sophiaserpentia (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophiaserpentia) wrote2005-09-26 12:17 pm
sophiaserpentia) wrote2005-09-26 12:17 pm
(no subject)
Chris Wilson of Lakeland, Florida, said in an interview that he created the site in 2004 as a simple Internet pornography venture: Users post amateur pictures--supposedly of their wives or girlfriends--and for a $10 registration fee, others can take a look. He claims there are about 150,000 registered users on the site, 45,000 of whom are military personnel. Of the 130,000 unique visitors who come to the site daily, Wilson estimates that 30 percent of the traffic, or 39,000 unique users, are US military personnel.
Early on in his Internet venture, Wilson said, he encountered a problem--potential military customers in Iraq and Afghanistan couldn't pay for membership, because credit card companies were blocking charges from "high-risk" countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Not wanting to shortchange US troops, Wilson established a rule that if users posted an authentic picture proving they were stationed overseas, they would be granted unlimited access to the site's pornography. The posting began, sometimes of benign images of troops leaning against their tanks, but graphic combat images also began to appear. As of September 20, there were 244 graphic battlefield images and videos available to members.
...The website has become a stomach-churning showcase for the pornography of war--close-up shots of Iraqi insurgents and civilians with heads blown off, or with intestines spilling from open wounds. Sometimes photographs of mangled body parts are displayed: Part of the game is for users to guess what appendage or organ is on display.
from The Porn of War (some foul language, so perhaps NWS), cited in The Heart of Darkness, linked byantiwar_dot_com
Is the link between sex and violence in pornography, which keeps coming up in myriad ways, an inevitable side effect of the medium? Or does this link form when pornography is produced and consumed in a society rife with imperialism and oppression? I lean towards the latter, and i still hold on to the idea that non-exploitative, non-sexist pornography can be a good thing.
A while ago i wrote about the suggested link between pornography and the Abu Ghraib photos. In that discussion i pondered the ways in which militaristic culture would twist the medium of pornography to the purpose of mischanneling pleasure as part of the culture's efforts to produce a class of soldiers.
If my thesis is right, then woman-positive porn should have some effect towards calming sexism, racism, and militarism -- that is, *if* consumers bottle-fed on high-impact thrill porn can develop a taste for kinder, gentler woman-positive porn.
Unfortunately, exploitation remains profitable, even (perhaps especially) in an industry like pornography. It is as if the archontic forces are aligned against the success of such a project: capitalism, militarism, desensitization, misogyny, racism, addiction, and... i don't know a term for "compulsively seeking prurient thrills in the depiction of violence."
Postscript. I recall having a discussion in my journal at some point, though going back through memories now i can't find it, about the prurient-violent depictions of Hell sometimes given by Bible-thumping preachers, in which it is clear that pleasure is being taken in the thought of sinners suffering in Hell. I think that style of religion plays a role in this too, as part-and-parcel of the cultural pattern of what militarism has done to American culture.
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In this case, I think it's a mistake to view the government as an individual entity. I've studied a lot of obscenity and smut cases, and while the judiciary has tried to strike some sort of principled balance on free speech, the executive branches (at state and federal levels) have, at various times, put a hell of a lot of energy and resources into trying to shut down pornogrpahers. They have had the most success when they've allied themselves with feminist theorists and fought porn from the "porn = violence against women" angle.
So while I agree with part of your other comment, that independent producers are going to be hurt the worst in this war on porn, I also think that people who produce images that are blatantly violent (BDSM) are going to be the major targets of the campaign.
I am a sadomasochist. While I don't have much of a taste for mainstream sadomasochistic porn (and particularly the porn coming from nations with less strict employment laws, etc.), I am a subscriber of dyke-made for-dykes made-in-the-USA porn, and the images I like most don't really celebrate "the beauty of life and sex", at least not in a conventional sense. Have you ever seen "Bittersweet"? In my opinion, it's one of the most beautiful life-celebrating films I ever saw, but if the "average" person were to see it, they'd probably be put off by the beating and the needles. I think it would be an error to try to categorize what I look at as somehow more healthy than other mainstream SM porn. It's healthier in that there are more safeguards available to protect the people who create it, but the actual content involves images of real sadomasochism, real violence.
Chances are, it's likely to be a vulnerable target of the War on Porn precisely because it involves images of violence against women, and the "violence-against-women" theory is the weapon that anti-porn prosecutors like to rely on most. They may go after it because they're threatened by women's sexuality, but they'll shut it down because of the element of violence. Anything that prosecutors can describe as misogynist is a more vulnerable target.
And I think the thing that bothers me most with your approach, that porn that "celebrates life" is more okay, is that that reminds me of the other angle that prosecutors have used, that porn which depicts "unnatural" acts is obscene (illegal and without 1st amendment protection). They use this to shut down video stores that include gay male porn or anal sex. "Natural", just like "celebrating beauty and life", are such subjective terms, that in the hands of the authorities, that test is going to be used first to exclude people on the sexual fringe, while only really protecting the soft-focus gentle hetero how-to-please-your-spouse 1980s tantric stuff.
I realize that you're also a bit out on the fringe with me, and I don't mean to be rude in the way I disagree with you. I'm just extremely wary of arguments that the content of porn can be easily categorized into acceptable and not acceptable, because while you didn't mention "violence" as a key factor, it's the first factor that regulators tend to look at.
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reposted with correction
It is misogynism-in-context that concerns me, not the appearance of misogynism in content. By which i mean, as i tried to touch on in a thread above, that even depictions of fem-sub BDSM or the acting out of rape can be done in a way that is not misogynistic.
That sounds like a contradiction, but as a feminist my views are very complex.
I am concerned about what might be the ultimate root of things like rape fantasies, but i am not interested in shutting them down; i see them as a survival reaction to an unhealthy reality. I do not criticize people for their survival reactions to oppression. So to that extent i strongly support the development of outlets where things like rape fantasies can be explored in a way that is helpful and healing to everyone involved.
no subject
When i speak of "authoritarians" i am not speaking of an organized party or institution so much as of a memetic/cultural current of control in society.
With respect to SM there is still a general lack of awareness and understanding in our society; even in the supposedly "ultra-liberal" state of Massachusetts, you find events like the "Paddleboro" incident. Many of those who oppose SM are well-meaning, but lack understanding, and often fail to see that they feed something harmful when they support blanket bans on sexual expression and artistic depiction.