Looking at Porn:
As a Revolutionary, Not as a "Sex Consumer"
I think that the heart of issues of sexuality is not "what ever floats
your boat" but "what ends the oppression of women.
Some things that "float the boats" of powerful-or-reactionary men
are deeply oppressive to women.
To me, the important issue here is: what will end the subjugation,
inequality and abuse of women.
It is wrong to look at pornography mainly as a potential
"consumer."
There are three ways that pornography "impact" society:
1) Pornography is produced under conditions extremely degrading to poor and
desperate women. It is essentially "filmed prostitution" and
sometimes it is "filmed rape." The treatment of women in the
production of porn involves a whole subculture of pimping and dependency
(including drug addiction, beatings for discipline, etc.)
as elijah says "No one wants to get fucked up the ass for a few
bucks."
2) Porn trains people (mainly men) to think of women as "things for my
pleasure" not as real people who deserve loving treatment and equality.
Women are just collections of racks, and openings in porn. they are there
*for* men, as objects.
This affects thinking -- it is a form of
indoctrination-through-masturbation. And it affects how you view women,
andhow women are treated.
3) As a result, Pornography has an impact on how women are treated GENERALLY
in society. It doesn't just affect the women who appear in porn, or the
women whose boy friends are ideologically "trained" by porn. It
affects all women.
As Andreix said: "This shit DEHUMANIZES women to the extreme, and it
can be seen everywhere in this society."
If the men of this society spend time watching porn -- and thinking of women
that way -- it affects how they think and act toward women on the street,
and also in their intimate lives.
The U.S. is so fucked up that the rightwing wants to ban "sex
education" in schools, while most kids learn about "sex" by
watching the objectifying reactionary male fantasies of porn.
in short: you can't think of sex as just "if you like it what's the
problem." Sex is not a consumer sport -- it is a social relationship.
And like all social relationships, it can be either reactionary or
liberated.
The issue is not "what turns me on?"
The iss ue is "what social relations and cultural treatment of women
will help lead to liberation?"