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So as it turns out women, mysteriously, don’t fall into the category of “life” that needs protection or saving. ‘Pro-life’ is anti-woman from snout to spade.
“Unsafe abortion is responsible for 13% of maternal deaths worldwide and represents one of the four major causes of pregnancy-related mortality and morbidity”
— WHO, Safe Abortion: Technical and Policy Guidance for Health Systems, second ed., Geneva: WHO, 2012.
The idea that somehow pornography is good for society, or that it serves some sort of preventative function for males, or (insert rationalization here), make me ill. Pornography, like religion, has no place in a civilized society. I found this awesome quote while browsing the interwebs and I agree with much of what it has to say about pornography, the porn industry and human sexuality. Thank you Jasmina for writing so eloquently about this important topic.
Hello,
I would like you to know, in a nutshell, that I am against the porn industry.
I am against white men who admit that they literally hate women making films to express that hate. I have absolutely nothing against sex or sexual activity or sexual expression or even sexual exploration through consuming sexual content. I am so glad that you love your body and are content with your sexuality — that is a very good thing.
I am against mainstream gonzo porn which depicts very violent misogynistic sex where the synonym for ‘woman’ is ‘slut’, ‘whore’ and bitch. I am against very violent porn where a woman is being slapped around and ripped to shreds is the most available type of pornography; being the default when accessing pornography. I am against the idea that the very accessible porn, free porn, depicts very rough sex as the norm — something which young curious boys (and girls) will access as possibly their first look at ‘sex.’ I don’t like that hardcore porn is now normal porn and softcore porn is just pop culture. I don’t like the way mainstream, popular pornography depicts women. I don’t like that violent acts such as choking on a penis or ‘ripping a tight virgin apart’ are ‘sexy.’
I don’t like that rough, violent sex, which I accept is the way SOME consenting adults choose to have sex is portrayed as NORMAL, as mainstream, as the ‘right’ way to have sex.
Porn isn’t sex, its the manifestation of male directors’ fantasies. I am in no way targeting the sex worker; but I am furious with the porn industry’s extreme mistreatment of the sex worker. I am furious that, because of pornography, men are conditioned into thinking they are entitled to sex because the storyline almost always pans out as ‘soft rape’ where the woman ends up liking it. I am furious that most women in pornography have an average life expectancy of 35, that they have sexually transmitted diseases they shouldn’t even have, that they are unable to leave, that they are beaten, coerced and raped, that their wishes aren’t respected and that most of the time they can’t say no to a film they aren’t comfortable with unless they are highly paid public figure porn stars. This is an industry that has a temper tantrum when the government proposes they should use condoms.
So when I say I am anti-porn; I am not anti-sex, I am not anti-sexual exploration, I am not anti anything people decide to do in their bedrooms. But I am anti-rape-culture and I am anti- to the idea that violent misogynistic sex is the first thing a 12 year old is going to see when they try and google porn. These things aren’t labelled as BDSM or tagged as particularly violent sex aimed at a kink — this is for mass consumption and I am sick to fucking death of boys who haven’t even seen a vagina in real life thinking that a cumming on a girl’s face after she chokes on your dick is healthy sex for everyone.
I have been sexually harassed countless times in my school days and they all tie back to porn. These boys tried to ask me if I had done ____ or _____, which were fucking bizarre actions but they saw them in free porn. In grade 7, 13 year old boys were talking about glass dildos and women shooting ping pong balls out of their vaginas; vaginas which are hardly an accurate depiction of what diversity there is in the actual physical look of a vagina (don’t get me started on the Australian ‘airbrushing’ laws which note that no visible ‘lip’ can be shown in porn that could be accessed by younger boys???).
I’ve been threatened by a 15 year old boy not even 6 months ago that he would shove his dick down my throat, after I confronted him about speaking rudely to me. How did he come to that conclusion? How did he make the connection between a sexual act and violence against me? How did he know he could use his penis as a weapon against me? How did he know that to really threaten me in a way that would grant him power he could use sex as violence? If I were a boy, he would threaten to beat me up, but he chose that instead. These are the things I’m thinking about.
I want this trillion dollar industry to be held accountable for the way it treats its workers and the ideas it passes off as mainstream. This is an unregulated industry. It contributes to the sex trade. It drives supply an demand for child pornography, for rape pornography, for sex trafficking. You can’t have one without the other.
So if you want to be your own boss and be a cam girl that is YOUR choice and your choice alone. You decide what is right for you. I’m not targeting you, I’m wanting this giant, abusive, global industry to be held accountable for the shit its caused. So until sex workers are treated fairly, women are not treated like slabs of meat, violent misogynistic sex is not portrayed as healthy and normal, etc. then I cannot succumb to the idea that mainstream pornography is okay. Because at the end of the day, the average john is going to see these women as dehumanised figures and ultimately will use their body to have an orgasm. And if they’re doing that for a long enough time alone in their rooms, they’re going to, if not develop a power complex, view other women that way, and ultimately possibly develop the idea that they can use sex as a weapon.
This is not black and white; nothing ever is. Sex is healthy but the sex industry isn’t. And sometimes it’s hard to break free but there’s a bigger power at hand here and a lot of things happen behind the scenes that we don’t all see. I’m just very very concerned about the harmful effects of gonzo pornography and the well-being of sex workers everywhere.
I saw this quote on the Anti-Porn Feminists blog. Too good not to share.
I have seen a sixteen-year-old boy weeping in distress after getting a girl’s pube stuck in his teeth, I hear he was unshaven. I have seen boys showing each other porn on their iPhones on the train home from school, in bars and whilst strolling along the Champs-Elyséés. I have had a boy ask me to text him screenshots of porn films because he was on a wifi-free family holiday. One boy turned to kiss his date in the cinema but not before romantically whispering ‘don’t struggle’. One friend drunkenly walked off into a park in the early hours of the morning and when a male friend brought her back without ‘trying anything’, he was heralded as being ‘soo nice!’ rather than ‘soo normal!’. I have friends whose boyfriends have posted naked pictures of them all over the Internet. I have heard consent described as ‘de-romanticizing’. I have had a shockingly sober boy say to me ‘Why can’t I just slap my dick on your arse? Doesn’t cost you anything!’. This just scratches the surface of my store of depressing anecdotes; the most violent of which I won’t go into out of respect for the girls involved.
2014 is not a good year to be a teenage girl. The last of the 90’s kids are growing up and we are starting to see the effects of being raised with the Internet. For generations before us, hormonal teenage boys looking for sexy images of women had limited options; they could brave the embarrassment of going to the counter and buying Playboy, they could look through their sister’s Cosmo or they could use their imagination. Porn today has rid itself of the embarrassment-factor by embracing the anonymity of the World Wide Web; Playboy isn’t really considered to be porn anymore, the real stuff lives in your phone, on your laptop, your tablet; it is available anywhere, anytime at the touch of a button.
Violence, Teenagers, and Gonzo Porn, Clara Bennathan
It’s a sad set of humanity that has to buy sex from another. Tanja Rahm speaks of her experiences and the pathetic nature of those who employ her. Thank you to the Antiporn Activist tumblr for hosting her story.
Dear sex customer,
If you think that I ever felt attracted to you, you are terribly mistaken. I have never had any desire to go to work, not once. The only thing on my mind was to make money, and fast. Do not confuse that with easy money, it was never easy. Fast, yes. Because I quickly learned the many tricks to get you to come as quickly as possible, so I could get you off of me, or from under me, or from behind me.
And no, you never turned me on during the act. I was a great actress. For years I have had the opportunity to practice for free. Actually, it falls under the concept of multitasking. Because while you lay there, my thoughts were always elsewhere. Somewhere where I was not confronted with you sucking out my self respect, without spending as much as ten seconds on the reality of the situation, or to look me in the eye.
If you thought you were doing me a favour by paying me for thirty minutes or an hour, you were wrong. I would rather have had you in and out as fast as possible. When you thought yourself to my holy saviour, asking what a pretty girl like me was doing in a place like that, you lost your halo when you proceeded to ask me to lie down on my back, and then put all your efforts into feeling my body as much as possible with your hands. Actually, I would have preferred if you had gotten down on your back and had let me do my job.
When you thought you could boost your masculinity by getting me to climax, you need to know that I faked it. I could have won a gold medal in faking it. I faked it so much, that the receptionist would nearly fall off of her chair laughing. What did you expect? You were perhaps number three, or number five, or eight that day. Did you really think I was able to get turned on mentally or physically by having sex with men I did not choose myself? Not ever. My genitals were burning. From lubricant and condoms. And I was tired. So tired, that often I had to be careful not to close my eyes for fear of falling asleep while my moaning continued on autopilot.
If you thought you paid for loyalty or small talk, you need to think again. I had zero interest in your excuses. I did not care that your wife had SPD, and that you just could not go without sex. Or when you offered any other pathetic excuse for coming to buy sex with me. When you thought I understood you and had sympathy for you, it was all a lie. I had nothing but contempt for you, and at the same time you destroyed something inside of me. You sowed the seeds of doubt in me. Doubt as to whether all men were just as cynical and unfaithful as you were.
When you praised my appearance, my body, or my sexual abilities, you could just as well have vomited on me. You did not see the person behind the mask. You only saw that which confirmed your illusion of a raunchy woman with an unstoppable sex drive. In fact, you never said what you thought I wanted to hear. Instead, you said what you yourself needed to hear. You said that, which was needed to preserve your illusion, and which prevented you from thinking about how I had ended up where I was at twenty years of age. Basically you did not care at all. Because you had one goal only, and that was to show off your power by paying me to use my body as it pleased you.
We’ve legislated equality. We’re done now right?
Wrong Answer Binky; legislating equality is just the first tiny step, because equality has many parts to it, including justice and fairness. Illustrated below:
We’ll be heading in the right direction when women do not have to deal with garbage like this:
In 2006, researchers from the University of Maryland set up a bunch of fake online accounts and then dispatched them into chat rooms. Accounts with feminine usernames incurred an average of 100 sexually explicit or threatening messages a day. Masculine names received 3.7.
–From the article Why Women Are Not Welcome on the Internet by Amanda Hess.
I recommend following the link and reading the article, it is very informative and details the experience of being female and possessing an online presence.
This post from The Bewilderness explains the low prevalence of false rape accusations.
“Anon asked: Tonight I was speaking with a female coworker about rape culture and how terrifying it is to live with fear of knowing that if I was raped, it’s a high possibility that no one would believe me or take me seriously. She then said that she doesn’t have a problem with that because “most girls lie about being raped”. What would you say in response to that? I’ve heard many people say that but I have no idea how to respond.”
And the response – (TW Rape)
Your female co-worker doesn’t know anything. I hate that she said that.
There is zero benefit to “crying rape”. There was a study out last year, I believe, that cited of all rape accusations, .5% of them were false accusations.
The reason? Because once again, there is zero benefit in doing so. When you claim someone has raped you, what that means is you are about to get dragged through the mud. Every decision you’ve ever made, “relevant” or otherwise will be questioned. You will be called horrific names, so on and so forth.
And that’s why so many women and girls who are raped choose not to come forward. In doing so, they are re-traumatized, and they will likely have nothing to show for it; meaning, no one will believe them, and their loved ones will often turn on them.
Rape is a kind of horror, but the aftermath of it within a rape culture, is another beast all together. xx
That is the way the myth is created.
If you report a rape they don’t believe you because denial is the first response to bad news.
Then they bargain. Maybe it wasn’t really rape because you weren’t beaten half to death by a stranger. Maybe it was just a misunderstanding.
Misdirected anger comes next for you saying such a terrible thing about such a “nice guy” or famous guy or friendly guy. And what were you wearing, you probably were asking for it.
By now the rape victim has usually been silenced. They sure as hell won’t be talking to you about it ever again.
So it must have been a lie they told for sympathy, or meanness, or attention, or any one of the many reasons for lying that we ascribe to victims of abuse for having the unmitigated gall to speak of the abuse they suffer.
So they repeat the myth that most girls lie and that perpetuates the myth that most girls lie.
It never seems to occur to them that most boys lie, most men lie, most rapists lie.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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