(no subject)

[sophiaserpentia]

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 by antiwar_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.

Comments

[smoken-mirrors.livejournal.com]

What would you define as woman-positive porn, out of curiosity?

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

More commentary on this here.

[ubiquity.livejournal.com]

though going back through memories now i can't find it

I'm telling you, ljArchive lets you grep! (:

[night101owl.livejournal.com]

I don't doubt the link between sex and violence in our culture, but one element that I don't think you mentioned is how the government has a fairly strong amount of control over the mainstream media, and it is in the government's interest to NOT let us see images of violence. If we see violence, whether the visceral stuff that's on that porn site or simply the flag-draped caskets, then our support for the war begins to lessen.

However, the government does NOT have that level of control over the media in the porn industry, and especially internet porn. In fact, with the Bush administration's new War on Porn, the gulf between the government and pornographers grows wider. Porn has always been a target for censorship, and pornographers are old hat at fighting censorship. So if there's material being censored for other political reasons (beyond maintaining the sexual status quo), maybe pornographers are the ones most able to share it.

So while I have no doubt that there is a connection between the consuming of mainstream porn and the consuming of violence, I wonder if showing the violence is, in a way, a political act, why we defend free speech in the first place, and whether Americans might not even have an obligation to expose themselves to the violence that they're paying for.

Expanded Definition of Pornography

[chimpstop.livejournal.com]

In 1991 Pat Cadigan expanded the definition of Pornography to include ANYTHING that gets you off in the media...this is her nearly Post Cyberpunk novel Synners. Images of things being blown up, natural calamites, etc. etc. were classified under the heading DISASTER PORN. Shows like Maximum Exposure pretty much cover that territory. There's also Slapstic Porn...Amerika's phunniest home videos being the primary outlet for that.
Pornography is anything that get's you "Off" which may or may not be a graffic sexual depiction. Shows like 20/20 and that show with Stone Phillips on NBC fall under the heading of Scandal Porn.
FOX News and CNN Headline News definitly fall under the headings of NEWS PORN.

Pornography does not necissarily equal erotica.

[alobar.livejournal.com]

My perception is that it comes back to religion. Like it or not, we live in a society which very much accpts very fucked-up Christain values. The term "adultery" is mis-applied to all sex outside of wedlock. Many people seem to accept that all non-procrative sex, even inside wedlock is wrong on some level. Likewise fantacising about sex. Hence, pornography. So if one breaks the taboo about sex, one can still feel guilty if one does not cleanly expunge the underlying wretched meme of Christian morality. There are similar taboos about murder & violence. So if one dabbles in breaking one set of taboos, the other sets of taboos are called into question as well.

I feel that if it were not for Christianity (or religions like Christianity) it would be far more difficult to get people to go and murder/torture strangers who did nothing to them.

[thesecondcircle.livejournal.com]

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.

The question, in this context, is whether porn is the "illness" or the "symptom." Will changing the porn improve our society or is it rather that improving our society will, very naturally, change the type of porn we crave? When you take porn out of the center, the issues of victim blaming, non-consensual fantasies, and other "deviant" sexuality go away (please note I'm not condoning actual non-consensual porn or behavior of any type).

If we can transform our world into a healing and functional place where people can develop their sexuality in an atmosphere of tolerance and acceptance -- without guilt, shame, and abuse*, then we would be able to see the true and full spectrum of healthy human sexuality. Healthy porn would naturally follow.

* How do we do this? I wish I knew.