hahahaha,
Well, as someone who has an interest in sociology, gender, and kink, I suppose I had to write about this at some point or another…..
Back in the day, in my early ‘teens–I flipped through the pages of a Barely Legal porno mag and thought, “Hawt, damn, college women are soooo sophisticated.” Now, many women that might be called MILFS are of the general age range to be my peers. Guess I haven’t “matured” enough to be a Cougar’s peer….
A few years back, I was hanging out with a hard drinking metal girl. She boasted that she loved porno, especially stuff with inter racial couples. She then offered to show me her collection, to which I declined. I’m sure a PUA would tell me that a girl offering to show her porn collection is an invitation that she would like you to escalate, however my gut instincts told me this is someone I shouldn’t get involved with….
The last time I was in an adult bookstore was a huge superstore called Hustler Hollywood. It looks more like a Borders bookstore than a hole in the wall porno shop. It’s well lit. Friendly staff greet you and ask if you have any questions. There are gag gifts and funny tee shirts like you might find in Spencer’s. Most interesting of all, it’s not the raincoat crowd. There were couples, groups of girls, groups of guys and assorted single people. Some were laughing. Some unashamedly walked with DVD’s, toys or magazines under their arm. Except for the fact that everyone was over 18, you could’ve been at your local mall.
Seems to me porno is becoming more and more mainstream, almost respectable…
Well, you can always find a critique against it. I read one by Roger Jensen a little while back. He mentioned how it was just a tradition of men selling women’s bodies as a commodity. Well, one thing that always strikes me as a little dishonest in these conversations is how someone will say how you are “buying women.” Do you buy a gardener if you pay him to work on your lawn? You purchase a service. If you buy pornography, are you perhaps buying a performance similar to if you buy a DVD of your favorite band? Also, when people talk about objectification, how come it only seems to refer to the actresses? How come they never say, “Oh, poor man, he is being reduced to nothing more than a throbbing, hard penis that spews copius amounts of ejaculate?” Doesn’t this critique leave out gays and transsexuals. Granted, that is a world I haven’t explored and don’t care too, but… …the point I’m trying to get at is that we don’t seem to be having honest conversations about gender or sexuality.
Thaddeus Blanchette just left a link on my blog to an article of his. It is in reaction to an article called Can You Trust Your Johnson? at The Good Men Project. Anyways, since dopamine and “brain circuits” get mentioned, I can’t but help think of video games. I like video games, but am not addicted. Anyhow, I don’t know where I fit into this picture as my greatest exposure to the naked female form is at my local clothing optional beach 😉
stonerwithaboner 
Men are not considered objectified when they are in porn for the same reason men are never called sluts. Male sexuality is treated as worthless. Male sexuality is treated as being as not only lacking any value, male sexuality is treated as having a negative value… a value less than zero. The reason for this is that when a man shares his sexuality with a woman he is considered to be in debt to her for having given of himself to her. So when a man gives of himself sexually he is being treated as if he is taking something.
Interesting viewpoint….
Makes sense on some levels, PUA’s are always trying to show their *worth* to women as if they have no inherent value….
*Off topic, but just to keep you informed*
As someone who knows someone who knows Roissy personally, he used to work at a banking REGULATORY agency whose name escapes me at the moment.
And yes, some of the posts at Heartiste are the “old” Roissy, but mostly he lets an anonymous group post.
Hiya Clarence,
You saw my post on Feminist Critics regarding the 99% I gather…..
Thanks for keeping me informed…..
Interestingly ernough, I just wrote a huge academic article about the “buying a woman” myth in anti-porn, anti-prostitution discourse. It seems to come straight out of German philosopher Immanuel Kant, via Dworkin, McKinnon and other feminist philosophers of the 1970s and ’80s.
You are correct to look in askance at the metaphor, Stoner: it has no logical basis at all, not even in the usually hyper-logical Kant’s writing. Kant basically comes up with the idea that “selling sexual services = selling one’s body” in his “Lectures on Ethics”. He doesn’t describe why this is via logic, but rather roots the entire argument in a series of dubious a priori arguments about the nature of sex.
The main a priori established by Kant – which just happens to be the one subscribed to by Dworkin, McKinnon, Robinson et al – is that sex is a totalizing act in which one gives the entirety of oneself to one’s partner. Thus, paying for sex involves an unequal exchange: one gives the entirety of oneself to another and receives only a few bits of dirty silver in exchange. One thus becomes the “possession” of the person who one had sex with.
Yeah, I know. Strange shit, man. Kant never describes how or why one “becomes the possession of another” through having sex, he just presumes thus must occur and lets it lie there.
However, the fact that Kant died a virgin in his 80s probably has an awful lot to do with his thoughts on this topic. Kant never actually had sex and thus idealized it out of all proportion as some sort of awe-inspiring, totalizing act rather than (as comedian Doug Stanhope would have it) “uhn, uhn, uhn [splorch]”.
The main thing the self-ascribed femininst “anti-sex” school seems to have in common with Kant is that most of the main theoretizers have extremely odd personal beliefs about sex. Dworkin’s views on this topic are well-knowm, though to give Andrea her dues, she question ALL heterosexual contact whatsoever under the conditons of what she labeled “capitalist patriarchy”.
Marnia Robinson, who seems to be the current pop heiress of the Kantian sexual throne, goes straight back to the roots of the debate and believes that only sex with in a stable, pair-bonded (heterosexual…? Hard to say with Marnia, although given the Darwinian thrust of her arguments, this seems to be the logical endpoint to them), monogamous relationship is “healthy”. She then goes the old German geek one further and declares the orgasm itself as a threat to human existence, a left-over from our primitive evolutionary development.
That’s right: in an odd replay of certain Victorian views on sex, Marnia apparently believes that every time you cum, your vital energy is put in peril through the risk of “sexual addiction”. According to this new self-taught savant (whose only prior formal training in science, biology and sexology apparently came while she was studying to be a corporate attorney), the orgasm has the same addictive potential as crack and should thus be eschewed in modern, healthy relationships.
Thanks for publicizing my tiff with the Robinson-Wilsons, Stoner. “The Good Men Project Magazine” has allowed them to censor their own comments section, which means, effectively, that their particular brand of snake oil is being pushed on TGMP Mag with no critical analysis allowed. TGMPM CEO and editor -in-chief Lisa Hickey says that I’m welcome to write an article in rebuttal, so hopefully I’ll get some time to do that in the next few weeks.
Abraços,
Thad
Just the usual ‘women are never morally responsible, always victims’ crap, is the reason for the white-knighting / fembot idea that porn objectifies women but not men. Bullshit, of course.
“I’m sure a PUA would tell me that a girl offering to show her porn collection is an invitation that she would like you to escalate, however my gut instincts told me this is someone I shouldn’t get involved with…”
Without speculating on whether or not she was someone you should or shouldn’t have involved with, it is worth pointing out that the most powerful tool women use to hook men is sex. This is one reason why PUAs tend to wind up in messed up relationships with messed up women who can’t do anything well except sex. Anytime a woman drops some sexual innuendo, she’s hoping the guy will take the bait, get all excited and start tripping balls for her. A better strategy whenever a woman is making strangely forward / sexual comments is to trust your gut like you did here and think of Admiral Ackbar yelling “IT’S A TRAP!” pull back, smile and relax.