the p0rn post

Instead of a picture to begin this post, I will start with some headlines/web addresses which appear when one googles 'p0rn.' The first site which appears, from the first click shows pictures of women with come on their faces, a special "f*cked up facials" section (this is the porn jargon for coming on a woman's face or in her eyes), women with pained expressions while being f*cked, and a left hand menu which goes from amateur through fisting, BDSM (which shows women with clamps on their breasts, electrodes on their vaginas, tied up so that their breasts are swollen, bound and gagged, tied up on crosses and other apparatus, and one with clothespins on her vagina), through to the teens section which advertises "girls next door abused." dirtylittlewhore.com is the fourth address, bitchdump.com is number 10.

If this sounds extreme, it is no longer considered so. This is normal mainstream heterosexual p0rn. This is what teenage boys (and girls) or younger find the first time they decide to google the word 'p0rn.' This is what is colonizing our culture and our sexuality, men's and women's. This is what I'm so pissed off about.

What I'm even more pissed off about is that not many people seem to care. In fact, not only don't people seem to care, people seem to like it. Guys like it and, increasingly, girls like it too. To speak out against it is to be misunderstood as repressed, old fashioned, anti-sex, or anti-free speech. To feel that it is disgusting and damaging, not only for the individuals who act in it, but for everyone who consumes it, for everyone who is influenced by it, in relationships and in daily life- is to feel oneself in the minority.

Does it have to be this way? According to one man I recently spoke to about it "If it wasn't about domination and submission it would be boring." So does that go for real sex too? Does real sex have to be about aggression and submission? Have you never had loving spiritual sex? Poor you.

Another person said to me "There's always been porn." Yes there has, and there's nothing inherently wrong with depictions of sex to facilitate arousal. But the images we make make us. The images we produce show us who we are. And we are currently woman-punishers, woman-haters, woman-degraders. Whole generations are learning about sex from porn, internalizing these damaging roles, and losing their sexualities to the porn industry. And it is, we must remember, an industry. With a net worth of $14billion, according to Forbes magazine.

A lot of people do object. But most people I know seem to fall into one of two categories. Either they know about it and don't see a problem, or they don't know about it, and thus don't see the problem. Unfortunately it is mainly men who fall in the first category and women who fall in the second.

I defy anyone to tell me that p0rn in its current practice is not applied misogyny. Just take one look at the first site which comes up when you google 'p0rn' : http://www.yobt.com/main.html
and tell me what you see. There is no love here, no pretense at equality, no respect. It is all about the utter dehumanization and degradation of women. It is the backlash against the feminist movement of the 70's. It is the message to women - hey you want your sexual liberation? Here you go, you slut. You like sex? I'll make you wish you never asked for it.

There is no equivalent for men in our society for the language of hate and degredation used against women- whore, slut, bitch, skank, ho. There are no equivalents for men for the ways women are depicted- dehumanized animals who enjoy being forced and who enjoy pain.

So some agree with me. Yeah it’s wrong, they admit, but what are you gonna do? I don’t know. I think the first thing I’m gonna do is bring it to peoples’ attention that we have a f*cking problem here, and we need to start taking responsibility for it. And then we need to take our culture back from the people who are selling this shit. We need to tell them that we’re not buying.