I'll leave it to this group to attempt to work out the hugely confusing issue of which behaviors are more socialized and which more innate. I hope you do realize you're on well-trodden ground here. (As was the case with the Watson / Dawkins debacle.)

IMNSHO: it's quite obviously often a mix, but as for the issue of the all too common insistence that objectification is somehow justified, that's simply laughable. We have an innate desire to shit wherever we feel like it, steal things, and all manner of other primitive behaviors. We get that socialized out of our systems fairly early.

As for the idea that men have some innate tendency to want to engage in such oppressive behavior, until we smash the patriarchy, and disabuse ourselves of its insistence that women ARE sex objects, we won't ever have any idea how much of men's disrespectful and oppressive treatment of women they can honestly claim is just 'boys being boys' and how much is simply a socialized mechanism to reinforce and maintain the sexist, misogynist status quo.

That penetrative sex is an artificially implemented, inherently oppressive and "unnatural" act?


And you do realize that the whole "smash the patriarchy" worldview, whch posits an ideal, pre-"original sin" state, a "fall", a "great satan" conspiracy (said Patriarchy) and a final battle against evil.. Is really indistinguishable, at its core, from a thousand other apocalyptic, cultlike worldviews?

That is "radfem 101", remember, as per your links and wikipedia.

It is on topic because we are talking about a belief system that resists any biological explanation for widespread planetary behaviors, preferring instead to posit a spooky evil conspiracy being responsible.

Is the source of racism a "spooky, evil conspiracy"?

The source of gender based bigotry is gender based discrimination. The source of misogyny? Misogyny.

Oh, and a lot of what you attribute to "the Patriarchy" comes from Western Religion. You might want to take it up with the Reisman-promoters and the Atheist-bashers, though, not me.

However, railing against consensual sex, railing against consenting adults taking pictures of other consenting adults fucking, railing against a woman who wants to wear a bikini, railing against people being attracted to each other on the basis of appearance...

NONE of those things have jack diddly shit to do with misogyny, or gender based discrimination, or any of it.

The whole rad-fem idea of the "patriarchy" was developed by people with no sociology background. At best the pioneers of rad-fem "theory" had liberal arts degrees. Some were college dropouts.

Who is in it, what is it's goal, who is in charge, and so on.

depending on the point those who believe in it are trying to make. Definitions are so unnecessary. Then logic would have to come into play.

if they refuse to define their terms in any concrete way.

Like with the porn debate. What is it? Well for the censors it's whatever they want it to be. This because they are full of shit.

Defining the patriarchy would give the rest of us a starting off place to debate them. So they keep it up in the air. You can't argue against them if you have no idea what their stance is (other than the nebulous men = evil, women = victims).

I don't believe in Hell, by the way, either.

If one can create the boundaries and definitions in their own mind, it will never be smashed. It will be like the boogeyman, always under the bed, used to scare as well as explain things we don't want to face about ourselves head on.

And As Such, We Must Smash It.

Hulk is of course a member of the patriarchy so this is the one thing he would be disinclined to smash.

The patriarchy does not make men enjoy the sight of nude women. Eyeballs and heterosexuality make men enjoy the sight of nude women, or at least some nude women. It is natural.

The mainstream concerns with porn is the affect it may have on some to many men. The combination of male privilege (patriarchy) and the viewing of pornography that features women, can make the viewer see women as sex objects, and therefore, feel less offended by sexist behavior and rape.

An important communication concern of mine, in the porn debate, is the definition of porn. Some anti-porn folks do not consider Playboy magazine to be pornography, while others do. Some people define porn as violent sexual imagery/text, and define erotica as "nice" sexual imagery/text. Whenever having a porn debate, I suggest asking the person you are debating with to say what they mean by the word "porn."

Just as fast food is not synonymous with food.

The attempt to conflate sex itself with various oppressive forms of sexual exploitation is the height of disingenuousness.

Or people fucking as if "porn" were a monolithic entity. More like treating ALL food as if it were Mcdonalds--- not the other way around.

One thing i found interesting in looking back at the Jensen threads, was the brou ha ha when he tried to claim anal sex was inherently degrading or opressive. To which, a lot of people got fairly offended, because lots of pople LIKE anal sex.

But, that is tangentally relevant to the topic. chimps engage in anal sex, for instance.

The topic of this thread is NOT porn, so please do not try to derail the thread.

I Would ask if you agree with zombie's assertion: is it "natural", to your mind, for male humans to enjoy looking at naked female humans (or, in the case of gay men, other men?) Yes? No?

And you're right that porn isn't some monolithic, homogeneous thing.

That doesn't change the fact that just like sweatshops, shit is seriously and deeply fucked up in that industry. And until the majority is awesome and only a tiny minority is fucked up, it doesn't deserve to be treated as a net positive.

As with any other hugely profitable industry, it deserves te most severe forms of scrutiny.

Like any other job.

Although, as you are no doubt aware, not everyone who posts a video to youtube is a member of the Screen Actor's Guild. Similarly, "porn" includes a lot of people who fuck in front of a camera simply because they like to.

And contrary to the way my words have been misrepresented, ive always argued fiercely that everyone involved should be consenting adults. Consenting adults is the line, but unlike some i dont go in for "nuanced definitions of consent". When Sasha Grey says she was in porn of her own volition, i dont seek to psychoanalye her into a state of mental helplessness, to get around her making a decision i dont like.

See, i dont think people are that easily brainwashed.

You didnt answer the question, though: do you think men only like to look at naked women because they are "programmed" to? Is it "natural" for hetero men to like to look at naked women?

There are different kinds of looking, though. There's leering, staring, glancing, and there's exploiting the system which exploits desperate and abused women who are often coerced if not outright forced into the lucrative sex industry.

So it's far from black and white.

And when the women men are 'enjoying' looking at are presented as objectified caricatures of sexuality, well I for one find that to be far from the most natural and egalitarian forms of 'looking'.

Let me guess: The kind of looking you like to do is okay, the kind of looking someone else... not so much.

exploiting the system which exploits desperate and abused women who are often coerced if not outright forced into the lucrative sex industry.

Wait. It's "lucrative"? Well, I can't imagine why anyone would do it, then. I know you are deeply invested in the idea that every woman ancillarily involved with a naked picture or a picture of sex is a "victim", much as the anti-reproductive-choice forces are deeply invested in the narrative of women being "victimized" by "the abortion industry". The idea that people might just be making their own damn minds about this stuff, is too threatening.

I'm talking about physical, sexual arousal on the basis of appearance. Is that natural? Or programmed by the patriarchy?

And when the women men are 'enjoying' looking at are presented as objectified caricatures of sexuality, well I for one find that to be far from the most natural and egalitarian forms of 'looking'.


You realize, you have to put yourself in someone else's head by about 3 orders of magnitude to even come close to making that statement.

I was under no illusions that the well-established concepts of objectification or patriarchy were understood by most on this group. Since we've reached the point where an understanding of these very basic sociological concepts would be required to have any meaningful discussion, I'll leave you to proceed with the regularly scheduled mocking and insulting.

"The Patriarchy" will be met with the unquestioning acceptance you demand, you are definitely in the wrong place.

"Objectification" is a made-up concept that has no concrete scientific basis in reality, any more than "causes disruptions to the flow of consciousness" is a scientific statement.

where truth comes from controlled experiments, carefully documented empirical data, and the aggregation of knowledge over the years.

Dude-science is a servant of the patriarchy.

Real Truth comes from a proper reading of the Prophet Dwarkin and her various disciples.

The concepts of "patriarchy", "objectification" and other nutty rad-fem phallocentric ideas are passed off as above debate, yet they only enjoy academic acceptance from within the bounds of a few women's studies programs. They aren't even widely accepted within the feminist community itself.

But of course, those of us who actually have been educated in Psych, Soc, Anthro must bow down to your superior intellect??

now back to HoF to femsplain exactly how men think from your vast knowledge based on never having been one!

" The attempt to conflate sex itself with various oppressive forms of sexual exploitation is the height of disingenuousness"

Glad you agree.. When can we expect you to go back to HoF and get your buddies to stop doing that then?

"I'm pretty tired of any feminist critique of porn, in order for it to be seen as valid, the author is expected to like pornography and heartily endorse it in a disclaimer. The happy, fun, consent-filled, queer and woman-friendly stuff we see on the internet is a rarity compared to the hateful (not a strong enough word) disgusting and degrading reality that is the whole picture. Say you have a pizza, and 14 out of 16 slices are covered in broken glass and dog shit, but two slices are cheesy and perfectly delicious. If I'm reviewing it, should I have to make some statement about how great those pieces fit for human consumption were? Should I support Pope Benedicto's Dog Shit N Broken Glass Pizza Parlour because they manage to make two edible slices of pizza per pie? It not only distorts the reality of the situation, but also seriously diminishes the pain and suffering of the vast majority of human beings who've actually been through it (eaten pizza/been involved in the pornography industry.)"

Gail "Just Shared a stage with the Transphobic Bigotry Conference" Dines?

Quite a fuck ton of words, to say absolutely nothing.

yes, i think you need to join a porn site and see the amount of porn thats out there that people put up themselves, I love the women friendly and what the fucks with the queer statement stuff you talk about, just because you maybe dont want to see someone gang banging or something dosent mean they dont enjoy it and showing it and other women want to watch. There is a whole world of sexuality out there.

"The attempt to conflate sex itself with various oppressive forms of sexual exploitation is the height of disingenuousness."

I agree! Yes, it is.

Last edited Wed Aug 8, 2012, 10:52 PM - Edit history (1)

Any more than that sort of thing would be tolerated in HoF, where apparently someone like me can get blocked for... um, actually, no reason at all.

You said, quote, "The attempt to conflate sex itself with various oppressive forms of sexual exploitation is the height of disingenuousness."

But I guess it's okay when those folks do it. Sort of like how it's okay to muddy the concept of consent with "nuance" when it's done for a good cause, i.e. explaining how sex is a universal instrument of oppression under "The Patriarchy™".

And in that vein, no, Dworkin did NOT back off from the idea. She qualified it, always, with "under Patriarchy", but as you are no doubt aware, due to it's perpetually un-smashed state, "Under Patriarchy" means "On Planet Earth".

I'm inclined to think you have a pretty broad definition considering the universal conclusion that asking a woman back to your hotel room then dropping it when she says no is borderline rape.

She tried to claim her quotes were "misunderstood" and her clarification was no better than all the other nonsense she spewed. She took her nutbaggery to her grave.

Tactic is to find the MOST outlandish or upsetting examples of the thing and go "see? Porn!"

So definitions are important.

However, you are incorrect if you think that no one asserts, for instance, that the same spooky "patriarchy" working objectifo-magic on mens brains, doesnt ALSO program them to like looking at naked women, period.

Ive been told not only that men only like to look at naked women because theyre "programmed" to, here, but also that the act of looking at a picture of a naked woman constitutes "optical rape".

The document discusses media which treats women as "game" and men as "hunters." I have not read the whole document, so there may be parts that support "both sides."

http://digilib.bc.edu/reserves/sc028/aren/sc02816.pdf

What am I, made out of time?

No. I am not made out of time.

But, I'll check it out and report back when I get a chance.

May be a while, though.

If you don't want to look at the evidence, then why bother asking for it?

JSTOR is a peer review journal. edit: OK, maybe it is not all peer review.

To call it "evidence" is, well, pretty fucking funny though.

YOU should read it. It's downright weird.

JSTOR is simply an online archive of selected academic journal entries which are both peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed. The paper you referenced was self-published by Feminist Studies which is NOT a peer reviewed publication. It's simply a dumping ground for anti-"phallocentric" ideas thinly veiled as academic.

and the articles I have used have all been peer reviewed, so I thought all of their documents were peer reviewed.

Okay, one, as MN noted, JSTOR is not automatically "peer reviewed". Apparently anyone can dump anything onto it, as this gibberish clearly shows. I'd be real curious as to see the "peers" that reviewed that thing and came back with "yes, that's good science". It's not even a good High School level essay.

This thing is even WORSE than the gobbledygook-laden crap explaining "scientific objectification theory", the one with the gems about the male gaze and the disruptions in the floooow of consciousness.....

Okaaaay, here goes-

Pages 1-4) Hunting! is! sexual! because hunters use words like "marriage" and "seductive". So hunters are getting off on hunting, which is sort of like getting off on sex, which must say something horrible about sex. Because hunters like hunting, like fuckers like fucking. See?

I guess.

Pages 5-6) Hunting is bad, remember! And hunting must be bad because hunters use sexual words to describe hunting. So sex is bad, too, see? And not just a few crazy men hunt, but many men who are in groups of hunting men, surprisingly, hunt. So you have lots of bad men doing a bad thing and thinking bad sex thoughts while hunting in big, bad groups. Now, rape! Yes, rape. Rape is, obviously, bad. And like sex, and hunting. So lots of men hunt, lots of men rape. Rape, sex, hunt, hunt, sex, rape. See the connection? Hmmm. Must be something wrong with men. I know what to blame!


*** I just want to interject, here: What does this imbecile dedicated scientist think people ATE, say, 20,000 years ago? You know, during the, ah, what was it called--- hunter gatherer epoch? Oh, right, that was before the Great Space Patriarchy™ Fucked Everything Up™ [font size=1]with its[/font] Cosmic Penis Of Oppression™, of course, and in addition to humans magically reproducing with just the aid of the wise crone medicine women and NO "PIV", food just magically appeared with no sex-hunt necessary. ***


Page 10) Okay, Ted Nugent. You knew he'd turn up somewhere! Ted Nugent proves exactly one thing and one thing only, that Ted Nugent is an asshole. You can't use him as an "example" of anything beyond Ted Nugent being an asshole. That's like Godwin's law, of the Nuge.

Page 11+) The point at which a gnawing suspicion which has attended the perusual of this work, made ever-more-stronger by the appearance of Ted Nugent's name, finally flowers into a near certainty: Someone is putting me right the fuck on, here. Either the author, to the general reader, or you, for getting me to actually read this. In either context, it's funny, actually. Doesn't work as "science", doesn't work as a High School Essay, but it might work as satire. Maybe.

of Ted Nugent's penis-antlers?

..admit it; you were fuckin' with me, there, weren't you.

Good one, actually.

on the male brain are women, femsplaining to men how their brains simply must be responding. This is based of course on their women's studies degrees and having never been a man.

And then when actual studies come out refuting those claims it is denounced as "dude science" since you know, mostly men performed the studies so it must be wrong.

In case you think I'm making that up:

http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2010/06/07/science-dudes-declare-porn-good-support-claim-with-danish-graphs-flawed-reasoning/

/ask yourself how feminists would respond if told over and over again by males that women must think a certain way and ignoring any women who care to disagree.

the consenting adult sexuality of others.

It's not okay when done to our LGBT friends and neighbors, it shouldn't be okay to do to ANYONE.

we were lured in to an unhealthy lifestyle that is absolutely devastating to our psyches and society.

If we just read the holy writ hard enough we can return to the proper path as laid out for us by Saint Dworkin and the Prophet Solanas.

Much like the Westboro people: they appear to hate differing lifestyles because they just want to help soooooo bad.

Back in the 70's, hacks like Dworkin were telling everyone that the proliferance of porn would lead to increased incidence of rape based on their flawed rad-fem "theory" of "male gaze", "objectification", "sex object" etc. Well guess what? Porn proliferated exponentially and the incidence of rape went down significantly over the same time period, which was exactly the opposite of their claims. Frankly I find these concepts insulting because it suggests that men are simply instinctual beings with their brain hard wired to their dick and lack the cognitive capability to resist primal urges. Not surprisingly these failed ideas were developed by people who really had no formal education or experience on the subjects in which they were writing.

Furthermore, I'm not really sure what you mean by "mainstream concerns" because those flawed ideas aren't even mainstream within the feminist community, let alone anywhere else.
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/trends/n_9437/

Well said.

I never claim to know the full affects of porn on the individual or society, but I very much think polite debate accomplishes more than less than polite debate.

The anti-porn article you posted suggests porn is bad because it decreases male libido, and makes women have to do stuff they wouldn't normally do in order to compete with pornography. I don't know if those claims are true, but I do think they are valid concerns. I don't think we should just laugh them off.

is that it's pretty much just pushed by a handful of religious fanatics and rad-fems whereas scientists have pretty much shot down all their claims.

It's a lot like the "debate" over evolution/creationism. One side says "they just want an honest debate" but it's usually a cover for something a bit more sinister and every scientific study is pretty much on the same side on this.

Debate if you want, but recognize that the anti-porn crowd is dominated by fundamentalists and really isn't substantiated by anything.

The ones that have shot down all the claims?

How do you feel about the APA? Do you think they are a good source for the subject?

If you think you have APA studies supporting your position (which you obviously do believe since you`ve now posted the baiting question 3 times), just post the fucking thing already.

before I spend time digging through their archives.

I don't want to spend a bunch of time searching through their documents just to have it declared unacceptable due to the source.

Too many variables, including who wrote it, when, etc.

But the concerns you listed which originated with the 2nd wave rad-fem crowd just have no basis in fact or reality. It was never anything more than a poorly supported hypothesis which claimed that porn would cause men to rape women and it never happened. It's no different than 'erotoxins' and many of the other half-baked ideas that have come from the rad-fem and book burning crowd who try to conflate consensual adult behavior with non-consensual adult behavior.

As far as the idea of women having to compete with porn, I say so what? I can't make my dick vibrate or rotate like a corkscrew either. Does that mean I can't compete with a vibrator because some women chose that instead of sex? So yes, men probably should be aware that if they use porn to excess, it's probably going to have an effect on whatever physical sex life they may have, but I take a civil libertarian approach to things like this. If you don't have the freedom to do whatever you want with your own body, which may include jerking off while watching consenting adults fucking, then what freedom do you really have? Just because those things may not be my cup of tea or even if they may be harmful to those who chose to partake, doesn't mean I'm going to tell someone else they can't or shouldn't.

I have not seen others on DU advocate outlawing pornography, but of course I have not read every post on the subject.

Personally, I think we (the US) lock up too many people already.

Not only do I think porn shouldn't be banned, I'm not going to tell anyone else they shouldn't be a consumer of porn.

So long as the porn only involves the activities of consenting adults, I have zero issues with it.

I really like when we feel uncomfortable telling others what to do.

I also really like debate, and I encourage anyone to debate whatever they wish.

So for instance we're wired to seek out the best possible mate we can find. That's been beaten in to our brains by millions of years of intense selection. What is considered "best" in a mate and how you go about acquiring one is however influenced by society. The basic behavior is biology, the external details are society.

The problem many feminists make is to assume it is 100% social conditioning.

They latch on to the details that are influenced by society (why are skinny women valued now but heftier women were seen as beautiful in the past, huh!??! Clearly it's entirely social conditioning) and use that to argue that the biological basis for those behaviors must then be social conditioning as well (men aren't really interested in sleeping with pretty women. PIV sex is traumatic to women and no woman outside of the patriarchy would ever engage in it).

Needless to say that nature/nurture debate won't end any time soon. And given that we can't raise people in controlled environments from birth for the sake of a study we likely won't hammer out all the details any time soon. But it's worth keeping in mind that society wasn't forced on us by some third party. We created it from scratch based largely on innate traits of H. sapiens.

evolutionary biology would categorically state that there are no aspects of human behavior that are not the result of evolution. Evolutionary psychology may not be perfect but it is beyond ridiculous to assume/conclude/believe that, given that humans are the end product of tens of millions of years of evolution, nothing in human psychology is a result of that evolution.

Such are the thinking processes, and I use that term very loosely, of an intellectual pygmy and such facially ignorant arguments are not even worthy of refutation.

then I don't think they're too considered with biology, science, common sense, and so on.

Writing stuff like that . . . they clearly have nothing better to do.

"My thesis is that all PIV sex is coercion".
"I can do better! My thesis is that all PIV sex is coercion and based on a subconscious desire to use women as toilets. Top that!"
"Okay that's pretty good, but my thesis is that men engage in sex with women because of a latent desire to shoot them like animals."

I guess this guy read the study you linked.
http://www.camocondom.com/