(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

[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.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

I see Christian disapproval of sex as a symptom actually of a deeper archontic current. You can see the same authoritarian current at work in many Islamic countries and in India and China as well.

Authoritarians find it to be in their interest to control the ways in which people have access to pleasure. This is as true of Christian authoritarians as it is of those of the atheist, Muslim, and Hindu persuasions.

I truly believe that guiltless pleasure is the greatest rebellious act one can perform.

[alobar.livejournal.com]

I agree wholeheartedly -- which is why I stated "or religions like Christianity".

> I truly believe that guiltless pleasure
> is the greatest rebellious act one can perform.

While I can relate to your stratement, I do think it is a fucking shame that it must be an act of rebellion. It should, IMO, be a totally natural and instinctive act with no need to be a rebel to do it.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I hope our descendents get that right, some day.