poverty draft."
Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>