Jezebel 
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New York, 4:43 PM
Thu Nov 26
42 posts in the last 24 hours
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12/04/08
Anyone care to comment on that?
12/04/08
All beings objectify. Through the act of exercising the senses or even awareness, consciousness inherently forms oneself as the subject and one's surroundings as objects. The environment is the other, is filled with others.
I can't understand how there has been seemingly so little progress in elevating the discourse of "the male gaze." I've been out of school for quite some time, yet this mantra sounds awfully familiar.
12/03/08
As for women execs, I believe more should be asked of them and they could learn some lessons from some of the gay porn industry. I just read that two of my favorite sites offer awesome health care packages for higher tier "models."
On camera (where I'd really like to see some changes), it would be nice to see women having pleasurable sex and not see female bodies contorted for some guy's pleasure. (Also if someone could stop the combination of whiny/I'm so horny shrieks of "oh yeah"--the falseness distracts me and is one of the reasons that I hardly bother with videos that involve women).
12/03/08
Maybe next time we'll actually talk about these women in positions of power and what they're doing, not doing and should be doing.
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Which is why it's extremely important for men to get off our asses and start a sexual revolution of our own*. To learn that it's ok to say no, to learn that sex does not revolve solely around our desires, that women are sexual beings just like us with their own needs and desires to be respected.
*I consider the sexual revolution of the 60's and 70's to be solely a womens revolution since they were the only ones to change
12/03/08
It seems she's been helping other women get a leg up in the industry as well--one of the actresses who has been in some of Tristan's films (Penny Flame) is now directing some educational dvds for Vivid, much like Tristan does.
[/fangirl]
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Throughout my life I have seen porno that's swung from extreme to bland and everything in between.
I grew up flipping through penthouse and hustler when I was taking a dump.
I went over to house parties where there would be some new, gross Jake Steed barf-fest to watch.
I've had slumber parties with other 20 year olds drinking champagne, popping pills and watching gay porn.
I've seen women squeal in agony at the SIZE and in pleasure too.
Some of it is sad, yes. Some of it is funny, and the tiniest of it (for me personally) is arousing. I don't care for porn because most of it is a schlock-fest of the highest degree.
I'd like to see what these women come up with. I'd like to see if they give a spectrum of the myriad quirks and preferences women have and hope a few of them aren't afraid to get dirty and raw, because there's nothing wrong with that.
I have to fully agree with what artfulslinger said "And my last point on this is that there is that some porn, while seemingly made just for men, appeals to a lot of women and I do not believe that is because of societal pressures. I believe most of us cant really help what gets us there."
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I think I have a much bigger problem with women who participate in Suicide Girls than Playboy, because their value is much more diminished and they are not compensated at all equally, but that could be because their market share is much smaller and the business owners, which are some women, are much smarter at utilizing girls for less money.
And my last point on this is that there is that some porn, while seemingly made just for men, appeals to a lot of women and I do not believe that is because of societal pressures. I believe most of us cant really help what gets us there.
12/03/08
The Furry Convention was recently in town, and it just makes me think, "Hey, whatever works for you!"
12/03/08
Throwing Furries into this discussion is pretty disingenuous.
12/03/08
Porn films on the other hand have strong misogynistic undertones. Calling women bitches and whores during sex acts that often don't even look enjoyable. Women as fucktoys with no sexual desires of their own. And I haven't even seen anything considered truly hardcore.
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Also, this is why I'm obsessed with PBS.
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I think the problem is the way we view sex, not the fact that we view it at all, you know?
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And geez, her snappy response could have easily been printed!
12/03/08
She kinda flipped out at me, and accused me of being a prudish Republican (I'm not) who doesn't appreciate all that Playboy does for women worldwide, and said that most young women, unlike me, "get it".
this statement says far more about her than any interview in any magazine could.
i'm not surprised that women who work behind the scenes in porn don't have a problem with it because they are rolling in money. they make their money with the people who are "probably not" involved in more drug abuse or more suicides, or were "probably not" victims of sexual abuse as children...all these women did was find a way to make money doing it without having to actually be on camera. how dare we question the origins of their cash flow? because we just don't "get it".
@Cimorene: bravo!
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and also, to me at least, and we've talked about this before, there is a kind of sexuality that this stuff is selling that is not value neutral, i.e., usually it is selling sex as a transaction in which male ejaculation and organasm is the ultimate goal and the rest is just window dressing. so they are selling a product that, as a "thing-in-itself," is not "just sex."
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You know, ever since I started a Facebook group called "I want to punch Catharine MacKinnon in the face and videotape it," I've been a lot more laid-back about her.
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I'm not sure how I feel about feminist porn (which, ftr, isn't the same thing as porn-with-a-woman-executive porn). But I do know that mainstream porn, which is by far most porn, objectifies women, even if the women on-camera agree to be filmed (agree to be objectified, I'd argue). And it fetishizes lesbians, which is like my biggest pet peeve in the world.
And no, it's not the worst thing in the world. Certainly it's not worse than the women who are tricked, coerced, or raped for porn. But it still sucks for me, because every dude who watches porn that is created for dudes (most porn) watches stuff that ends up objectifying women. And that shit doesn't stop when you turn off the computer--when you objectify a woman (or minority) at 10 o'clock, the effects of said objectification--namely, the tendency to objectify all women--don't go away the next morning at your office when you're talking to your 22 year old assistant. And so porn basically perpetuates the cycle of objectification of women, and the reduction of us to the sum of our body parts. And I call bullshit on that.
Besides, maybe statistics show similar stats about suicide, drug use, and history of abuse* in other industries that similarly reduce women to their bodies, like hollywood, pop singers, and tv. But doesn't this site regularly call out Hollywood, the recording industry, and television companies for the sexism (and racism and classism) on a daily basis? I don't want to "exceptionalize" the porn industry, but neither do I want to privilege it because it has to do, primarily, with men's ease of masturbation. And even if feminist and woman-friendly porn (which, really? It ain't woman-friendly unless it's feminist) are not following this trajectory of objectification and explicit sexism, though I'd argue that any pornography inherently objectifies the sexual body and commodifies sex and the female body regardless of the socio-political intentions of the director and producer, those two aspects of porn are so, so, so depressingly small compared to porn-for-dudes.
That said, I am glad these women are making sure that girls aren't getting coerced or forced to perform sexual acts that they don't want to perform. It's admirable, especially in an industry that is rife with sexism on all sides. And it must be hard to take those stands when you've got a bottom line and an expanding market for gonzo or violent porn. But how low have our expectations gotten, that when someone is making sure that their workers aren't getting raped, they get a cookie? Like, isn't making sure that the people you hire are NOT sex slaves or otherwise coerced into the job you're having them do actually just the baseline of human decency? This world makes me cry.
*Which, how is that getting linked up with killing yourself and addiction? Addiction is desperation; suicide is the final straw of desperation. A history of abuse does not condemn you to a life of being fucked up. Though to minimize the consequences of childhood abuse is not what I'm doing here, I'm just saying that a woman who was abused or assaulted can still make her own decisions, which is not something I feel comfortable saying about an addict or suicidal person.
12/03/08
But how low have our expectations gotten, that when someone is making sure that their workers aren't getting raped, they get a cookie?
12/03/08
Men have been and will be objectifying women for years and while I can say there are certain things that are worse, I think "Girls Gone Wild" is worse than anything I have seen from the Vivid company. I think the fact that women have allowed this idea of what is sexy become true and run amok at Spring Break and make out with their friends for points with dudes is a problem with these women. Not to say that men aren't guilty of continuously perpetuating this shit on some women, but a great deal of chicks out there need to own what they do.
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I, for one, don't like porn and the way it presents women but I think men are capable of seeing real world and pornography as two separate and very different things.
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There are levels of compartmentalization, but I do not believe that someone that masturbates habitually to pornography will not be affected by the pornography. I mean, it's like positive conditioning or something. Every time i see a woman on screen [getting objectified] I have an orgasm. So, I start to subconsciously associate objectifying women with orgasms. Not a big leap, in my opinion.
Some men, of course, compartmentalize better than others. But I don't actually care that much because I don't like it when any woman is objectified.
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I'd love to see some sources cited for such studies.
12/03/08
I myself, don't have any inclination whatsoever to be IN porn, but I don't have a problem with those who do. I mean, wow. I've seen some straight-up misogynistic porn that is like a car accident: awful, but I can't help but look. I feel sorry for those chicks who have to endure gigantic dicks up their a-holes. Yikes.
Was it a Jane's Addiction song that said "Sex is violent!"? Well, I can attest that in my more or less normal and loving relationship, when I'm getting jack-hammered, that shit hurts sometimes! But it hurts so good. And, as far as I know, no one is watching my stupid oh ah O faces. Except for the aliens and ghosts, of course.
Where the hell am I going with this? I'm rambling like I've been throdding all day.
12/03/08
Yeah I feel sorry for them too. Especially when they are prostitutes hired through their pimps who rape and beat them frequently. I feel really sorry for those chicks. But you know, whatever! The conflation of sex and violence in our society has definitely had no ill effects, like it probably doesn't have anything to do with the very literal combination of sex and violence: rape. So we can just keep making jokes about how awesome light bondage is without a critical look at why our culture thinks that combining sex and violence is like, the height of sexy. Maybe it makes someone come, but WHY does it make them come?
Sex + Violence = (mainstream) porn = rape. It's just different points on the continuum of rape culture.
12/03/08
And, no one knows why it makes them come, or whatever. Human beings have a lot of confliction and misfires. I don't go out there and shove dildos up strangers asses, and I certainly hope that never happens to me. I don't know what chick is getting raped in what porn. I don't know what is going through their minds, and neither do you, unless they come out and say so. Lina Lovelace came out and said things, so has Jenna Jameson.
Pick and choose your battles. Porn does no absolutely equal rape. Fuck.
12/03/08
And you know, you're right. I don't know which women are getting raped and which ones aren't. That's why I don't watch porn, because what if I was masturbating to a woman getting raped? How fucked up and evil is that? And Linda Susan Boreman (Lovelace) came out and said that every time someone watched Debbie Does Dallas they were watching her get raped. And that's one of the highest grossing porn films of all times. Is this not an indication that porn as it stands now is a pretty fucked up medium?
And who the hell knows why anything gets anyone off--but when your need to get off impedes on my life, I don't care about your orgasm. Orgasms are less important than making sure that women are not getting exploited.
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