Regarding the Sex Industry and Empowerment, Pt. 3 – No Acceptable Losses

I try to subscribe, as much as it is possible to subscribe and still live in this society, to a “no acceptable losses” rule. Simply put, I am not willing to tolerate any losses, in terms of womens’ lives, for my choices. I do not use pornography, because I will not support an industry that destroys even a single woman’s life.

Even if I can be mostly sure, by some ineffable mystical process, that the pornography in front of me at any given moment was made only by willing, fully consenting women who had a multitude of true choices in front of them and who are being fairly treated, looked after, and compensated, I cannot be 100% sure, and therefore I am not going to take the risk that I am supporting someone else’s pain. Because my number is zero. I will not take any risk, even 1%, that my persuit of entertainment is enabling a woman to be abused or raped.

If the porn industry only directly led to the abuse of a single woman a month, it’s not worth it for an orgasm. If it was only a single woman in a year, it’s still not worth it for an orgasm. A single woman every ten years is not worth it for an orgasm. My orgasm is just not that important.

My view is simply that my orgasm isn’t worth the risk that I might be masturbating to a picture of a sex slave or a coke addict who would not be in that position if I wasn’t busy helping to create a market for it. Sure, there are women out there who enjoy those acts and being in that business, but how can I ever be sure that the specific woman I’m looking at is one of them? Statistically, that’s a huge gamble to take, and I just don’t have the stomach for it.

I won’t take that risk, and I look down on men who are willing to take that risk, who say their orgasm is worth that risk. Especially since, in this day and age, that risk is not at all insignificant.

Now if I had a girlfriend or wife who enjoyed taking pictures or movies of herself or us for our private veiwing pleasure, well, in that case, I can be sure she’s one of those who enjoys that kind of thing. Because I’d know her personally, and she’d say “Hey, I have a great idea…”

Of course, the things we’d be recording wouldn’t be the things you see in porn, either. Porn is to sex what UFC is to ballroom dancing.

I hold to the same rule for strip clubs, and prostitution is, of course, right out.

Obviously, to head off the oncoming point from someone without the ability to detect nuance, that rule can’t hold for things required for everyday existence in this culture. I realize that my clothes were most likely produced by children in a third-world country making five cents a day in appaling conditions. I realize that my car, if I had one, would be responsible for deaths in an incalculable fashion due to gobal warming and pollution.

But to compare materials required to live in a modern society to an orgasm aid? That would be pretty darn silly. As far as things as completely insignificant as masturbation go, I hold very strictly to “harm none”, and I think we would be better off as a society if everyone did so.

Which, unfortunately, means I would get rid of the sex industry entirely until the mindset of society can evolve enough maturity and respect for women to handle such a thing appropriately, because I can’t endorse an industry that does so much to harm women both individually and as a societal group.

In the majority of cases women come to this industry from an abused, sexually traumatic past, continue to live out that sexual trauma as a component of their job descriptions, and if they ever get out, come away from it with PTSD and scars on the body, mind, and heart. While this is not true for every participant, it’s true of enough participants that I believe some more critical examination is in order, as well as some kind of corrective measures.

I mean, how bad did Nike have to treat its workers in China for liberals of the world to get up and boycott them? Not all those workers lived in such nasty conditions, though… but we didn’t focus on them. We focused on the suffering, we organized action, and we got results. When it comes to the sex industry, though, we see similarly deplorable treatment of workers, but we focus entirely on the ones who have it pretty decent and say things are pretty much fine as they are, no action necessary against the industry or even specific companies.

I see it as a pretty sad statement of the western world that we seem to be saying that we’re willing to tolerate more horror and abuse in producing our orgasm aids than we are in producing our shoes. The symbol of that is while we didn’t focus on the American Nike workers, or the Nike workers with connections who got a decent wage and didn’t get whipped for poor production quotas, that’s definitely the equivalent population we seem to want to focus on when it comes to the sex industry as an excuse to avoid confronting that industry directly with any kind of legislation, or even grassroots market-based actions.

Men don’t have a right to exploit women who just want to make a living. The men who are getting their kicks from watching women pretend to orgasm over incredibly painful, damaging, and/or dangerous acts are exploiting women’s sexuality for their own feeling of control and power. A2M is a perfect example of a new, explosively popular, amazingly dangerous sexual act that women in these industries are being expected to perform. Why? Because men are getting off on it, and men are making money from it.

The sex industry isn’t about women, or women’s sexuality. It’s about women pandering to men’s sexuality in order to, in the vast majority of cases, make money for other men.

It’s a bit like saying that African-Americans should have the right to participate in Minstrel Shows. Sure, maybe they should. But are the white customers and white producers helping African-Americans express their culture when they promote and support such things? Of course not. They’re promoting a pleasing stereotype of an oppressed class in order to give themselves a feeling of superiority and line their pocketbooks in the process. To re-focus the issue on “Well, banning these shows, or boycotting these shows, only hurts poor African-Americans and takes away their right to make choices!” is taking the lens away from the real root of the issue and making the continued exploitation of the oppressed group out to be the only solution to that group’s immediate, short-term problems.

The long-term affect on both the performers, the consumers who are being trained to believe that the performance is actually reality, and the members of the oppressed class who are not participating, either willingly or at all, in these performances are never considered.

Regarding the Sex Industry and “Empowerment”, Pt. 2 – Choices

The question nobody asks is WHY women would choose those paths.

Are we talking about women who have the option between stripping, a scholarship to Harvard, and a fulfilling career in a skilled trade with no glass ceiling? Or are we talking about the option between watching your five year old starve on the street and taking off your clothes for men to gawk at you?

I would propose a study: let’s take some women in porn and offer them a no-strings-attached position as a carpenter’s apprentice, or truck driver trainee, or steelworker’s apprentice, with the same advancement opportunities as men, and see what they choose.

I think what a lot of people miss is that radical feminists are all for sex-worker’s rights. Their right not to be abused, exploited or raped, and their right to get out if the want to are all parts of the “sex-workers rights” thing. That right is not protected by advocating legalization of prostitution (see, again, Prostitution Research). That right is not protected by enabling pornography producers to move more and more extreme body-punishing acts into the mainstream.

Fight for women’s right to choose their path in life? Bloody hell, yes. What the sex-pos crowd misses is that part of that fight is enabling that choice to be an actual choice, instead of simply glamourizing their oppression and the performance of sexual acts and mimicry for men’s pleasure.

How many of the women in this thread would quit their jobs, or drop out of their schooling, to become a prostitute? A stripper? A porn star? It’s not a choice unless it can be freely chosen, and as the links I’ve provided help to show, that fact is rarely in evidence.

IMHO, burlesque, strip clubs, porn, etc are nothing more than the PC version of minstrel shows with blackface. Present and promote a pleasing stereotype of women to the dominant class for money and acceptance, and it can be dressed up as much as you like, it’ll never lead to equality, only the perpetuation of exactly those myths and misconceptions that feminism is supposed to be fighting.

Tell you what. Let’s all fight for women’s rights to be in an occupation men can be in, with no glass ceilings, and no wage gap. Let’s all fight for women’s rights not to be raped, molested, and otherwise sexually assaulted by strangers, friends, and family members. Let’s all fight for women’s rights to be judged by some criteria other than their bodies, their right to not to have to live life 20 pounds underweight lest they face ridicule and derision, their right not to have to pander to male sexual fantasies for acceptance and a passing familiarity with humanization.

Let’s do all that, then see how many women still choose to work in the sex industry. At that point, the “sex-pos” crowd will have my support, because that’s when sexual display can be a tool for self-discovery and liberation, instead of stereotyping, control, and misogyny. That’s when sex work will truly be a choice.

Regarding the Sex Industry and “Empowerment”, Part 1

Ok, so, this was the rant that inspired me to start a blog in the first place. I posted this at a site with many members who are very hostile to radical feminism or any critique of pornography and the sex industry at large. So, I decided to maybe save this idea to a place where it might be more permanantly kept, and easier to refer to if I, or anyone else, needs the ideas contained therein.

This has been edited slightly to make it more blog-relevant than messageboard-relevant.

Feminists seek empowerment for women. That’s pretty much a given. The “sex-pos” crowd claims, among other things, that the sex industry is a road to that empowerment.

What kind of empowerment are we talking about here?

Prostitutes don’t seem very empowered to me. See Prostitution Research for lots of facts and information, to wit:

• The vast majority of prostitutes world-wide don’t want unions; they want out
• The vast majority of prostitutes are against the legalization of prostitution
• Even in the USA, a significant number of prostitutes were trafficked across borders against their will; slavery is still alive and well in the US sex industry
• 68% of prostitutes in the US suffer from PTSD; a rate higher than soldiers returning from Iraq

How is that empowerment? How is fighting for the right of women to become a prostitute “empowering” them? And is it the same kind of “empowerment” males like me enjoy? I don’t have to worry about any of that to make a comfortable living and be taken seriously by the culture’s dominant group.

Strippers aren’t particularly empowered, either. I’ve been to strip clubs, and I fail to see how a woman can be empowered when she is crawling on her hands and knees with her butt in the air while dirty, ugly dudes stuff dollar bills between her breasts, or while pretending to be orgasmically excited by the act of grinding into the lap of some of the grodiest huggers in the world while they try to finger her without the bouncer noticing. That’s not exactly the kind of “empowerment” I want, and I’m pretty glad I don’t have it.

I’d also like to point out that even if a woman can feel empowered by such a profession, does it really make her more powerful? More well-respected? More able to fight off oppression and degredation in daily life, more resistant to laws and policies which deny her personhood?

If so, I fail to see how; in fact, I live in a Navy barracks, I know exactly what men think of strippers, and the language is some of the crudest and most misogynist I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter, so respect is out the window. The very process of giving a lap dance is pretty much inherently degrading; at least, I know I’d feel pretty degraded if I had to pretend I was enjoying dry-humping a woman who weighed 300lbs and hadn’t showered in weeks just to earn a few dollars stuffed into my thong while she called me the foulest names and blatantly copped feels. Is it the “sex-positive” feminist’s position that women actually enjoy doing that? Maybe they really are so vastly different than men in their desires and thought patterns that I could never begin to understand them, if that’s the case.

I can’t think of any job, at any salary, that men have to do for which sexual harassment is not only common, but enduring it every single day is part of my job description, and if I could think of such an occupation, I sure as hell wouldn’t call it “empowered”.

Personally, I’d feel a lot more empowered as a CEO or a journeyman carpenter than as a Chippendale’s dancer… but maybe I’m just strange.

Finally, we have pornography. What are women “empowered” to do when they’re porn stars? Do they make a lot of money, at least? I don’t know… I hear men say that alot, but even Jenna Jameson doesn’t own the rights to any of her movies; her husband does. In fact, the vast, VAST majority of money going into porn goes straight into mens’ wallets rather than womens’ purses. Seems like porn is about empowering men to make money off of womens’ bodies rather than empowering women to do anything at all.

Especially with as violent as pornography is becoming; is it the position of “sex-positive” feminists that women actually enjoy and are empowered by A2M, double- and triple-penetration, facial shots, donkey punches, rape scenes, and worse? I doubt it.

Jersey Jaxin left pornography, and gives an interview about what went on both behind and in front of the camera. Why don’t we call her up and tell her how “empowered” she really was? I’m sure she’d appreciate the info.

Jersey Jaxin, Pt. 1
Jersey Jaxin, Pt. 2

Also, Gail Dines makes a great speech about pornography in this video; I wish I could find more on the conference, because there was also an excellent study presented about the kinds and prevelance of sexual violence in the industry’s top-selling movies, but I guess that bit didn’t get onto youtube.

I, as a male, enjoy lots of empowerment. I have the power to walk into an employment office with no skills and no education and walk out with a job as a construction electrician’s helper, and the power to work my way up to electrician, job foreman, project manager…. the sky’s the limit. And at no point is rape an occupational hazard. At no point does my job description include smiling coyly at a fat, smelly, sweaty man waving a five dollar bill at me yelling “bring that snatch over here!”. At no point do I have to pretend to enjoy incredibly painful, body-punishing acts of penetration as a condition of my continued employment.

So am I equally empowered as a prostitute, stripper, or porn star? The kind of “empowerment” that the sex-positive feminists talk about is really nothing more than the power to gain male acceptance as sexual objects, because I can’t find any other power they’re getting. It really seems like that model puts the power in male hands more firmly than it is already.

If women in this society really had true empowerment over their bodies and their lives, there would be a lot less pornography, a lot fewer strippers, and a lot less prostitution. Those industries exist solely for the benefit of men, and are all exceptionally harmful to women.

Or maybe I’m just blind, and am missing the “empowerment” part. It seems like that this is the kind of “empowerment” just about every male in the world can readily get behind, because for the most part, it’s exactly what they wish women would be anyway; what red-blooded american male doesn’t want a nympho stripper/porn star in bed exploring her “sexual liberation”?

True sexual liberation is the abilty to say “no, I don’t want to have sex right now” and have it stick. The sex industry only gives women the ability to say “yes”. How is that liberating? How is that empowering? It’s not even novel. The ability to say “no” and have that “no” respected would be incredibly revolutionary. The ability to say “yes” is what men have been fighting for women to have since the beginning of time.

A woman who says “no, I will not be in a relationship with a man who uses porn or goes to strip clubs” is not seen as exercising her sexual liberation, she’s seen as a prude who apparently just needs a good fucking. Apparently “sexual freedom” only means the freedom to have wild, kinky sex, go to strip clubs, and watch porn, not the freedom to say “no, I won’t tolerate those abuses of my body and my sense of self-worth”.

And it’s THAT power which will really shake the world up in terms of equality. So of course, that’s the stuff that’s met the with most violent, nasty resistance.

So, what’s this all about?

I’ve got a lot of ideas, see. And I like talking about those ideas. I don’t like talking about these ideas among my RL friends and colleagues because, well, let’s be frank, I’m in an environment that attracts people who are entirely hostile to my ideas.

So what are these ideas? Mostly, they’re about gender dynamics and inequality in modern society, oppression of women, minorities, and nature, global climate change, the environment in general, feminism in general, and a whole host of other heavy topics. I just decided to start a blog and write about them, so I didn’t explode trying to keep from arguing with bullheaded morons in person.

I’d much rather argue with bullheaded morons on-line. Wouldn’t you? Hell, maybe that’s why you’re here!

So, as I’m not much for introductions, I’ll go ahead and get right to the posting.