By David Futrelle
Can “Gender Critical” feminists — a.k.a. TERFs — talk about anything without turning the discussion into an excuse to bash trans women?
I was browsing through the Gender Critical feminism subreddit — Reddit’s main hangout for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists —
and ran across a discussion of the ever-more-extreme nature of online porn.
“Stuff from 10 years was your soft porn – missionary, blowjobs, and sure, male orientated but the female had some sort of pleasure at least,” wrote a commenter called DetectiveSpaghetti.
These days the dark stuff (the hardcore youd find ONLY if you really wanted to find) its everywhere. Anal sex, face-fucking, its the norm not the exception. Its disgusting
I don’t doubt that porn is getting more extreme, but anal sex? People have been putting things in their butts for thousands of years, and I’m pretty sure that there were plenty of anal sex videos readily available ten years ago.
Someone called DowntownOrange replied:
Yeah, I went to see what they had in some supposedly soft core/female-oriented category and one of the first vids was something like “skinny teen gets her ***** destroyed by 5 big guys”
She followed up with more results from her, er, research:
I just went to pornhub again to check what they called it and the category name is “romantic”, the first vid is called “Giving her good dick after falling on her Ass In night club”, the third one is “I suck him in the public pool shower and he cums all over me”. Incredible.
She’s got a point, or at least half of one, in that not all of the titles in the “romantic” category are particularly romantic in nature. I just went and browsed the first couple of pages of “romantic” results on PornHub and the titles listed ranged from “Couple have romantic sex” and “Passionate couple falls in love having sex” to slightly-less-romantic-sounding titles like “30-year-old Slav very much asked to work on her fat ass” (huh?) and “Romantic sex leaves her showered in …” well, you get the idea.
It’s at this point the discussion got a little weird.
There’s a separate one “popular with women” that apparently shows the vids that “real women” watch the most. I do wonder how many of those “real women” have dicks though, skewing the results, considering TiMs are obsessed with porn…
Yep, she’s accusing trans women of messing up the video recommendations for cis women with their (presumably) degenerate tastes in porn. (A TIM, or Trans-Identified Male, is deliberately misgendered TERFspeak for trans women.)
I went and looked at the “popular with women” section of PornHub too, and honestly the only particularly weird video I noticed involved someone called Miss Banana taking something called the “Fire Noodle Challenge while getting Fucked.”
I don’t know if it was cis or trans women (or both groups working together) who got that video onto the front page of the “popular with women” category, but I can report that Miss Banana did in fact manage to eat the entire bowl.
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Two parodies that impressed me:
Wood Rocket’s Bob’s Burger’s parody was pretty unimpressive except for the guy who played Teddy. He was absolutely spot-on in appearance, voice, and mannerisms.
I like when parodies really dig deep into what they’re parodying. There was a series of Star Wars parodies based not on the movies or TV shows, but on the “Legacy” comic book series that Dark Horse put out for a few years that was set over a century after the films. That’s some real nerdery there.
Let me guess they made sure that Hit Girl and all other characters who were minors in the original movie were clearly stated and depicted as being adults .
@Allandrel
Remind me again what Gail Dines’s shtick is. I recall her being over the top in her opposition to porn, but what exactly did she lie about? I don’t remember any of her talking points (which I am sure were fabricated, but I’m curious anyway).
The comments about search engines reminded me of when Princess Diana died. Some woman got incredibly upset when she entered “Diana, queen of our hearts” into a search engine and got some sort of porn page instead of the results she was expecting. (This was the name of a commemorative plate the Bradford Exchange put out at the time.) She angrily complained that someone had to something about an insult to Diana like that. Thinking about it all these years later I wonder what search engine it was, and if they had any sort of “safe search” settings in those days.
@Fabe
I think so. More to the point, given Hit-Girl’s chest size, there was no way they could have pretended she was prepubescent anyway.
I happen to be starting to push towards identifying as trans myself and I’m not remotely responsible for the trends towards “Facefucking” or any of it…
I’ve complained before blowjobs are hot for instance but thrusting in the girls mouth I do not understand, you’re supposed to let her do the work in that regard.
the shit i’m into isn’t violent, it’s not necessarily everyone’s taste but violent? not at all.
generally speaking it’s on the amateur side, usually white, and I tend to be into creampies and that sort of thing
honesty mixing Sex and violence is a turn off and if you’ve got a problem with it at this point you’re better off actively consuming so more ad revenue goes towards videos that don’t mix the two…
@Allandrel,
So Dines is like the professional version of the “antis” on Tumblr? Gaaaahhh.
I remember reading that Pornhub doesn’t determine the gender of their viewers by the stats of the users who sign up for an account. Because the vast majority don’t sign up, and also people lie. I don’t remember exactly how, though, something involving using Google data to make a best guess I think? Searching for it didn’t help, I wasn’t able to find anything which confirms or denies that.
It’s always possible that something could be messing up the stats, but trans people probably aren’t it.
…Okay, finally found something. I was browsing the Pornhub insights blog and found a mention of them using Google Analytics to determine the gender of viewers. (Coincidentally, it was the trans porn stats entry from 2017.) And also it also reminded me of something that that could mess things up – there’s no “nonbinary” category, so Google Analytics probably sorts them into male and female semi-randomly.
@Naglfar
Dines puts on for-profit “feminist” presentations where she lies about the porn industry (usually through half-truths and omissions like I outlined above) and declares that all porn is rape – but just of women, of course. Why the male performers, who are also being paid to have sex on camera, are rapists rather than fellow rape victims, isn’t terribly clear – unless, of course, Dines subscribes to the patriarchal notion that men will have sex with any woman at the drop of a hat. How very feminist of her.
No idea who is raping the female performers in girl-girl or solo scenes, or whether anyone is being raped in boy-boy scenes – Dines doesn’t seem to think those exist.
Her rhetoric here includes directly telling women porn performers that if they think they consented to their performances, they are WRONG – Dines knows their consent better than they do.
One of the “proofs” that she offers that the female performers are not really consenting is any scenes where the women appear to not be having fun – which basically includes any scene where they make weird facial expressions, i.e. look like people do when they have sex.
“But Gail,” people say. “What about the scenes where the woman’s displeasure is part of the fantasy? Isn’t that just acting?”
“No,” Dines explains, “the displeasure is always genuine because these women are, every single one of them, terrible actresses who cannot fake any non-genuine emotion. If they could, they would be real actresses and not stooping to porn.”
(For someone who claims to want to help female porn performers, Dines displays a LOT of contempt for them.)
“But Gail,” people continue, “You say women never enjoy porn performances, but they frequently do seem to be enjoying themselves, including physical signs of arousal that cannot be faked with acting.”
“No,” Dines explains patiently, “the women NEVER enjoy themselves. EVERY time it looks like a woman is enjoying herself that is acting. They are VERY good at acting like they are having fun even when they are in pain, as this is the job they wanted and they are very good at it.” (This apparently includes controlling their blood flow like a Bene Gesserit.)
I’ll leave it to readers to point out any inconsistencies in Dines’ assessment of porn performers’ acting skills.
@Hippodameia
Very much so, yes. One of her sources of revenue is a “documentary” called “The Price of Pleasure” that she uses in her presentations and also shows at colleges (for profit). This film makes extensive use of clips from porn films without complying with 18 U.S.C. 2257, which is required for any material containing adult content.
Because when you’re a righteous crusader, you can charge people to look at porn without following the laws that govern doing so.
Kind of reminds me of the 911 hijackers hanging out at bars and strip clubs.
@Allandrel
This Gail Dines person sounds less like a feminist and more like a religious right conservative. Much like a religious right conservative, there are at least 3 thing she says that are self-contradictory. By calling herself a feminist, she seems to be actively damaging the movement.
I’d also guess she’s a TERF too.
@Naglfar
Why yes, Dines IS also a TERF! However did you guess?
So far as I can tell, the only difference between TERFs/SWERFs like Dines and the Religious Right is the rhetoric that they use when trying to control women. It’s notable that, while constantly calling each other The Enemy, they are happy to cooperate when it comes to efforts to hurt the Real Enemies – trans women and sex workers.
Part of the reason I loathe these people so much is that I am a Christian and a feminist, and they pervert everything those beliefs are supposed to stand for.
@Allandrel
I just looked it up and apparently Gail Dines is Jewish. As a Jew, I share your frustration that she has appropriated both the religion I practice and a movement I support for her own ends.
The other thing I find interesting is that I thought radical feminism was about destroying patriarchal systems of oppression and rebuilding society to no longer have such structures. Dines’s ideas seem to have nothing to do with overthrowing the patriarchy and everything to do with reinforcing its ideas about female and male sexuality.
@Cat Mara (re Victorian archaeologists & Pompeii):
I’d venture to guess the Egyptians also threw a spanner in the works, what with their priapic statues (which, I know, the Roman’s also had) and masturbating mythology.
“Creating the world by self-abuse? I say, old bean, you must’ve mistranslated that papyrus. Do recheck your work. There’s a good lad.”
TMI Warning:
And on the general topic of porn, when my partner (lesbian) & I (bi) were first getting to know each other as a couple, she told me she didn’t watch lesbian porn as “they didn’t know what they were doing” (which I get since a lot of that is geared toward the male viewer).
I pointed out that there’s quite a bit of girl/girl material now that’s written, directed and performed by lesbians or lesbian friendly people, to say nothing of the amateur stuff.
She was still unimpressed. Turns out when, she’s in the mood to “fly solo” as it were, she watches straight porn (but not the extreme misogynistic variety) up until the point it’s about to become “gross” (her word for the “money shot”).
Again, I fully understand this I just found it very interesting.
TMI Warning over.
SWERFs neglect of the existence of m/m porn has always irritated me, since a lot of their arguments end up being completely negated by its existence. Of course, on those rare occasions when they do address it they tend to assume that bottoms are effectively women and tops are effectively straight men so…
I’m probably going to regret asking, but does she have any opinions on genuine amateur porn, as in videos made by actual couples and not released for money?
Let me guess, in absolutely every case the woman was bullied into it by the man, and then he released the video without her permission.
Suddenly remembered a Tumblr blog I saw a few years ago that consisted of screenshots of puzzled-looking cats in the backgrounds of their humans’ amateur porn videos.
The best was the woman, presumably trying to shoot a bondage video, whose cat was sitting on her and attempting to chew through her ropes.
@Rabid Rabbit
She probably just pretends it doesn’t exist, like what she does with same sex scenes or solo stuff.
@Moon Custafer
That sounds funny. I assume it’s yet another site nuked by Tumblr’s no nudity rule though, sadly.
@Moon Custafer
There’s a gif somewhere out there of a dog trying to nose in on someone giving a blowjob. The cold nose effect is obvious and hilarious.
Christ, no wonder they hate BDSM practitioners so much if they think anal is some dark and/or extreme stuff.
@coleyote
They have sierous case of really loving vanilla sex and thinking that everyone should love it just as much as them.
@ColeYote, Lainy
I’m also curious as to their stance on femdom. My guess would be they either don’t think it exists or that the man has pressured the woman into it and that actually she hates it.
Also, what do the SWERFs think of lesbian BDSM? I imagine they yet again deny its existence.
@naglfar
I got into a huge fight with one of these people onces. She used to do bdsm and was a dominated woman for men. She later discovered she was a lesbian and talked about that her having complete control over a man while having sex was a copy mechanisms for repressed sexuality. Now that she’s come to accept herself she had a girlfriend and has only vanilla sex with her and is happy. That would be great for her if she hadn’t started saying this all with “women in bdsm are kidding themselves. Your all traumatized broken women like I was who don’t know what you actually want so I’m going to tell you what you want” so that was one hot take.
Me? I can’t argue with these people any more because I’m a rape victim who was a virgin at the time of my rape. They throw that back in my face at all times. Any sex I do that doesn’t live up their image of a poor traumatized little girl who was brutally attacked doesn’t fly with them. Sierously I think they expect me to cry every time I have sex. After standing up and arguing with those people I’ve given up because they really do give me they feeling that they want me to have only vanilla sex, maybe just with a woman, and I should be so soft and timid that it should only be with a person I love that holds me because I have to cry about my traumas after it. Sierously how they treat rape victims that don’t live up to their standards is gross.
It’s like they want rape victims to be emotionally crippled for life, and are offended if a victim more-or-less recovers and is able to have normal levels of enjoyment and etc. … now I wonder why that might be? 🙁