Porn Again

[ManyShadesOf]

The real genius of using gender to divide and conquer is that it's timeless.



Right Wingnuts learned that long ago. It's still workin for em bigtime. Such that people are still calling themselves Republicans instead of fleeing the insanity; voting against their own best interests and even their own bodies and health.

Health is at stake here: physical, emotional, psychological, societal. It's all wrapped up together.

On this board, recent squabbles about discussing women's issues inevitably turn to issues of control, dominance and accusations of censorship.

Why? Why is being able to discuss women's rights and societal impacts on the lives of women automatically turned into a supposed affront to the rights of others?

Because they want to watch porn?

It's possible to chew gum and walk. Maybe it's possible to discuss societal impacts on gender issues AND also consider the huge can of worms that is pornography (or not even think about it).

Being pro-feminist, pro-woman, pro-healthy relationship/society is not automatically anti-male, anti-porn, anti-free speech. To pretend that it is, shuts down open discussion and serves the Right Wing agenda.

[whathehell]

1. Thank you...

"Being pro-feminist, pro-woman, pro-healthy relationship/society is not automatically anti-male, anti-porn, anti-free speech"

Unfortunately, too many supposed "progressives" on this board are not even CLOSE to getting that.

[ManyShadesOf]

2. you're welcome!

true AND there have been some great statements in all this from many who do get it.

[whathehell]

3. I agree, but have you noticed that

most who "get it" are women?

[ManyShadesOf]

5. some men

or more of them are speaking up. Two good quotes from tonight, which are in response to the porn threads but touch on broader issues.

Really disturbing porn
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002831011
If we want to reduce the number of degrading spectacles around us, we need to take back our government from the Predator Class and create a new New Deal. We need living-wage jobs. As long as the 99% are held down by debt, austerity, and laws that give their money to the wealthiest, we will have very bad things happen. We must fight.

The Truth About Porn OP
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=826076
Well, guys - and yes, I mean that literally, guys - let me explain a few things about porn to you. Pornography is damaging. it's dehumanizing, it often revolves around violence and brutalization, it causes weird problems both in the bedroom and greater society, and it perpetuates all sorts of ugliness that we'd like to forget about.

[whathehell]

7. Some

but still not enough. I do like the last link you provided

The first is a bit too "diffused" to be considered, IMO, a message on porn.

[Warren DeMontague]

11. The tedium is the message.

[Mojorabbit]

19. I noticed that. I think we do get it and I applaud those men who also get it. nt

[whathehell]

20. I do as well. It's just that if you take a look at this thread

I think you'll see that they are in the rank minority.

[tabatha]

4. As a woman, I know that issues of reproductive health are things one has to deal with

from age 12/13 onward for decades. It is not funny. It is a hassle. Doctors visits are awful. Complications are even worse.

I know that dealing with men in everyday life, who for the most part, have just one thing on their minds especially for certain decades of life, is annoying, irritating and very often demeaning.

Thus the discussion of porn seems very superficial and quite frankly insensitive.

If a person likes porn, so be it. Just shut up about it.

There are porn watchers in restricted societies, and in free societies. So what. All it means is that men like porn no matter where they are born or live. The only thing that it evokes in men is the ability to do what they like most physically.

For women, it can evoke a lot of pain. Especially for those who have been raped - and there are many who have been.

[ManyShadesOf]

6. great post

thank you tabatha.

Also, discussions of media depictions of women relate to that -- and not necessarily to discussion of PORN. Unless it's in someone's mind that they are the SAME THING. They're not.

[Skittles]

10. worthy of its own thread

yes INDEED

[Autumn]

18. Wonderful post. Thank you. n/t

[joeglow3]

23. You are ignorant if you think porn is a men's only product

http://articles.cnn.com/2009-07-24/living/o.women.watching.porn_1_arousal-candida-royalle-explicit-sexual-imagery?_s=PM:LIVING

[Warren DeMontague]

8. Can we walk and chew gum at the same time? MLK and Ghandi think so!

Of course, the vast majority of people here are unapologetically for choice, just like the vast majority of people here don't think consenting adults watching other consenting adults have sex is a big deal. Certainly not worth the fights, the hand-wringing, the moaning and gnashing of teeth we periodically see over it.

And yet, the religious right, the Rick Santorums, want to do away with abortion, contraception, AND consenting adult porn.

Seems to me pretty cut and dried. It would take a lot of deliberate pot-stirring to muddle that sort of clarity.

[ManyShadesOf]

14. Then please

stop doing it.

[Warren DeMontague]

24. talking to

yourself again

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

21. This

"And yet, the religious right, the Rick Santorums, want to do away with abortion, contraception, AND consenting adult porn."

This 1000 times this.

Don't know why people are conflating the issues......if someone is claiming that fans of porn HERE can't support women's rights, control over their OWN bodies, the right to say vagina in public, etc......then they can take a long walk off a short pier.

[Warren DeMontague]

22. "Don't know why people are conflating the issues...."

Hmmm. Good question, I've got some ideas as to what the answer may be. Let me put it this way:

[ManyShadesOf]

25. all right

that sounds good. So why can't some "fans of porn" be consistent in their "support women's rights, control over their OWN bodies, the right to say vagina in public, etc." and stop stalking/mocking/harassing women here who choose to discuss these matters? Such that they are blocked from Groups and resort to cherrypicking topics to drag back to their Groups for more stalking/mocking/harassing .. it's toxic behavior and not clear what the benefit to DU is.

and then there's http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=833736 (insert your own "short pier" joke here)

If they were consistent, all that crap would end sooner. And it would be easier to spot the diehard right wing misogynists who stir the shit.

Some "fans of porn" here seem to have a short fuse and get aggressive on women's topics that aren't about porn at all.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

26. Why don't you direct me to the threads where "fans of porn".....

.....are hijacking saying that the women protesting the Michigan legislature want to ban porn and therefore phooey on them? Or anyone who's turned a discussion of women's right of reproduction into a porn thread by saying "If you defend my right to porn I'll back you on this issue!". Because I have not seen it.

As far as the men's group hate. Enough. There is no trademark on topics. The funny thing is you can go over there and openly talk about it as long as you don't insult members of the protected group and not be banned. So do so if it angers you so much.

I like porn, and I support all those other things and donate and work for candidates who also do and speak out against those don't.....Rick Sanctimonious the prime example. To some people here (thankfully a very tiny minority), that's a contradiction and they won't stand for it. To them, I say. too bad.

[ManyShadesOf]

27. Why don't you

listen?

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

28. Is that it?

I'm just trying to figure out why we are all back on the porn jag again. Educate me. Someone must have a thread where someone said there's a quid pro quo here or something. I've read a number of the Michigan legislature threads and see zip there, so I guess I'm in need of a lesson.

[Skittles]

9. women's issues are secondary to the right to sport a boner

religious freaks don't care about drugs that give boners, only the drugs that prevent those boners from impregnating

(saw this recently: I bet the Vatican would be pro-condoms if altar boys could get pregnant)

[quaker bill]

13. The problem with porn

Is that many of us in this country view it as the greatest of obscenities because it involves sex. There are and have been far greater obscenities in this country. The negligence that abandoned the disabled and elderly to die in Hurricane Katrina was a far greater obscenity as one small example. Torturing disarmed, captured, and fully contained enemy combattants at GITMO was another, fortunately for all of us, the videos are not for sale.

[ManyShadesOf]

15. Agreed

"Health is at stake here: physical, emotional, psychological, societal. It's all wrapped up together."

[seabeyond]

16. and many of us have a problem with it because of the degradation and dehumanizing of women

and the effect on all society. which has NOTHING to do with the sex.

[ManyShadesOf]

17. Attention!