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"While sexual aggression and the desire to debase women may not be what arouse all men, they are certainly an animating force of male sexuality. They may be una

• deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
• dejb 16y ago
  "This encounter proves an unpleasant fact that does not fit the feminist script on sexuality" The fact that the author chooses to generalise a 'proof' from a single personal encounter shows what sort of low standard she has for evidence.
  • Eliezer 16y ago
    This shows that all female authors secretly want to set a low standard for evidence!
  • hackerblues 16y ago
    The feminist script she describes is 1990's notion that a couple can obtain a satisfactory sex life through a process in which the woman overcomes the mans negative sexist conditioning by using a verbal contract to stipulate her limits. There some provisions made about people with no respect for women like date rapists and people with the "frat boy" mentality. The example she gives is of a man who is by external measures an enlightened guy - wealthy, polite, and educated. We are given no reason to believe he is disrespectful of women generally speaking. But when it comes to sex he is unable to get it up unless he is explicitly pushing a woman beyond what she feels comfortable doing. For emphasis: this is a part of his sexual experience and not a part of his general attitude to women. The fact that this single event occurred is sufficient to demonstrate that the 'How to have a mutually enjoyable sex life' script does not work universally and so requires revision for a full explanation of the world. It proves the unpleasant fact that dominance beyond enthusiastic consent can form an integral part of a mans sexual identity. In this section she establishes that a breach in this perception of sex has occurred. In the rest of her article she uses online pornography to argue the size of the breach. tldr; lolz bitches hate logic right bro?
    • dejb 16y ago
      > The fact that this single event occurred is sufficient to demonstrate that the 'How to have a mutually enjoyable sex life' script does not work universally I'm sure there are wealthy, polite, and educated necrophiliacs also and single instances of sexual fetishes and requirements so strange as to be unimaginable by most of us. Does his mean that we need to adjust our entire model of human sexuality for each of these? Maybe for people so limited of thinking as to believe that any one model of sex could achieve 100% coverage, this could actually be useful information. But to automatically assume anything about 'ordinary' sexuality is ridiculous.
• nkurz 16y ago
  claiming that online porn demonstrates how the male psyche is fueled by the need to hurt and humiliate women sexually I don't see a contradiction, since I don't think she is making this claim. This would be hard to determine by textual analysis, though, since I'm sure my own context for the article is just as subjective. I'll write her and ask if she'd be willing to comment, but of course then we're into postmodernism, and the intent of the author being irrelevant to your interpretation. In the meantime, I think that Vargas-Cooper is coming more from a 90's feminist-backlash position than the earlier 70's 'men are evil' view. Or maybe it's slash-backlash: "He answered, almost without thought, 'Because that’s the only thing that will make you uncomfortable.' This was, perhaps, the greatest moment of sexual honesty I’ve ever experienced—and without hesitation, I complied. This encounter proves an unpleasant fact that does not fit the feminist script on sexuality: pleasure and displeasure wrap around each other like two snakes." I think her point is that we need to acknowledge the forces that exist (including a desire to degrade) without giving up or pretending they don't exist. But I don't think she feels that this is exclusive to males, nor that this is the primary fuel of the male psyche. And I think her point is that two players are needed to maintain the illusions, and that not all illusions should be thrown out. She didn't smack him across the face and pay for her own cab ride home, rather she took the honesty as a compliment and stayed.
  • axiom 16y ago
    I disagree, I think the article is very clearly making that point. The premise of the article is that the attempt to attack/suppress violent porn is wrongheaded because it's based on the notion that violent porn warps men's sexuality. The author claims it's wrongheaded because men's sexuality is inherently violent. It's a pretty nasty piece of work.
    • nkurz 16y ago
      Reading it again in that view, you do have a point. I don't think it's intended to that clear cut, though. There's a lot of cross-play going on: Source: The Atlantic - Respectable, liberal. Title: Hard Core - Low brow, sensationalist. Subtitle: The new world of porn is revealing eternal truths about men and women - Reactionary or defensive? Author: Doesn't seem afraid of sex-positive imagery - http://www.natashavc.com/ http://www.natashavc.com/ Image: Art porn by an expert - http://www.google.com/images?q=Sølve+Sundsbø http://www.google.com/images?q=Sølve+Sundsbø Text: As you say, but also mixed in places. I think one needs to consider the piece as a whole, and it's likely effect of making porn a more acceptable mainstream topic for discussion in the future. But I'm comfortable with interpretations that are contradicted by different levels of the text, and think that we should judge by final effect rather than intermediate argument. I think the apparent contradictions are more likely intentional (at some level) rather than oversight. Any chance you've seen Slavoj Zizek's argument that The Sound of Music is actually pro-Nazi: http://benatlas.com/2010/02/zizek-on-crossdressing-to-the-sound-of-music/ http://benatlas.com/2010/02/zizek-on-crossdressing-to-the-so...
• iuguy 16y ago
  The author(ess in this case), while a good writer in form has some very strange ideas about the world and sweeping generalisations that border on misandry (at least IMHO). For example: MEN, SO THE CONVENTIONAL wisdom goes, tend to desire more than women are willing to give them sexually. The granting of sex is the most powerful weapon women possess in their struggle with men. I would certainly say that western women these days are more sexually adventurous and willing to initiate than say a decade or two ago. There is much broader recognition that women get horny too, and some women hornier than some men. I'm actually pretty offended about the use of sex as a weapon. If you're in a relationship where you're using sex as a weapon, that relationship is inherently unhealthy. Sex should be something that's fun, that's shared with someone/thing/people/animals, not used as a weapon. Yet in each new sexual negotiation a woman has with a man, she not only spends down that capital, she begins at a disadvantage, because the potential losses are always greater for her. I'm not entirely sure what she means by capital although I imply that the 'weapon' has inherent value, and that by presumably imitating acts seen in pornography (I don't know, I'm clutching at straws to parse her comment) that she's somehow reducing that capital? A failed or even successful single encounter can be life-altering. For either sex and for either partner if not both, surely? Whatever “social construct” you might impose upon the whole matter, nature imposes much more rigorous consequences on women than on men. And the legal system (and society in general) imposes much more rigorous consequences on men than on women. I'm not saying that one way is worse than another but it affects both in different ways. In conclusion I perceive the author as either a woman with generalised views that are incorrect, a feminist or a downright misandrist. It's an interesting article, but much of the opinion spouted is not applicable in many cases.
  • pyre 16y ago
    While I agree with you in general, a couple of points: > that by presumably imitating acts seen in pornography (I don't > know, I'm clutching at straws to parse her comment) that > she's somehow reducing that capital? I don't think that she's talking about reduction of capital when she's talking about losses. She's more likely referring to the downsides of imitating porn acts (e.g. vaginal penetration immediately after anal penetration, which could result in a vaginal -- or urinary tract -- infection). > And the legal system (and society in general) imposes > much more rigorous consequences on men than on women. Depends on which legal system/society.
• electromagnetic 16y ago
  I remember watching, IIRC, pornucopia with Katie Morgan. In one of the scenes she's talking about how mainstream pornography came to a start. The black and white silent-film clip showed is of a man stealing three women's clothes as they skinny dip and blackmails them demanding sex. They agree on condition that it's through a glory hole. He agrees and goes to do his thing. The girls grab a stray donkey off the beach and back it up against the glory hole. I saw women exploiting a man for his stupidity when he's horny. I saw glory hole sex from like the 1910's. I saw beastiality and the debasement of the man. You can still see all these things today in porn. Given that the internet basically created the Clothed-Female-Naked-Male genre, I'd contend that the author of the article really has no clue about porn. For all the violence against women, there's equal amounts of violent porn against men. For every one debasing a woman, there's on debasing a man. For one humiliating a woman, there's one humiliating a man (I mean there's actually porn videos where there's a guy tied up and blind folded naked and a group of women laugh at his junk). The Internet has done for porn what the printing press did for the written word. You went from only the elitist males in society being able to write a book to virtually anyone from any background being able to become world famous. I mean look at J.K. Rowlings backstory for when she wrote Harry Potter and you can hardly say she had any of the elitist connections of early writers. Similarly we've gone from only big studios producing porn, to anyone with a half-decent video camera... or even just a cell phone.
  • pjscott 16y ago
    > For all the violence against women, there's equal amounts of violent porn against men. For every one debasing a woman, there's on debasing a man. For one humiliating a woman, there's one humiliating a man (I mean there's actually porn videos where there's a guy tied up and blind folded naked and a group of women laugh at his junk). Do you have numbers on this? Because it is a quantitative claim you're making.
    • dspeyer 16y ago
      I did a quick xnxx search for "humiliated". It's 36 vids per page. The first page had one male victim and the rest female. The second page had seven male. The third page fourteen. I stopped at that. So it doesn't look like true numerical parity. On the other hand, there is clearly enough of both that you could watch either exclusively and never run out. So they are both effectively infinite, which is kind of like being equal.
• lwhi 16y ago
  I like the article - I think there's generally a lack of discussion about sexuality in society, to our detriment. The article works around an assumption that pornography is acting as a feedback loop, expressing and evolving deeply held male desires; but I'd argue that the article might buy into its own myth by holding up pornography as a true mirror reflection of what men really want. Perhaps the ubiquity of male domination in porn, might be more due to cultural hegemony and market-led assumption, rather than a true reflection of sexual mores. If the bare structure of a purely sexual relationship is examined - pretty soon, two classic archetypes emerge; the dominant and the submissive. The roles might not be very clearly defined; but even if there isn't any explicit acknowledgement, I think there's usually an underlying tacit acknowledgement. When it comes to who will fit which role - I don't think gender necessarily creates a predisposition. I think, to a degree, personality-type determines who fills which role; and in that respect, I think that people's desires are often quite deeply embedded in their psyches. I suppose it could be argued that people consciously try to attain socially lauded ideals; and that a person's desire to live up to gender stereotypes might affect what they might strive for - but personally, I think there are a lot of competing factors that make the process of examining sexual identity much more complex. Pornography isn't an interesting examination of sexuality - its a cheap shot, designed for cheap thrills. Perhaps, in much the same way that constant swearing reduces the impact of cuss-words, pornography's increasing need to trump itself, will eventually lead to it's downfall. Once this impact is lost - what will happen then? Maybe honest personally-drawn narratives and characterisations will take the place of clichéd story lines and hackneyed acting - but then it wouldn't be porn, it would be on the road to becoming art.
• jodrellblank 16y ago
  "But I’m tired of seeing men and women buy into the lie that male sexuality is inherently violent and sadistic. My experience as sex worker has taught me the opposite." A prostitute talks of her experience. - http://goodmenproject.com/2010/11/22/the-professional/ http://goodmenproject.com/2010/11/22/the-professional/