This somewhat alarming video was recently posted in Reddit’s GamerGhazi subreddit. It features Sarkeesian Effect co-creator Jordan Owen explaining, at some length, his disagreements with antiporn feminist Gail Dines over the book Fifty Shades of Grey. (Dines, you see, was Owen’s previous obsession, before he discovered Anita Sarkeesian; this video is a couple of years old.) Alas, the sound cuts out about halfway through the nearly hour-long video, so you won’t get to hear the whole thing.
You might also be slightly distracted by the fact that Owen delivers this lengthy critique while sitting naked in a bathtub.
I have not seen any porn since the seventies, with the exception of the floods of stills 4chan posts on feminist forums. Mostly cum shots on womens faces.
I have heard too many exited women talk about their experiences of going to Hollywood to be a movie star and ending up in porn shoots and being prostituted.
I cannot suspend my disbelief enough to see women being choked beaten and gagged and not call it torture.
@ cassandrakitty – blunt is Hella different than mean! š
@ thebewilderness – And that’s the problem (or a huge one, anyway)! How does a consumer know which actress wants to be there and which one is being forced? Especially with porn so ubiquitous now.
I also wonder if age might be connected to how obvious it is to a person that porn has changed people’s sexuality. Emily was right that anal is the perfect example. When I first started having sex? Not assumed at all. Some people did, sure, and nobody that I knew thought that was a problem, but the idea that it came standard in het relationships and there was something wrong with you if you weren’t interested? Nope, that was not a thing. That idea, that it’s basically mandatory, tracks very closely with the rise of easily accessible internet porn for everyone. No pubic hair for women being almost mandatory? Also tracks with it becoming the standard in porn, in terms of timeline. There’s just no way that you can deny that this stuff is influencing people’s sexual expectations, and if people were able to say, well, it’s just an entertainment product, not a guidebook, then we wouldn’t need to have this conversation (though we’d still need to have the one about the impact on the people who actually work in the industry, or at least I would, because I’m a socialist and labor rights are important to me). And people for whom exposure to lots of porn came after they were already sexually active mostly do seem to be able to make that distinction, but people for whom exposure to lots of porn came before sex itself? Those are the people I’m worried about, and I’m also worried about the people who’re getting into bed with them and having to deal with their expectation that (whatever) will come standard because hey, the women in my favorite porn all seem to like it, so why don’t you?
I agree with everything already said about problematic aspects of porn.
Just wanted to add that I also find this (not sure if this is a right word) disconnection it often brings deeply troubling too.
Too often some people who consume and defend porn seam to forget that the actors are humans too. Or that in some cases “actors” in those movies are not in them by choice. Yes, there are ethical porn makers that only hire people who chose to be in those movies.
But a big chunk of things on the net and things coming from the East Europe (I’d be willing to bet from other parts of the world too, but I can only talk with certainty about the part I’m from) is pure sex trafficking.
And when you bring that up (as a reason to be critical of pornography or full on against it) people get offended and deny knowledge of such things. Most of the time you get people either trying “How could have I known? You are making me feel bad about enjoying things I like!” defense or going the way of, for example, John Grisham and defending it with some “Well, it’s not like the person watching is harming anybody! So, you are being too hard on us!” BS.
The “it’s not real” argument does puzzle me. Like, do they think porn is being made by incredibly lifelike robots? In order to film people having sex you need, you know, people.
@ cassandrakitty – Maybe they assume it’s CGI?
Oh god, I just pictured CGI porn a la Final Fantasy, which set off my uncanny valley alarm like woah. Do not want.
Effing Grisham. His 2009 book is about how gang rape isn’t rape if you had sex with her before and don’t worry that she is unconscious and now she just wants money. If you actually read it you will see that the hack continues to fail at show don’t tell. Argh. I am not surprised he is pro pedophile as well.
intended to not say more but i have to: sometimes “mean” is called for & you always bring it when it is (&never when it is not). it’s part of what i respect. you’re unafraid of the “meanie” label & that is hella hard.
now i shut up.
Aww, I was going to fish for compliments next.
You’re a man who got invited to come hang out with a group of mostly women who’re all eevil feminists. That’s a pretty big compliment.
hissssss, I need more. more. mooooreeeeeee.
Oh wait no I’ll just go play inurashii’s candy app game to soothe the keening void that is my self esteem.
We love you THIS MUCH.
(And you too, POM)
Seriously though, I do actually recommend everyone take a second to go play inurashii’s candy game. It’s soothing, and I believe they made it specifically to counter the various screaming examples of brain-pain that is the various shades of fool on the internet.
Is it ipad downloadable?
Not trying to silence anyone. At the time, all the porn I was consuming (and producing) was text based. I thought that my interlocutor’s perspective was based on abstract principles – e.g., ‘if you write a fantasy in which a man is penetrated and enjoys it, you are contributing to the oppression of women’.
The idea that some men IRL actually do enjoy that was not part of her universe of discourse. I do not harbor ill will over the incident – it has stuck in my memory as an example of how you can apply overarching ideas to specific instances in ways that seem counterintuitive to one not versed in those ideas. My personal experience had not exposed me to the idea that enjoying reading accounts of men having sex with other men could affect how I thought of or interacted with women – or even other men.
I’m genuinely confused as to what that has to do with porn of the variety that involves actual people being filmed/photographed.
I mean, I’m pretty sure Gail Dines doesn’t care about erotic fiction written by gay men for other gay men at all.
Robert, you could have mentioned it was fiction. I guess that took a backseat to swiping at the feminist.
Hellkell – I was a college undergraduate in the early 1980s. What other kind could I have been producing?
Cassandra – from what I’ve read by her, I have no such confidence.
During the same period of time, a larval Objectivist excoriated me as a ‘good little Communist’ for planning a career in the civil service. I remember that remark, as well. My husband says that I have a good memory – for some things.
@ Robert – larval Objectivists should probably be sprayed with borax, post haste.
Ah, so you admit that taking a swipe at Dines, in the thread about the MRA campaign of harassment against her, was your goal. Good job?
When I saw a mention of an unfamiliar name, I looked her up online and read some of her work. It reminded me of a personal experience, which I was moved to share.
I do not object to any of the comments made as a result.
Jumping in on the praise wagon, I pretty much always am cheering for whatever cassandrakitty says. I know I’m TERRIBLE at expressing myself sometimes and can end up sounding like I’m actually against something when I’m not. Sigh. I should just spend more time quoting cassandrakitty and saying ‘This!’.
And I will always admire Finibinachi too!